34. Nikolai
Nikolai
Days pass. She’s in the house, but she makes sure our paths rarely cross. When they do, she doesn’t look at me like she used to. She’s there, but I can tell she’s already got one foot out the door.
I don’t know how to apologize. I’ve never been good at it. In my experience, apologies are words people use when they want forgiveness without changing anything.
I do what I know. I take action.
The sitting room in the east wing hasn’t been used since I bought this place. When I moved in, I had someone furnish it. Two chairs. A table. Nothing I chose. It gets a lot of sunlight, so I kept the curtains closed. It wasn’t like my office, where everything had a purpose.
I call Luke’s therapy center. Two phone calls later, my apology is underway. What should have taken a week is finished in two days. Kylie worked on the final touches in the evening while Luke was occupied in the cinema room or asleep.
The next morning, I stand in the middle of the finished room before I bring Luke in. I try to see it through his eyes. It’s quiet. Ordered. A place that makes sense. A place where the world outside can’t get too loud.
My mother would have loved this room for me.
I find Luke, knowing Gabby will be with him. She’s always with him or close enough to reach him. Ready for whatever threat comes next.
He’s in the kitchen eating cereal. Cocoa Puffs again. Gabby stands at the counter with her coffee, staring out at the backyard. She turns around when I walk in. Her eyes hold mine. I miss being the first thing she sees when she wakes up.
“Morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
I look at Luke. “I want to show you something.”
He looks at Gabby, the way he always does when he’s deciding whether something is safe. She gives him the small nod I’ve watched her give a hundred times. Permission. Reassurance to go ahead.
He slides off his chair.
Gabby follows without being asked. I expected her to.
I lead them into the east wing and stop outside the old sitting room. I look down at Luke.
“This is yours,” I say. “If you want it.”
I open the door.
Luke steps inside first. He moves slowly, the way he does in a new space. Taking everything in before he decides what to do with it. He catalogs the room, his eyes moving from one object to the next. He stops at the sensory swing. Beside it, a shelf holds all the toys his therapist recommended.
Of course, there are dinosaurs. The T. rex on the wall might scare some kids, but I think Luke will see it as protection.
I watch him cross to the sand table and push his fingers into it. Then, he notices the canopy in the corner and crouches to look inside. A weighted blanket is folded on the small mat inside, beside a few books and one of the fidget tools his therapist suggested.
He crawls in and sits down.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
Gabby makes a small sound beside me and presses her fingers to her mouth. When she looks at me, tears fill her eyes.
I look away. I don’t know what to do with her crying.
We stay for a few more minutes while Luke explores. He sits in the swing with his feet brushing the floor. After a moment, he starts moving, slow and rhythmic. I watch the tension ease out of his small shoulders.
Eventually, Gabby walks in and stoops over in front of him. “I’m going to talk to Nik for a minute, okay?”
“Okay,” Luke says. Still swinging.
Kylie is waiting in the hall. She smiles. “This will be so good for him,” she says.
“Can you sit with him?” Gabby asks.
“Absolutely.”
Gabby walks ahead of me toward my office. I follow.
She goes inside and waits for me to close the door. Then she turns to face me, and I brace myself. I cannot predict this woman.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” she says.
“I want to.”
“Nikolai.” Her voice is soft, but I can’t tell if she’s happy or sad. “You don’t owe us any of this.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“He needed it. It will help him.”
“You’re a good man,” she says quietly.
No one has ever called me that. Pasha might think it, but he’d never say it without following it with something cutting. Sergei respects me. Maksim loves me. Neither of them has ever called me good.
My mother called me a good boy. That was different.
I don’t know if I’m good. I’ve put men in the ground and made choices that kept me alive at someone else’s expense. Good is not a word I use for myself.
Gabby says it like she means it.
“I’m not,” I say.
“You are.” She says it again, and I believe she means it.
I don’t know how to respond.
She exhales, a slow release of breath that makes me tense.
“Thank you,” she says. “For the room. For everything. You have no idea what this will mean to him.”
She steps forward and puts her hand on my chest. I reach up and wrap my fingers around her wrist. Her lips brush mine.
I kiss her, giving her the apology I don’t know how to verbalize.
I know she thinks I was wrong. I still don’t understand how keeping her safe became something I need to apologize for, but I trust Pasha. He knows these things.
Her other hand slides up my arm to the back of my neck. I release her wrist and pull her against me. Then I feel dampness on my cheek.
I pull back and see tears. I want to kiss them away. Her fingers brush my lips, a soft smile curving hers.
Then she walks out.
I stand alone in my office, staring at the door she closed behind her.
She called me a good man and then walked away.
I have never been so confused. I’ve sat across from men who would kill me the second I turned my back, and I’ve read every one of them.
I can’t decipher Gabby.
This woman undoes me, and I can’t figure out how to stop it.
I don’t want to.