Page 66 of Fight

He was dead.

I looked up at Markov, whose frowning face gave me some grim level of satisfaction. I’d made him so much money, but no more, something I was happy to deny him.

A half hour later, he slithered toward me.

“My debt is paid,” I said.

“It is. You might have even made a little extra if you hadn’t been so hasty in bringing things to an end. There’s a pleasure in taking your time, Ioan.”

His words, the unspoken reference to P made me rage, but I kept my feelings in check, looked at him blandly. He kept going.

“Have you reconsidered my offer?”

“Our business is done,” I said.

He huffed, shrugged. “Your choice. But maybe I’ll see you again.”

He left then, something for which I was grateful, and I soon followed, relieved to be away from him forever, even more relieved that he had no further hold over P.

But there was uncertainty, too. Uncertainty that kept me from going directly to her as I always did.

P was free from Markov.

P was free from me.

I’d known this day was coming and had worked hard to see it arrive. Now that it had, the relief, the joy, that she was no longer in his debt was chastened by the fact that there was no reason for her to be with me now.

Sometimes, I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy that she’d stay, but it was simply that. We hadn’t talked about it, but what other possibility could there be? There was a place for her in my life. I hadn’t intended there to be, but it was there nonetheless, a place that she had created and one that only she could fill. One that I wanted her to.

But what did she want?

I was too chickenshit to ask, but I could guess the answer. She’d spent her life seeing after her mother, fighting for the next day. Now that she didn’t have to, she’d want to live. I wouldn’t stand in her way, no matter how much the voice inside me demanded I make her stay.

I returned home, found P sitting at the kitchen table. She stood when I entered, looked at me with worried eyes lingering on the bruises that covered my face. Calm coming over her when she saw that I was okay.

Vibrating with emotion that I couldn’t ignore, I went to her and wrapped my arms around her tight, her soft, warm body perfect against mine.

No one else would ever fit my arms so well.

I squeezed her tighter and then dropped my arms to my sides.

“It’s done, jefe,” I said.

“Done?” She frowned, then blinked, the hopefulness in her voice and eyes like a dagger to my heart.

“Markov has been repaid,” I said.

Her frowned deepened for a moment but then she hugged me, her touch telling me of her relief but something else I didn’t recognize. She pulled back and tilted her head up, offering a kiss I would never refuse.

So many times I’d kissed her, but none quite like this. Before, there had been something hanging over us, a necessity that held us together, and now it was gone. That absence gave this kiss a freedom that the others hadn’t held but also a finality, one that I rejected with every fiber of my being.

When I stopped kissing her and looked down at her face, her lips swollen, her eyes shining, I knew that I loved her.

I kissed her again, unable to express the emotion in any other way, and as we made our way to the bedroom, clothes falling piece by piece as we went, that feeling only got stronger.

Got stronger still as I pushed inside her, our fingers entwined. Our lovemaking was gentle, but no less urgent, and when she reached her climax as I emptied my seed inside her, I knew I would never live without her.

“So…” she said a long time later as the sun began to break across the horizon. “I can go…I mean, if you want that, I can.”

My arms tightened involuntarily, my body rejecting the idea before my words could.

There were so many things I wanted to say, things like telling her I wanted her with me forever. Instead, I said, “Go to sleep, jefe.”

She chuckled lightly, and then, after she’d burrowed even closer to me, she did just that.

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