34. Harper
HARPER
I wake to a sound I can’t immediately place, low and pained, coming from somewhere just outside my door.
For a second I think I dreamed it. Then it comes again, closer this time, a man’s voice, straining, and I’m out of bed before I’ve fully processed why, feet hitting the cold floor, heart already racing ahead of my thoughts.
I open the door to find Dimitri half carrying Viktor down the hallway, one of Viktor’s arms slung over his shoulders, though Viktor’s very much on his own feet, just favoring one side.
The hallway light catches the state of him all at once. His shirt is torn at the shoulder, a scrape along his jaw still bleeding sluggishly, a deeper cut across the bridge of his nose that’s already swelling. Nothing about the way he’s moving looks broken, just bruised, sore, furious.
“Viktor.” His name comes out of me before I’ve decided to say it, sharp with a fear I haven’t felt since the parking lot at Ginger’s school.
“I’m fine,” he says immediately, wincing as he says it. “Harper, I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.”
“He’s stubborn, not dying,” Dimitri says, quick, before I can spiral further. “Help me get him sitting down somewhere I can actually clean him up.”
I don’t ask more yet. I move, pulling a chair out at the kitchen table instead, clearing space, my hands working faster than my mind can keep up with.
Viktor sits without much help from either of us, more annoyed than incapacitated, and up close the damage looks like exactly what Dimitri said: scrapes, a split across his nose, bruising already forming along one cheekbone.
“What happened?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Dimitri, what happened to him?”
“Car accident. Or made to look like one. Someone ran him off the road on his way back from the club.” Dimitri’s already moving, pulling supplies from a bag I didn’t notice him carrying: gauze, antiseptic, a small suture kit he doesn’t end up needing.
“It wasn’t an accident. Whoever did it wanted to send a message, not kill him, or he wouldn’t be sitting here arguing with both of us right now. ”
“Should I call an ambulance? A doctor, anyone?”
“No. No hospitals, no calls. I need you to trust me on that for now.”
“How am I supposed to trust that with him bleeding all over my kitchen, Dimitri?”
“Because it looks worse than it is, and because I’ve cleaned up considerably worse than this myself.” Dimitri glances at Viktor. “Tell her yourself. You’re the one insisting you don’t need stitches.”
“I don’t need stitches. Scrapes and a bruised nose. That’s the extent of it.” Viktor catches my hand before I can pull further away, his grip steady, strong, nothing weak about it at all. “I promise you, Harper. I’ve had worse mornings after sparring with Dimitri.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I know. I’m trying anyway.”
I clean the scrape along his jaw myself, hands still not quite steady, while Dimitri tapes gauze across the bridge of his nose and checks his ribs with a few firm presses that make Viktor grunt but nothing worse.
“Nothing cracked,” Dimitri confirms. “He got lucky. Airbag did its job, and whoever hit him wasn’t actually trying to kill him tonight.”
“Who did this?” I ask once the worst of the cleaning is done, Viktor sitting steadier now, color back in his face. “Was it them? The Ivanovs?”
“We don’t know yet, not for certain. But given the timing, given everything else, I’d bet on it.” Dimitri cleans his hands, expression grim. “This isn’t watching anymore, Harper. This is them actively trying to send a message. That’s an escalation we haven’t seen before tonight.”
My hands are still shaking, even with him sitting right here, clearly whole, clearly strong enough to argue with both of us about whether he needs help. I press them flat against my knees anyway, trying to steady myself against the image of him in that hallway a few minutes ago.
“You could have been killed tonight.”
“I wasn’t.” Viktor reaches for my hand again, steady, certain. “I promise you, this is nothing. A message, like Dimitri said. Not an attempt that actually worked.”
“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is.”
“No. I suppose it isn’t.” He studies my face, something apologetic crossing his features despite the bruising. “I’m sorry you had to see this before I could clean myself up first.”
Dimitri leaves not long after, promising to have full details on the car and the men responsible by morning, and it’s just the two of us in the kitchen, Viktor testing his own range of motion in his shoulder, wincing but clearly fine, nothing about him actually fragile despite the state of his shirt.
“Come sit with me,” he says. “Properly. Not hovering.”
I sit across from him instead of pacing, and some of the shaking finally starts to settle now that I can actually see for myself how little damage there really is.
My anger doesn’t feel like it matters anymore, sitting here looking at him.
It hasn’t disappeared, not fully; the hurt of these last four days is still real, still valid.
But it’s shrunk down to something small next to the much larger fact that I could have lost him tonight, even if tonight turned out to be scrapes and a sore shoulder instead of something worse.
“You stayed close the whole time,” he says, watching me. “I thought you needed space.”
“I needed space from the anger. I don’t need space from watching you come through that door bleeding, Viktor.
Those are different things.” I reach for his hand again, still slightly unsteady myself, though he’s rock solid under my grip.
“We need to talk. Not about what happened four days ago. About what happens now.”
“Now?”
“They’re not just watching anymore. This is them coming for you directly, which means it’s coming for all of us eventually, whether I’m angry at you or not.
” My voice steadies as I say it, the fear resolving into something closer to resolve.
“I can’t keep doing this from a distance.
Being angry didn’t protect either of us tonight.
It just meant I almost lost the chance to tell you I forgive you for trying, even when you got it wrong. ”
“Do you? Forgive me?”
“I’m getting there. Faster than I expected to, watching tonight happen.
” I hold his hand tighter. “Watching that hallway, I kept thinking about every version of tonight that could have gone worse. It didn’t.
But it could have, and I don’t want to spend whatever time we actually have left being angry instead of together. ”
“I’m sorry you had to see any of this.”
“I’m not sorry I was here to see it. I’m glad I was, honestly, instead of finding out after the fact the way I’ve found out everything else these last few months.
” My voice steadies further. “But forgiveness isn’t the thing that matters most right now.
What matters is that we stop facing this apart.
I want in, Viktor. All the way in. No more decisions made for me. ”