Chapter 27 - Marco
I was sick.
My heart was failing.
It had been wrong for as long as I could remember.
My parents found out when I was three years old.
I tried to think back that far sometimes, tried to imagine what I looked like from the outside - a tiny, dark-haired child with bruised-looking eyes and too-thin wrists, clutching stuffed animals in hospital waiting rooms while adults spoke in voices over my head.
I didn’t remember all of it clearly. Some memories were only pieces.
The smell of disinfectant. My mother’s hand shaking when she tied my shoes.
My father standing very still beside a doctor, jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might crack.
But I remembered enough.
Enough to know that before me, they were doing okay.
Not rich. But okay.
They had enough to buy little things without counting bills in their heads first. Enough to be tired in ordinary ways instead of the particular exhaustion that came from watching money vanish into test results, prescriptions, specialists, procedures, follow-up visits, emergency visits, second opinions, third opinions, hope, fear, and more hope after that, because what else were they supposed to spend their lives on if not trying to keep me alive?
I was the fracture line.
That was the truth no one ever said out loud.
My diagnosis dragged debt into our house.
It soaked into everything. Into my mother’s smile, which stayed warm but became thinner around the edges.
Into my father’s shoulders, which never quite relaxed again.
Into meals made smaller, lights turned off earlier, shoes worn longer, every joy measured against cost.
They never blamed me.
That almost made it worse.
If they had blamed me, maybe I could have hated them and made something simple out of it. But they didn’t. They loved me through it. They loved me with frightening devotion.
By the time I was thirteen, things got better.
My health stabilized for a while. The appointments became less frequent. My parents, after years of scraping themselves against debt, managed to get back on their feet in small increments. Not easily. But they did it.
And I studied like my life depended on it, because in some indirect and humiliating way, it did.
I wanted to give them something back. I wanted to be worth the wreckage.
I read until my eyes blurred. I memorized things I didn’t care about. I earned a scholarship to America. Bloodburn.
My family moved here because of me.
Because I had “made it.” And this was supposed to mean something.
And for a while, things really were better. We had a house, even if it was modest. My father smiled more. I told myself it had been worth it. That maybe all the debt and pain and years spent waiting for bad news had finally passed.
Then my body started failing me again.
That was the worst part. It didn’t arrive like disaster. It arrived like nuisance. Dizziness. Fatigue. Pressure in my chest that came and went. A cough that lingered too long. The kind of symptoms you could explain away if you were motivated enough to lie to yourself.
And I was.
I ignored it.
Missed appointments. Skipped checkups. Delayed follow-ups. Told myself I was busy, that classes mattered, that money mattered more, that my mother’s health had become the priority because she was sick too now and I couldn’t stand the idea of the family drowning twice at once because of me.
So I chose not to spend money on my own body when hers was already demanding so much.
I couldn’t do that to them again. So I let things slide.
I let the dizziness become normal. I let the chest pain become background noise.
Then Alexei handed me that check. One hundred thousand dollars.
And after that, especially after I started coughing up blood, I went back to doctors. I let them examine me and tell me what I already knew somewhere in the sickest part of myself.
It was getting worse again. Manageable, for now.
But there was a good chance that love, if anyone ever made the mistake of giving it to me, would become grief.
That was why I couldn’t let Alexei say it.
He couldn’t love me.
Not because I didn’t want him to.
God, that was the worst part. I wanted him to in all the selfish, rotten, aching ways a person could want something. I wanted it desperately enough that when he looked at me with that terrifying softness, I felt my whole body lean toward him like a plant leaning toward light.
But he couldn’t.
He was too beautiful.
Too alive.
Too much for me in every way.
He could have anyone. He could have someone strong. Someone healthy. Someone fearless and bright and whole.
He didn’t need a sick boy. He didn’t need someone like me.
And yet he had said it.
Three words.
In three languages.
I love you.
Ti amo.
Ya tebya lyublyu.
I fell asleep in his arms crying last night. He held me while I cried. And I hoped he hadn’t.
If he had been cold, I could have hated him. If he had been cruel, I could have built a wall.
I would have understood it.
What I didn’t understand was his tenderness.
