Chapter 21 Fyodor
FYODOR
I've been driving for two hours now, circling the same streets over and over, checking every hotel and bus station and late-night cafe I can find in this godforsaken town.
Sasha is asleep in the back seat with his head lolled against the window and his breath fogging the glass, and I keep glancing at him in the rearview mirror to make sure he stays that way.
I tried my damnedest to calm him patiently when Noemi marched out of that motel room and he started crying, but I'm a pathetic excuse for a father. I don’t know what to do with him at all.
He clung to me desperately, but he needs her.
He just lost his mother and I got so short-tempered that I shouted at her, and now she's gone and it's my fault and I don't know how to fix it.
She could be anywhere by now—it's been hours. She could've called a cab or hitched a ride or found some way out of Moscow, and I'd have no way to find her because I don't even know where to start looking. All because I lost my temper with her.
I just want to protect them. That's all I wanted when I told her no to shopping.
She wanted new clothes, which isn't a huge thing to ask for.
And she wanted books for Sasha after having left behind his studies at the hotel so abruptly, but all I could think about was either of them being seen in public by Koslov's men.
I couldn't stand it if they got hurt. It made me irrational at the thought of losing one of them, and I snapped.
I pull into another hotel parking lot and sit there for a minute with the engine idling, trying to decide if it's worth going inside to ask if anyone matching her description checked in tonight.
But it's the middle of the night and the lobby looks dark through the windows and I've already done this at three other places with no luck.
She doesn't have any money, I know that much.
Just whatever was in her purse when I took her from her classroom, which couldn't have been more than a few thousand rubles.
That's not enough for a hotel room, let alone a bus ticket back to St. Petersburg.
So where the hell is she?
I pull back onto the street and keep driving, scanning every storefront, sidewalk, and cross street.
The city is mostly dead at this hour, just a few cars on the road and the occasional drunk stumbling home from whatever bar is still open.
I pass a gas station, a pharmacy with its lights off, a row of closed shops with metal grates pulled down over their windows.
After another full hour of searching, I see a woman walk out the front door of one of those twenty-four hour coffee shops with her collar turned up and her head down. And without even having to think twice, I know it's her.
Noemi has this grace about her in everything she does, including the gait of her walk that is so feminine it appears she could walk on air. One glance at the figure strolling down the sidewalk cupping a paper coffee cup between two hands and my heart twists in my chest.
I pull the car over to the curb and throw it into park, then get out and close the door as quietly as I can so I don't wake Sasha.
He needs his sleep and he doesn't need to see whatever is about to happen between me and Noemi.
Who knows how she'll respond to me, and he doesn't need to see us bickering again.
I cross the sidewalk toward her, and she stops walking when she sees me coming.
I'm braced for a fight, ready for the anger that's been building between us to finally explode.
But when I get close enough to see her face, she's not angry at all.
She's shivering and scared, her eyes red-rimmed and her cheeks wet from tears she must’ve been crying before I pulled up.
She looks exhausted and cold and completely alone, and I feel the fury in my chest start to soften around the edges.
I don't see the frustrating woman who has the balls to stand up to me.
I see a fragile woman who needs protection.
"Get in the car," I tell her, probably a bit more gruffly than I should. She probably expects gentleness and patience along with an apology. I only realize it when it comes out and she scowls at me.
"No," she grunts, and she keeps walking, ignoring me.
I hurry after her, glancing over my shoulder at the running car where my son sleeps.
"Noemi, it's freezing out here and it's the middle of the night.
Just get in the car." Now I'm annoyed. The idea that I'm far enough away from my car that someone could jump into it and drive off with my boy is crowding out my ability to find compassion for her.
"You can't talk to me like that." She shakes her head, and I can see her hands shaking around the coffee cup she's holding. "You can't order me around and expect me to just obey. Why the hell do you think I left that motel?" Her feet slap the concrete and she doesn't stop walking.
"I'm trying to help you," I growl, grabbing her arm, making her spin around to face me.
"No, you're trying to control me." She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand, and I watch her struggle to hold herself together. "You want a fucking slave, Fyodor. You don't have the first clue about how to care for someone or protect them."
The words claw across my raw heart and I let go of her and step back. She's right—I know she's right, but admitting that feels like surrender. And I've never been good at surrendering to anything or anyone.
"I need you to come back," I say, and I hate how stiff the words sound coming out of my mouth, but they're true. As vulnerable as it makes me seem, I can't do this without her help.
"Why? So you can scream at me again?"
"That's not—" I stop myself, clench my jaw, try to find the words that keep getting stuck somewhere between my brain and my tongue. "That's not what I want."
"Then what do you want, Fyodor? Because I can't figure it out. One minute, you're kissing me and the next, you're treating me like the enemy. One minute, you're reading my journal and looking at me like you actually see me and the next, you're telling me to get out."
I don't have an answer for any of that because I don't understand it myself. I don't know why I push away the people I want to keep close, don't know why every feeling I have comes out twisted into anger that cuts the people I care about most.
All I know is that watching her walk out that door felt like someone reaching into my chest and ripping my heart out, and I've been driving around this town for hours trying to find her because I can't imagine going back to that motel room without her.
