Page 113 of 10 Days to Surrender

“Fine.”

More silence. I hear her breathing on the other end of the line, tense and measured. Like she’s choosing her words as carefully as I am.

“Well,” she says finally. “I’m glad you made it back safe.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re… okay?”

I think of the three bodies cooling in the alley behind Zoya’s. Of how steady my hands were when I pulled the trigger. “Getting there.”

“Good. That’s… good.”

The conversation dies again. We used to be able to talk for hours about nothing. Now, we can barely string together three sentences.

“I should let you sleep,” I say.

“Probably.”

Neither of us hangs up.

“Sasha?”

“Yeah?”

She takes a breath like she’s about to say something important. Then: “Never mind. Goodnight.”

The line goes dead before I can respond.

I stare at the phone for a long moment, then set it face-down on the nightstand. Dawn is starting to creep through the windows. I should sleep. Should focus on the war ahead.

Instead, I pick up her hair tie and twist it between my fingers until the sun comes up.

43

ARIEL

Judas is acting up again. It’s dark and sticky, with not a breath of breeze or A/C to break up the hot monotony of summer in Italy.

And yet I still wish I had Sasha’s heat next to me. I’m lying in bed, drowning in the oversized fabric of his shirt that I couldn’t bring myself to wash after he left. His cedar-and-mint scent still clings to the collar, though it’s starting to fade.

The twins are restless tonight, turning and kicking like they know something’s wrong. I press my palm against the spot where Thing 1 is doing somersaults. “Shh,” I whisper. “I miss him, too.”

The call earlier left a sour taste in my mouth. All those stilted words and silences that said too much and not enough.

I roll onto my side, the mattress groaning under my weight, and stare at the wall. Moonlight pierces through the shutters, painting jagged lines across the plaster. I’m so tired—of the pregnancy, of the distance, of feeling like I’m losing him all over again. I’m so tired of being tired, and I feel like I’ve been exactly this tired for a long, long time.

My phone screen suddenly blazes to life on the nightstand. Sasha’s name appears above the FaceTime icon. My heart lurches. We just talked—well, attempted to talk—less than an hour ago. What could he possibly…?

I almost let it ring out. Almost.

But my finger slides across the screen before I can stop it.

Sasha’s face fills my screen, and the sight of him knocks the air from my lungs. His hair is mussed, like he’s been running his hands through it. The usual pristine dress shirt is wrinkled, top buttons undone. There are shadows under his eyes that weren’t there when he left Italy.

“Sasha, is everything?—”

“I couldn’t sleep. Not after— Fuck, I can’t stop thinking about you.” He drags a hand through his hair, and I catch the flicker of a pink hair tie on his wrist—mine, from months and months ago. “I’m tearing myself apart here. This city, this war… it’s eating me alive, but I need you to know that I’m doing it for you. For them.”

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