What I didn’t understand was Alexei Morozov standing in my hallway drenched in rain, crying with me, telling me he loved me.
What I didn’t understand was what kind of person looked at a boy with a dying heart and said I love you.
When I woke up, Alexei was already dressed.
He was leaning against my desk with several papers in his hands, dark hair still slightly damp from what must have been a shower, black shirt buttoned almost all the way up.
My room was washed in morning light. The curtains hadn’t been fully closed last night, so pale gold cut across the floorboards and the edge of my bed and the side of his face. My head felt heavy. My eyes burned the way they always did after too much crying, and there was a deep ache behind them.
I pushed myself upright too fast.
Pain lanced through my skull. A small sound slipped out of me before I could stop it.
Alexei was moving. One second he was by the desk. The next he was at the side of the bed, sitting close enough that the mattress dipped under his weight, one hand already on my arm, the other coming up to touch my face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you in pain?”
His voice was low, but the calm in it was fake. I knew him well enough now, or thought I did, to hear the fracture underneath.
And his eyes - there was something close to terror in them.
I hated that.
I reached up automatically and touched his wrist.
“Yes,” I said quickly. “But I just sat up too fast. My head hurts a little, that’s all.”
He studied my face for a second longer, like he was trying to decide whether to believe me.
Then his hand slid from my cheek into my hair, fingers brushing carefully through the tangled curls at my temple.
“Slowly next time,” he muttered.
I tried for a smile, but it came out weak. That was when I noticed the papers in his other hand. “What’s that?”
Alexei followed my gaze. Then he looked back at me.
His expression changed very slightly.
“I should be asking you that. You missed your checkup on March 12th,” he pointed out evenly. “And April 3rd. And April 29th. And May 14th. There was one more you rescheduled twice and then never attended on June 6th.”
I stared at him, feeling my heartbeat start to climb. “How…” I began, then stopped. “I thought you said you weren’t a stalker.”
Alexei looked at me for a long moment. Then, very flatly, he said, “I changed my mind.”
He set the papers down on the bed beside me and leaned in just enough that I had to look at him.
“I should have been one from the start. Then I wouldn’t have let you be so fucking reckless.”
Heat rushed to my face. Not from embarrassment exactly. Or not only embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. The horrible childlike feeling of being caught doing something dangerous and stupid.
I looked down at the blanket pooled in my lap. “I wasn’t trying to be reckless.”
“No? What would you call repeatedly missing cardiology appointments while coughing up blood?”
I flinched.
A frustrated sound left him, and when I finally risked looking up again, some of the edge in his face had changed shape.
He exhaled slowly and lifted a hand to my head, rubbing lightly over my hair the way someone might soothe a frightened animal they were also furious with.
“We’re changing your doctor,” he said.
I sat up straighter despite the ache in my head. “No.”
His hand stilled. “No?” he repeated.
“I can’t.” The words came too fast. “The others are asking for too much. The specialist I saw before was already expensive, and the newer ones are even worse, and I already told you the check was too much and I can’t keep—”
“Marco.”
He turned fully toward me, one leg folding onto the bed, his entire attention suddenly narrowed to me and only me. His gaze hardened. “I’m going to be very clear.”
Every instinct in my body went still.
“There will be no argument when it comes to your health. You will do what I say.”
I stared at him. My mouth opened, then closed again.
Because a part of me wanted to push back immediately. To tell him he didn’t get to decide things like this for me. That this was still my problem.
But another part of me heard something else beneath the command.
Panic.
Not mine.
His.
And that made resisting harder.
Still, I tried. “I was trying to save money,” I whispered.
Alexei went silent. I could feel him looking at me.
I hated how small my voice had gotten. How young I sounded.
“For my mom,” I added after a second. “And because mine always turns into more. It’s never just one appointment. It’s tests and follow-ups and medication changes and transport and more tests and then someone says they want to monitor something and suddenly it’s three months of bills and—”
My throat tightened. “And I thought if I felt mostly okay, then maybe it could wait.”
Alexei’s hand came back to my hair, but this time it rested there instead of moving.
“I don’t care what they charge. I will pay it.”
“You can’t just—”
“I can.”
“I don’t want—”