"I can't do this without you." Raw emotion scrapes up out of my throat and I swallow around the feeling.
"I don't know how to raise Sasha. I'm failing him every single day and I can't—" I stop before my anger gets out of control again and force myself to keep going even though every instinct I have is telling me to shut up and lock it down.
"I read your journal. I know you said you want to help me learn how to be a father.
I want that too. I want it more than I know how to say. "
Noemi stares up at me with a furrowed brow and apprehension in her eyes. Of course she doesn't believe me because I've given her no reason to believe anything I say. All I've done is show her reasons not to trust me or feel comfortable around me.
I run my hand through my hair and feel the frustration building, but this time, I don't let it turn into anger.
"I've spent my whole life learning how to fight and survive and shut everything down so it can't hurt me.
Nobody's ever taught me how to let someone in or ask for help without feeling like I'm admitting I'm weak. "
"Asking for help isn't weakness, Fyodor."
"I know that. I know it up here." I tap my temple. "But getting it from here to here—" I press my hand against my chest. "That's the part I can't figure out."
She doesn't head toward my car yet, but she doesn't back away either.
The look on her face is neither anger nor acceptance, and I can't tell what she's thinking.
She just stands there staring at me as if she's waiting for me to explain something further or apologize.
I'm not sure what she wants from me when I've already told her I have no clue what I'm doing.
"Please get in the car," I ask her softly, and I take a step toward her.
"Please, Noemi. I'm asking you. I need you to come back.
" But I refrain from touching her, though my fingers itch to pull her against my body and hold her.
When she walked out that door, I was afraid I'd never see her again, but I couldn't chase her down with my son standing there crying.
The wind picks up, tossing her hair, and she shivers harder until her teeth are almost chattering.
And still, she doesn't move. It's infuriating.
I want to shake her or pick her up and lug her to my car.
And maybe that's my real problem. Not that I'm incapable of having real emotion or even sharing that emotion, but that I'm impatient and I can't sustain a temperate demeanor for more than a few seconds.
Then without so much as a thunderclap of warning, the rain comes—all at once, in a drenching downpour.
Noemi gasps at the shock of it, and the coffee cup slips from her fingers and bursts open on the sidewalk, splashing hot liquid across my legs, but all I can do is stand there staring at her, praying she listens to me.
Every fiber of my being screams at me to drag her to the car out of the bone-chilling rain, but manhandling her will only prove her point.
I won't control her anymore, and I won't make demands of her.
From the moment this all started, I've done nothing but take away any choice she had, which is the reason she thinks I'm controlling.
I have to be different, and the only way I know how is to take it one choice at a time.
So I stand there in the pouring rain being drenched in heaven’s icy tears until Noemi moves. I expect her to turn and walk away, but she moves toward me instead. When her arms wrap around me and her head tucks into my chest, I'm shocked.
I go stiff at the contact, every muscle in my body locking up because I don't know what to do with this.
How am I supposed to respond to someone holding me?
Her face presses against my chest and I can feel her shivering against me.
She's almost soaked through already and she's freezing, like a block of ice that seeps through my layers and steals my breath.
I don't know what to do with my hands. I don't know if I should hold her back or just stand here like the useless idiot I am.
The rain's coming down harder now, running down my face and dripping off my chin, and she's not letting go, and I don't want her to let go and I don't know what any of this means.
So I just stand there in the rain getting soaked to the bone, and I let her hold onto me because I don't want to ruin whatever is happening between us right now. For once in my life I don't want to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or push someone away when they're trying to get close.
My arms come around her and I rest my chin on her head.
I don't remember the last time I ever cried, maybe that day when I was a child—but I have to choke back a sob of relief. Something powerful and overwhelming wells up in my chest and I know without a doubt, I need this woman. No, not need—want. I want her—in my life, in my home, in my heart. I love her, and I don’t even know what love is, but I know I feel it for her.
She pulls back finally, tilting her face up to look at me through the rain. Her hair is plastered to her cheeks and her makeup is running, and she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my miserable life.
"We should go," she says. "Sasha's going to wake up if we don't get back soon."
I nod because I don't trust my voice right now, and I take her hand and lead her back to the car.
The rain is still coming down in sheets, soaking through everything, but I don't care.
I open the passenger door for her and she slides in, but before I walk around to the driver's side, I lean in to kiss her softly.
It's quick and chaste, but she reciprocates as if it's the most comfortable thing in the world for her.
Sasha is still asleep in the back, oblivious to everything that just happened, and I sit there for a moment with my hands on the wheel and the rain drumming against the roof of the car.
Noemi is shivering, water dripping from her hair onto the upholstery, and I reach over and turn the heat up as high as it will go.
"I'm sorry," I say. "For the way I talked to you before. For all of it."
She smiles at me sadly, but her head dips and she says, "I know. We'll figure it out, okay?"
I put the car in drive and pull away from the curb, heading back toward the motel. The road ahead is dark and slick with rain, sort of like the hazy future I can't quite see clearly right now.
But I've found her, and she didn't run away again.
Now if I can finish this fucking job and get Marat Koslov off the face of this planet, I can focus on something even more important than that.
My family.