Chapter 14 #3
“I love your terrible wolf. I love your sharp mouth. I love the Little who trusts me with her coloring pencils.” His expression became serious again. “You are worth protecting, Lena. But you are also worth stopping to enjoy.”
My throat hurt. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his.
“Ok, your pasta was almost good,” I whispered.
He laughed against my mouth.
“That is the closest thing to devotion you have ever said to me.”
After sunset, when the sky turned violet over the water and the first stars began to show, I found Sal on the veranda and said the words without making them sharp.
“I would like Daddy now.”
He looked up from the book in his lap.
The expression on his face changed at once. Not hunger first.
Attention.
“Come here, little one.”
I went. He drew me between his knees and rested his hands at my waist.
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know.” I looked out at the water. “To stop thinking. No more worries.”
“All right.”
He did not ask what I had been thinking about. He took me upstairs and opened the drawer where he had placed soft clothes for me. Not clothes chosen by my father’s stylist. Not the polished armor I wore to meetings.
A pale blue nightdress. Thin straps. Soft fabric that slid over my skin.
“May I help?” he asked.
I nodded.
He unbuttoned the shirt I had borrowed from him. His fingers moved slowly over each button. Then he lifted the nightdress over my head and settled the straps on my shoulders.
His knuckles brushed my collarbones.
“Beautiful,” he said. “You’re so god-damn beautiful. I can barely take it in.”
I looked down at myself.
The dress made me feel younger than I was. Softer.
It made me want to crawl into his lap and stay there until the world forgot our names.
He led me back to the veranda with my coloring book and pencils. A bowl of sliced mango waited on the table. So did a bottle of lotion.
“Sit,” he said.
I sat on the outdoor sofa with my legs folded beneath me.
Sal warmed lotion between his hands and began rubbing it over my shoulders.
The sun had left my skin tender. His palms moved slowly from the base of my neck down across my shoulder blades. I let my head fall forward.
“Oh.”
“Too much?”
“No.” I closed my eyes. “Very good. The right amount. Perfect. Just like everything you do.”
He worked the tightness from my muscles with patient pressure. I colored while he touched me. The firebird on the page became red, gold, and blue. Its wings spread above a dark sea.
Every few minutes, Sal held a piece of mango to my mouth.
“Open.”
“You are enjoying this way too much.”
“Probably.”
I took the fruit from his fingers. Sweet juice ran over my tongue.
The night grew warmer. Crickets moved through the gardens. Somewhere below, waves folded against shore.
“I still think about surrendering,” I said.
His hands stopped. I looked at the page.
“Whenever somebody gets hurt,” I continued. “Whenever a guard is shot or a restaurant burns or Kiryl is scared. My mind goes there before I can stop it. I can’t help it.”
Sal’s hands rested quietly on my shoulders.
“You do not have to promise me you will never think it.”
I turned around to face him.
“What if we add a rule?”
His brows drew together.
“To the agreement,” I said. “Not one where I need permission to make decisions. I don’t want that.”
“You won’t have it.”
“But when I believe giving myself up is the only solution, I tell Daddy before I do anything.”
Sal looked at me for a long time.
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“Because fear makes me alone.” My fingers tightened around the pencil. “And when I’m alone with it, I start calling self-destruction strategy.”
His face changed. Deeply. His hand came up and cupped my cheek.
“That is a very wise rule.”
“I hate that I need it.”
“No, sweet one. Everyone needs someone when fear lies to them.”
He brought the agreement from inside. We sat at the veranda table under the small gold lamp while he wrote the addition in his careful hand.
When Yelena believes surrendering herself is the only solution, she will tell Daddy before taking action. Daddy will listen without punishment, contempt, or coercion. The final decision remains Yelena’s.
I read it twice. Then I took the pen. I signed it.
This one was a rope I had chosen to hold.
Sal signed beneath mine.
“What do you want from this holiday?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair.
“Four days.”
“That is very specific.”
“Four days in which you learn that your happiness does not have to justify its cost.”
I stared at him.
“That seems ambitious.”
“I have been told I am excessive.”
He stood and held out his hand.
“Come to bed, little one.”
This time, I did not need to ask what he meant.
The room had open windows. White curtains moved with the sea breeze. Moonlight lay across the bed in pale strips.
Sal undressed me with reverence. He kissed my shoulders where he had rubbed lotion into my skin. He touched me as if he had nowhere else to be and no battle more urgent than learning every sound I made when I forgot to be guarded.
When he kissed me, I opened for him.
When he asked what I wanted, I told him.
Slowly.
Closer.
Stay.
He did.
There was no punishment in his hands. No test I had to pass. Just heat and breath and the heavy sweetness of being wanted without being spent. He held me after.
My cheek rested on his chest. His fingers moved through my hair. The sea sounded beyond the open windows, steady and endless.
Not guards changing shifts.
Not engines outside a locked gate.
Water. The world. Possibility.
I listened until sleep took me.
It was bliss.