Page 126 of 10 Days to Ruin

Or maybe not. Maybe that’s just my hope talking.

He comes back into the kitchen a moment later with a thick volume in his grip. “Here.” He thrusts it at me. “Take a look.”

I’m frowning as I crack it open to the first page. It’s a photo album. Blank leather cover, inside pages yellowed and crinkling.

But the first picture pasted inside stops my breath. A boy of maybe five straddles a bicycle too big for him, front wheel mangled beyond repair. His split lip blooms purple, but his grin could power the Eastern seaboard.

“You wereadorable,” I gush. The bowl cut, the short shorts, the clear eyes, the irrepressible smile. I look up at the man version in front of me. “Wait—are you still fishing for compliments? Am I just falling into your ego trap?”

He chuckles and rolls his eyes. “Keep sassing and I’ll take the book back.”

“Over my dead body.” I turn my back to him to shield it. Sasha is still chuckling as he plasters himself against me, his chin coming to rest on top of my head. “Keep going.”

The next picture is even older than the first. Baby Sasha, swaddled like a burrito, with only his chubby cheeks peeking out.Aleksandr Ozerov—1 July 1986, 4.56kg.I do some quick math in my head and my jaw drops once again.

“You weighed more thanten poundswhen you were born?!” I screech.

Sasha’s laugh bounces his chin on top of my skull. “I was big.”

“You werefat! Oh my God, Sasha, you must’ve killed your—” I freeze, even as the insensitive words are already halfway out of my mouth. Blanching, I change gears. “I’m so sorry. That’s such a horrible way to— God, I’m an asshole. I’m sorry, Sasha.”

His hand drifts up to graze my cheek from behind. “It’s okay, Ariel. It’s all okay.”

But it’s not okay. Because I turn the page and see eight-year-old Sasha with a black eye. The page after that has him in a leg cast. Then an ugly, puckered slice on his forearm, a grimace as he tries to run after a soccer ball. Another cast, another bandage. Page after page reveals a story written in bruises and blood. I see decades of Sasha’s pain, preserved forever in Polaroid amber. Nataliya Ozerova appears ghost-like in the margins—a blurry figure drying tears in a ripped sundress, hands cupped around a candle in a blackout, pressing an ice pack to her son’s eye while hers swells shut.

The last photo steals the air from my lungs. Nataliya stands before a quaint storefront with peeling gold letters:Babushka’s Lap.Zoya’s place. Her smile is sunlight through prison bars.

“That’s—” My throat constricts. “She looks exactly like?—”

Sasha reaches past me and snaps the album shut. “I think that’s enough.”

“Why show me this?”

“Because you wanted to know me. This is me.”

“Thiswasyou,” I correct. I turn to grab his wrist. He lets me take it, unresisting. “But a book of photographs and an asshole dad don’t define you any more than a closet full of princess dresses and an asshole dad define me. I didn’t want to be that anymore, so I stopped. You…” I look up at him, surprised that my eyes are filling with tears. “You don’t have to be what he wanted you to be.”

Sasha gazes down at me. It’s impossible to say what he’s thinking, what he’s seeing. Do I look insane to him? Delusional? Or just plain stupid?

What I’m proposing is a complete and total rewrite of his entire life. His dad melted the soul of this little boy down and poured it into the mold of a monster. But fuck the mold. Outlines are only suggestions, right? I’m not the princess Leander wanted. Sasha doesn’t have to be the beast Yakov intended for him to be.

We can find a different way.

… If he’s willing to try.

Sasha’s thumb passes over my cheekbone where a tear escaped without permission. His eyes burn through the fragile space between us. “You think it’s that simple? Stop being what he made me?” The vodka on his breath is sweet fire. “Maybe youaredelusional.”

But there’s no heat in it. Only wonder.

“Delusional’s my middle name.” My laugh cracks. “My parents couldn’t decide between that, ‘Disaster,’ or ‘Bad Decisions.’” I reach up to touch the scar around his throat, a question I’ve been too afraid to ask. He flinches—then stills, letting me trace the marbled skin.

“He did this,” I whisper. Not a question.

“He tried.”

Then he makes his move.

Not toward the exit. Not away from the truth. Towardme.Sasha’s mouth crashes over mine like a storm surge—hot, desperate, inevitable. The photo album thuds to the floor, forgotten, and he picks me up to my feet.

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