25. Tamara
TAMARA
Ivana looks tiny and breakable in the hospital bed, a miniature shadow version of my sister.
A mask covers the lower half of her face, breathing for her until her body remembers how to function without help.
A tube inserted into the back of her hand is feeding her intravenously, the liquid dripping monotonously from the bag attached to the stand beside the bed.
A monitor records her vital observations, fluctuating relentlessly, mesmerizing with figures that I don’t understand apart from they mean that my sister is still alive.
She is so pale it’s as if all the color was drained from her skin while she was in the ocean. Her lips are still blue, barely there, giving her a ghoulish appearance. Her hair is stringy, matted, and the veins in her eyelids stand out against the paleness.
Hypothermia is a killer; the doctor explained to us when we arrived.
I didn’t listen.
My sister has survived worse than hypothermia; the evidence is right there for all to see.
The sliced flesh around her throat like a sinister necklace surrounded by purple-black bruises, hidden discreetly behind a sterile dressing as if that will make me deny what they did to her.
The fingernails missing from both hands, and the fingers splinted together to help the broken bones heal.
The cuts on her arm like someone was checking off the days on her flesh in lieu of a calendar.
The burn marks like polka dots on every visible part of her skin.
It wasn’t enough to throw her overboard. The fucker tortured her first to find out who she was working for.
I shouldn’t have killed him. I should’ve secured a rope around his neck, hung him over the side of the boat, and navigated it back out to the ocean so the sharks could feed on him from the toes upward.
“She’s strong.” Finn’s voice penetrates my reverie.
He covers my cold hand with his warm one, and I feel the tension pulling me tight like a bow.
I know I need to let it go, but I don’t know how to.
Not while Ivana is still fighting for her life, as if her life isn’t something she’s entitled to like anyone else, it’s something she must win by proving her worth.
While fuckers like Boris Petrov take theirs for granted regardless of the horrors they inflict on other people.
How is that fair? How can anyone look at Katya curled up on Finn’s lap with her thumb in her mouth, sleeping properly for the first time in fuck knows how long, and decide that she should fight for her place on this planet?
“Breathe, sweetheart.” Finn raises my hand to his lips and kisses it. “You did what you had to do. I’m proud of you. Your sister will be proud of you too.”
“It isn’t enough.” I shake my head and blink back tears.
“Someone once told me that we get up every morning and we give it our best shot. That stuck with me because, when you think about it, what more can any of us do? And you know what I see when I look at you?”
My eyes sting when I look at Finn.
“I see a strong woman who gives it her best shot and then beats herself up about it later.”
I turn my attention back to Ivana.
She is so still. So vulnerable. So lifeless.
Ivana’s legs usually move when she sits still.
She covers every inch of a super-king-size bed with her incessant wriggling and taps out a tune on a coffee cup when most people would sit back and relax.
Seeing her like this is like looking at a waxwork model, and I can’t get my head around why she deserves so much pain when all she has ever tried to do is protect the people she cares about.
Katya fidgets in Finn’s lap. She needs medical attention.
The nurses tried to coax her away from us once Ivana was settled in the ICU, but she got so distressed that they left her here with us.
I’m letting her down too. I promised that no one would hurt her again, but I can’t even think about taking care of her while Ivana needs me.
The weight of responsibility is weighing me down, bowing my shoulders, and keeping my head bent.
“Sweetheart.” Finn waits for me to look at him. “You’re here for her. You’ll be here for her when she wakes up, and she’ll know that you didn’t give up on her.”
I suck on my top lip and try to swallow the ache in my throat. “What if she doesn’t wake up?”
“Talk to her. She’ll hear you, and when she wakes up,” he emphasizes the ‘when’, “she’ll remember every word you said. I can wait outside with Katya if you want to be alone with her.”
I shake my head. “Stay?” It comes out as a whisper.
He smiles, and the dimples make a brief appearance, sending tingles through my exhausted body. “Right here, baby.”
I want to kiss him. Maybe I shouldn’t want to while my sister is being kept alive by machines, but I know that if he puts his arms around me, and we kiss, everything will feel …
hopeful. But there’s still so much that I need to say to Finn too, it’s like I pressed the ‘pause’ button on my life when Ivana went missing, and everything that has happened since then is waiting for me to hit ‘play’ so that it can catch up in real time.
