Page 28 of 10 Days to Surrender

“Let me help,” he rasps.

“You don’t get to help.” My voice wavers. “You don’t get to swoop in and act like some white knight after?—”

“After what?” His eyes glitter. “After I loved you? After I failed you?”

The word hangs between us—loved, past tense—and something inside me wails in self-pity.

Jasmine’s voice cuts through the dark. “Ari? You okay down there?”

“Yeah.” I duck under Sasha’s arm. “Peachy.”

I’m starting to stride away when he speaks up again. “I didn’t come back to ruin your life, you know.”

That draws a derisive laugh out of me. “No? But that’s your favorite game.” I turn back to face him. “But yeah, sure, you didn’t come back to ruin everything; that’s just a fun, natural byproduct of you doing what you want all the time, and fuck what it means for anyone else, right?”

“Ariel—”

“You came back because you couldn’t stand—couldn’t fuckingstand—the thought of me existing outside of your control. That’swhat you came back, Sasha. At least do me the courtesy of saying it to my face.”

The thickening darkness hollows out his cheeks and turns his eyes to mercury. “You think this is about control?”

“With you, everythingis about control.”

“Not with you.” He growls in his throat. “When I kissed you in that library… When I—” He cuts himself off, jaw working side to side. “That wasn’t control. None of it. That was surrender.”

My heart stutters. “Don’t start using words like that, Sasha.”

He steps closer. The farmhouse seems to hold its breath. “You asked me once why I wouldn’t fall in love. Let me answer now—it’s because love is the one thing my father couldn’t beat out of me. The one weakness he never found. But you…” He touches my cheekbone. “You made it look soeasy.”

I knock his hand away. “You don’t get to rewrite history now. You lied. You manipulated. You let me think?—”

“I know what I did.” His voice drops. “And if I could carve those lies out of the past, I would. But I can’t. So all I can offer is this—” He presses my palm to his chest. His heartbeat thunders against my skin. “However long we have left. However you’ll have me.”

I wrench free and turn so I don’t have to look at him anymore. With my back to him, I say, “We have until Jas and I are safe. Then you’re going to walk away from us, Sasha. And I’ll never see you again.”

I can feel him lingering. Waiting. His breath rattles in the silence.

“You’re right,” he says finally. “I should walk away. That would be the noble thing to do.”

I pause at the barn door, hand on the rusted handle. Outside, crickets chirp a deafening symphony.

“But I never claimed to be a noble man.”

10

SASHA

The Italian border guard’s flashlight rakes across the car window. Kosti breathes quietly in the seat next to me. I keep my hands loose on the wheel, bloodied bandage carefully tucked beneath the hem of my shirt, eyes straight ahead.

When he turns his attention to the back seat, the guard’s gaze lingers on Ariel’s swollen belly, her death grip on the door handle, the way Jasmine’s arm drapes protectively around her sister’s shoulders like she’s twelve again and guarding her from their father’s drunken rages.

Family vacation,I want to sneer.We’re the fucking Partridge Family with bullet holes.

“Passaporti,” the guard barks.

Kosti leans over me and slaps a stack of euros into the man’s palm. “Amici della famiglia,no?”

I wonder for a moment if he’s gone too far. The last fucking thing we need is to spend a night in Italian jail while immigration authorities decide our fate. The thought of this underpaidcountry boy popping open the trunk to find a full armory and knives stained with Serbian blood is darkly funny, though.

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