Chapter 22
Louhi
We’re still catching our breath when there’s a knock on the door and Honey Eyes’s voice drifts through the wooden barrier. “Lou, the nurse is here.” There’s a brief pause before he adds, “She doesn’t speak English.”
“Give us a second. I can translate.”
This is perfect, actually. I was wondering how I might scheme my way into watching Sean’s exam.
I don’t think he’d tell me what happened to him otherwise.
There’s no denying that some terrible things were done to these men.
Based on the way Digs never quite unleashed himself on me while we were shagging, I surmise he’s battling seen and unseen forces firing shots within his mind.
I hoped that stepping into the dark together might reconnect us, but I hadn’t bargained that he’d hold himself back. We need each other, or we’ll never survive whatever the future holds.
We both slip from the bed, and I re-dress, not bothering with my boots, while Sean pulls the sweats back on. I toss my pillow onto the bed from the floor where I’d dropped it and prop the gun case against the wall.
Swinging open the door, I find a shirtless Jace with his hands stuffed into his pockets some distance from a slender, young nurse with wavy brunette hair.
Jace strides inside first. Oh, please come in. I suppose they’re being tended to in this room then.
I nod at the nurse, but she doesn’t return the gesture as she sizes me up, prompting me to arch an eyebrow. I wonder if she knows who she’s in a room with.
The two men take a seat next to one another on the sofa in the living area of the primary bedroom. I flick on the gas fireplace as she begins to speak in Russian.
When I turn back around, leaning against the mantle, I translate. “This is Amaliya. She’s going to look at your injuries.”
The petite woman perches on the ottoman and scoots in front of Jace first, but I snap at her in Russian. “No, the other one goes first.”
She whips her head around, pinning me with a glare as though I’d told her she’s a piss-poor nurse. My lips are pursed, though, and I have no qualms holding a gun to her head to ensure Sean is tended to first. Viktor’s potential anger doesn’t scare me.
Whatever she sees etched in the lines of my face has her doing what I demanded. Smart woman.
Eye-to-eye with Sean, she asks, and I translate, “She’s going to begin by listening to your heart.”
He nods. When she places the bell of the stethoscope to his chest, Sean’s grey-blue eyes find mine, and they don’t leave my face as she proceeds with her examination, looking at his bruises carefully and applying a salve to the cigarette burns.
Her next words in Russian hang heavily in the air, wrapping around my neck like a rope dangling from a tree branch.
I stare at the back of her head for several moments.
I’m not na?ve; I know the atrocities that happen in prisons like Ex-I.
While I got lucky in that everything that was done to me was done by Sean, I can only imagine the heinous things the other inmates endured.
I’d kill anyone and everyone who touched Sean without his permission. He’s mine, all mine. No one touches what’s mine.
Sean’s eyebrows furrow, and Jace glances between us, his face scrunched tightly in confusion.
“She wants to know if you were…” I clear my throat, the next two words strangling me. “Sexually assaulted.”
His chest rises with a large, silent intake of breath, his intense, stormy gaze pinned on mine as he shakes his head twice. The relief threatens to buckle my knees and drop me to the floor. I grip the wooden mantle next to me to keep me upright.
I barely register Amaliya speaking over the static that rumbles in my ears. It abates enough for me to echo the words, “She needs to set your dislocated shoulder. She says that it’s going to hurt and that you can wait to be sedated.”
His jaw tightens. “Tell her to do it now.”
I relay the message, and she nods, indicating that he should move to the bed. Translating again, I explain, “She wants you to lie face-down on the edge of the bed.”
Forcing myself to watch as she sets about fixing his shoulder, I have to fist my hands at my sides to stop myself from blowing a hole in her skull. She’s trying to help him.
Angled toward me, his face contorts, grunting through clenched teeth as a pop that I will hear forever rings through the room. Shit.
She helps him to sit up and bends his elbow before retrieving a sling from her bag and nestling his arm within it. Sean appears exhausted by the time she finishes, a sheen to his skin as he leans against the headboard of the bed with a visible weariness gripping his features.
Rinsing and repeating the same process through Jace’s exam, Amaliya applies an ointment to the wounds on his torso and back, as well as a handful of butterfly bandages.
But when she gets to the part where she asks him about being assaulted, he rubs the back of his neck and glances away.
“No, but…I think my, uh, balls are bruised.”
Jeesus Kristus. What the fuck happened?
I communicate his statement to the nurse who has me instruct him to undress so she can take a look. To give him some privacy, I face the wall. While I’ve already seen his dick since it was swinging between his legs the entire journey to the boat, this is…different.
See, I can be polite.
“She says that the swelling is minimal, and you shouldn’t have any lasting issues, but it’ll be uncomfortable for a week or so while the bruising goes down. She said you can put your pants back on,” I relay, turning around after I hear the faint rustling of fabric.
“Vasha ochered’,” Amaliya states in a gentle voice, looking squarely at me.
“Oh, I’m fine. I’ve already been tended to,” I reply in Russian.
She purses her lips like she wants to argue, but doesn’t. She probably doesn’t believe me. I wouldn’t. Not with my vast number of cuts, burns, bruises, missing toenails, and broken fingers.
To prove that she suspects I’m a liar, she leaves some medical tape on the ottoman before walking out with Honey Eyes on her heels.
“Lay with me,” Sean murmurs, his words heavy with sleep.
As I strip down to my knickers, I realize that we’ve never shared a bed before.
It’s the first time I’ve shared a bed with someone I didn’t intend to kill.
The prospect of curling up with Sean fills my stomach with an odd, giddy sensation that I’m absolutely not going to analyze.
It feels like our first taste of normality, a glimpse through the window that shows our future.
I flip off the lamps and crawl into bed next to him, but as soon as I have the sheets pulled up around us, he shoves them away.
“What’s wrong?” My face pinches as sit up, trying to make sense of things.
“I—The sheets.” His voice is hoarse and thin.
Ah. I was trained to endure all manners of hell, but I don’t imagine that whatever the army’s training was prepared him to undergo intense physical and psychological torture. Only to inflict.
“Do you want to sleep on top of the sheets?”
Moonlight streams through the sheer curtains, and I clock the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he nods. I nuzzle into his side, careful not to put my head on his chest. If I had to guess, he’s feeling like he’s locked in that box again. I don’t want to add to the sensation that he’s trapped.
After several quiet moments, I whisper, “I’m here if you want to share what happened to you.”
I’d make an awful therapist, but for Sean, I would try.
His good arm snakes beneath me, tucking me to him tighter. “How did you survive it?”
That’s a question with a complicated answer.
His fingertips brush the years-old injury on my right side, beneath my ribs, that I got when I was careless.
I hadn’t intended to talk about this, but scars—both inside and out—tell our stories, and while I’ve never wanted to erase a single one, I’ve never wanted to share mine with anyone either… until now.
If I bare an emotional wound, perhaps he’ll show me his.