I suck in a shaky breath.
I hold Ivana’s hand carefully like she’s a fragile bird.
And I smile at her, because she’s still my beautiful sister.
“Did you know it was him?” I begin.
There’s no right or wrong way to start this conversation, so I’m winging it. I’m pretending that we’re sitting in her bedroom in Leonid’s mansion, the sun is shining outside, and everyone else is sleeping. Those precious moments between waking and our time that belongs to the Ivanov family.
“I’d have come with you, Ivana,” I continue. “I’d have helped you every step of the way, but I guess you knew that. Is that why you sent me to the wrong dock that night? Because you wanted to prove you could do this alone?”
I glance at Finn who gives me an encouraging nod.
I puff up my cheeks and exhale slowly. Fuck, this is hard.
“Just be you,” Finn whispers in my ear.
Katya wriggles in his lap without opening her eyes.
The poor child is exhausted, and I’m reminded again that she needs medical care to heal physically, a pause between her past life and her new life wherever it may take her.
Mentally … this trauma will always be a part of her; I only hope she’s strong enough to not let it define her but rather use it as a foundation to build a good life on. A great life.
Just be me, Finn said. That’s easier said than done when I no longer know who I am.
I’m not only Ivana’s twin sister and Leonid’s enforcer, I’m …
the woman who can’t live without Finn … the woman who promised to keep a frightened child safe with no idea of what that promise would really mean to either of us.
I’m also the woman who is going to be a mom.
“So much has happened,” I start over. “I never thought I could exist without you, Ivana. We’ve always been in this together, right? Do you remember when we were in the orphanage, and the big kids taught you how to fight? You were my hero then. You’re still my hero now.”
Finn finds my free hand and squeezes.
My gaze drifts between my left hand holding Ivana, and my right hand in Finn’s, and it occurs to me that I can have both. I’m the connector. The bridge between two worlds that can co-exist if I allow them to. If that’s what I want.
Tears fill my eyes, and my throat aches with the words that need to come out.
“I will live without you, Ivana, if this is your time to go. I promise. You don’t have to fight for me anymore. You don’t have to worry about me; I can take care of myself. And… I met someone. His name is Finn. I think you would like him because…”
I’ve not stopped to question why I like Finn.
Aside from the obvious physical attraction which I’m not going to share with my sister, I simply accepted his unconditional love without question.
Without analyzing how I felt about him. Probably because I was frightened that he might try to replace my sister. But now I know he would never…
“Because he is selfless, and kind, and funny, and sexy.”
“Sexy?” Finn whispers in my ear. “I didn’t know you thought I was sexy.”
Heat rises to my face, and I realize that he’s joking when he winks at me.
“The multiple orgasms didn’t give it away?” I whisper back.
“I thought you were just using me for my body.”
I run my tongue across my top lip, studying his mouth, while my clit tingles at the mental images of him licking me till I come.
“Your body is good.” I’m still whispering, conscious that this conversation is for our ears only.
“Good?” He frowns, feigning hurt.
“Okay, it’s better than good.”
“How much better?”
“You want me to score you out of ten?”
We shouldn’t be doing this here. I have no idea how this conversation has even drifted from serious to playful in a matter of seconds, but I guess it must be some kind of coping mechanism because I can no longer feel the weight pressing down on the top of my skull.
“Hmm…” Finn scrunches his nose. “Do I?”
I suck my lips in, trying hard not to smile. “Eleven.”
His eyes widen, and the dimples are back. “Eleven?” His lips brush my ear when he whispers, “Think I could push it to twelve?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
He kisses me on the lips, and my heart flutters like it has grown butterfly wings and is trying to escape. “Mo féileacán,” he whispers like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. “I love you.”
The words are right there on the tip of my tongue. I love you. But I can’t say them here, now, not while Ivana is unconscious and Katya is asleep on his lap.
“I know, sweetheart.” He kisses my forehead and sits back in his seat, contentment oozing from his pores, and I question if I said the words I was thinking out loud anyway.
Ivana hasn’t moved. The monitor is still beeping hypnotically, the figures still fluctuating, the drip still leaking fluids into her veins.