Page 111 of The Game

The next thing I know I’m watching a truck barreling down a street behind Anna and she’s walking along, oblivious, talking on her phone. I wave my arms over my head, screaming, “Anna! Behind you! Move!” and I keep yelling at her to shift out of the way, but she’s just talking and talking, and I can’t get her to hear, to look up, to doanything. So, I race across the road and dive for her, and thank Christ I make it in time. But I’m under the truck and being crushed by this huge tire, a searing pain in my stomach, so bad that I want to die.Please let it stop!But it goes on and on and it’s the end … This is how my life ends. Then my eyes pop open to dim green lights and a hospital ceiling.

I gasp as a shadowy figure leans over me.

“Adam, are you all right?”

Anna.She’s okay, she’s okay.Oh my God.“I’m okay. I’m okay,” I gulp out. “What happened?”

My heart rate recedes from the red zone.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. It was a dream. Just a dream.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No. Fuck no.”

She climbs onto the bed beside me and, careful to avoid my tubes and wires, she shuffles down and rests her head on my chest. “Is this all right?” she whispers.

I put my hand on her head. It’s silky under my palm and my throat tightens in gratitude. I could lose her. Tomorrow or the next day, someone could get to her or me and she would be gone. They’ve said that I’m okay, but who really knows? We’ve been friends for such a short time. I’ve been cautious all my life and look where I am now—in no different a place than Fabian. He ended up in a hospital, too. Something else put him here, but it was no more or less self-inflicted. All this caution … for what? If nothing ever comes of this, what we’re doing here, I want her to know.

“I love you, Anna.”

She goes still under my hand. Then her face pops up next to me.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

My throat tightens unbearably. “I said I love you. I don’t want us to just be friends. I know this is a crazy time to say it, and I know you want a better man than me, especially now, but in case I don’t get another chance to tell you, I want you to know.”

Even in the dim green light, I can see her frown as she glowers at me. “A better man than you?”

“You said you wanted to be friends, and you told me that at the start, too. I understand, Anna, I do. But it hasn’t happened that way for me and …”

She presses a finger over my lips. “I said just friends in the beginning because being with a tennis player is a problem. I’m not here for ten months of the year. My focus has always been on my sport, not something or someone else. My relationship history, what I had to do … I’ve never met a good man, always dangerous manipulators. But then I found you, and you were a million miles away from that, and I realized that was what a man was supposed to be. That the best men look after you in all the right ways. The way that’s best for you.”

“But I was a distraction, too.”

“No, you weren’t. I lied about that. You were anything but. But with all the stuff with Arty, my history in Russia, I got worried that I was putting you in danger … I didn’t want them to come after you.” She grins suddenly, and her teeth look green in the strange light. “Rather ironic now, don’t you think?”

She’s so perfectly capable of looking after herself. I’m so relieved she’s here: warm, alive, and so unbelievably okay. I start to cough as my throat closes up and she starts to climb off me, muttering, “I shouldn’t be on the bed with you.”

“I’m fine,” I gasp, tightening my arm around her.

She gazes up at me. “I love you, too.”

Now I really can’t breathe. “What?”

She squeezes my hand and stretches up to place her lips on mine, mumbling, “I love you, too.”

“You don’t have to …”

But she squeezes my hand again. “I nearly had a heart attack when Konstantin implied he’d done something to you … I just … I’ve never felt anything like that before. Like an express train was rushing toward me and I couldn’t get out of the way.”

It’s so like my dream, I want to laugh.

In fact, I want to swing from the rafters and dive off a high cliff, so I slide my hand into her hair and kiss her senseless.

EPILOGUE

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