Page 45 of 10 Days to Surrender

Sasha exhales through his nose. Looks up at the mist-shrouded sky.

I sink deeper, until the water licks my chin. I’m praying it’ll drown the inconvenient lust—and if not, it can just drown me.

“What?” I challenge when he stays quiet.

“Nothing.”

But I catch the way his neck flushes when another involuntary moan slips out past my lips. The water’s working dark magic—I canbreatheagain, the twins’ weight buoyed by the water.

I can’t fully unclench, though. Not with him here, barely clothed, no one else around for miles and miles. Even as the minutes bleed past and I try to tell myself that it’s okay, everything’s okay, my muscles stay coiled up tight.

“You should—” Sasha starts.

“If you say ‘relax,’ I’m drowning you in here.”

He snorts. “I was going to say you should stretch your hips. The magnesium helps, and prenatal stretching improves labor outcomes.”

I squint at his outline through the steam and fog. “Since when do you know about prenatal care?”

I could almost swear he blushes. “I had Feliks send me some articles.”

The image is unintentionally hilarious. I want to laugh as I picture him cooped up in the villa cellar, scowling broodily at diagrams of cervical dilation.

Silence swells again. Water laps at the stretch marks branching across my stomach. I trace one with my thumb, wondering if he’s looking. Wondering why I care. Lord knows there’s plenty else I could be concerned about. It’s been a hectic few days, to say the least. I haven’t had coffee and my stomach is gurgling with hunger.

I’ve never felt farther from New York than I do right now. Even for the six months in France, I felt away, but notthatfar away. This, though, is like I’ve jumped to a different planet. Steamy fog wreathing me as I share a hot spring with this alien of a man, this enigma, thiswhat-the-hell-makes-you-tickmystery who got me pregnant and ruined my life. I miss my mom. I miss my apartment. I miss Gina.

“I miss bagels,” I blurt.

Sasha blinks. “What?”

“Bagels. A good, real, authentic New York bagel. I haven’t had one in six months. I’d made my peace with never having one again. Or at least, I thought I did. But now… Fuck me, I’d kill for a bagel.”

Sasha, to my surprise, lets out a laugh. “I’ve done worse for less.”

But I feel like I’ve opened Pandora’s box now, and I can’t possibly keep it all contained within me. “You know what else I miss? Target. And bodega coffee. And Gina’s shitty apartment with the radiator that sounds like a dying accordion.” My throat tightens. “I misstalkingto her. To Lora. To my mom. I miss so many things that I always used to take for granted, and if I don’t think about them, it’s fine, but if I give them even the tiniest fraction of a thought, my heart starts to hurt so bad that I feel like I’m gonna die.”

Sasha’s quiet for three heartbeats. Four. Five. Then he reaches for his discarded pants on the rocks.

I tense as he pulls out his phone—black, encrypted, almost certainly bulletproof. He powers it on, taps through menus, then extends it toward me.

“Call them.”

The device glints in the mist. I eye it like it might bite me. “You’re joking.”

“You think I’d joke about this?”

“They could trace?—”

“Not this line.” His jaw flexes. “Five minutes. That’s all I can risk.”

My fingers tremble as I take it. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Sasha climbs out before I can retort. Water sluices off him in sheets, those black briefs clinging obscenely to curves I swore off six months ago. I look away just in time to miss the worst of it—but not before my body stirs.

He wanders over to a boulder a few yards away. Just out of earshot, but close enough to be here in a second if I need him. He just sits silently, gazing over the fog-crowned hills in the distance.

So I dial.

One ring. Two. I’m just about to give up hope when?—

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