Page 162 of 10 Days to Ruin

“Sasha? Sasha! Fuck, where are you?”

“Lib… Lib… Library…”

“Fuck. Hold on, I’m?—”

The phone slips from my numb fingers before I can hear what he says. Darkness creeps in.

Not like this.

Ariel’s face floats behind my eyelids—laughing in Paris, furious in the library, coming apart beneath me in that goddamn dressing room.

Ya tebya lyublyu.

I press a trembling hand to the gut wound, where I can feel the life draining away.

Pressure. Keep pressure.

Then a shadow falls over me.

“Oh, Sasha.” Kosti Makris tsks, adjusting his cashmere scarf. “You don’t look good.”

He kicks the knife out of my hand. Then he crouches, tilting my chin up with a gloved hand. “Don’t worry, my friend. I’ll take care of you, just like you took care of my niece.”

Blackness swallows me whole.

56

ARIEL

I make a vow as I run. Not the vow I thought I was going to make tonight, but a vow nonetheless.

I will leave Sasha Ozerov behind me.

Every step is an underscore on that promise. I’m gonna leave him behind me. All of him. Every kiss, every touch, every murmur he ever whispered in my ear when the lights were off and it was just the two of us pressed skin-to-skin beneath the sheets. It all stays in the past.

The snow stabs at my throat as I run. My breath comes in ragged clouds. I don’t slow down until the library’s silhouette fades behind me, swallowed by the iron-gray sky.

My right hand throbs. I glance down through frozen lashes to see blood trickling from a gash below my knuckles—courtesy of smashing through the library window.

God, I’m tired of life trying to stitch together these poetic circles. Doesn’t it understand? Nothing isneat.Nothing iswhole.It’s all a broken, sobbing mess, and you never end up back where you started in a neat synchronicity—you end up worse off, every single time.

A neon sign glows through the blizzard ahead—CVS. Sanctuary. Perfect. I can shoplift a first aid kit and patch myself up.

The automatic doors wheeze open for me. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, bleaching the aisles into a fever-dream haze. I grab a box of Band-Aids, hydrogen peroxide, and start to head for the bathroom.

Then freeze in front of the family planning shelf.

A pink box mocks me from the shelf.Rapid Results!it chirps. My stomach lurches.It’s just stress,I tell myself.Stress from dodging mobsters and playing fiancée to a human wrecking ball.For ten days, my entire life has been a dumpster fire full of shit rolling downhill, so of course this weird, fluttery intuition of mine that says I should take the test, just to see, just to be sure… That’s nonsense, right?

Right?

I grab the test.

In the bathroom, I fumble with the packaging, but my hands are slick with blood, so I drop it twice before I manage to tear the plastic free.

I pee, set the test on the sink, and count the seconds. Sixty. One hundred. A hundred twenty. I deliberately avoid the mirror. If I have it my way, I’ll never see my reflection again.

I finish my own count right as the test’s automatic timer starts to sing. I look down, and?—

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