Page 73 of Vasily the Hammer

He manages to adjust his hold so I’m tipped onto him, no choice but to rest my head on his shoulder and neck, to curl up there against him. “You don’t,zvyozdochka. Ty menya lyubish.”

“Ya tebya ne lyublyu,”I counter, but it’s weak and I’m sniffling, so I don’t know that it’s very convincing.

Definitely not when Vasily responds with a laugh and, “Oh, ho, ho, look who suddenly understands Russian.”

Oh. I guess I do know a bit of Russian. At least enough to understand when Vasily accuses me of loving him and to tell him I don’t love him. “All you do is hurt me,” I pout, my adrenaline waning enough that I want to simply curl up here, even if the fight hasn’t left me.

“I’m sorry,” Vasily says. “Do you forgive me?”

“Forgive you? What—how—Vasily, you overdosed on heroin!” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things he’s done wrong that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness for, but this? With everything going on? The tears well again. “You have a son!”

“Shh, shh, shh,” he rushes out quickly, and I don’t know if I weigh too much or if he’s just exhausted from the day, but he walks me back a couple steps and rests my butt on that gurney that I’m now hoping was his because otherwise I’m sitting on a sheet a dead body was just on. It’s also his way to put the space between us that I didn’t want. I’m forced to look at him.

I hate him.

I hate him for all the times he’s hurt me, whether I remember them or not. I hate him for abandoning me. I hate him for not being there for my son. I hate him for his lies and the lies I must have told Artom. For taking me to that empty apartment and making me question if I was going to ever get my memories back and for leaving me there because he knew what he was doing was wrong. I see that now. I see the way he hid from me.

But he’s alive.

He’s in a hospital gown, ass out to the world behind us, and there are wads of cotton taped to his arm, where blood must have been drawn or medicine administered. He has a bruise under his eye and a butterfly bandage on his neck. His complexion is sallow and his eyes are bloodshot. His hair is damp— I’m thinking now that he was doing the best he could to wash up in the sink in the bathroom— but it’s sticking up stubbornly where I can see he attempted to finger comb it forward. He’s an absolute mess, and no matter how many men I’ve seen before and how many I’ll see again, no one will ever be as handsome.

But that doesn’t matter either. Not after everything.

“I didn’t overdose, I swear,” he says, his eyes pleading for me to believe him. “Or, not deliberately. Not on heroin.”

“That’s what Janson told Maria.”

He blinks at that. “Wow. I don’t like that chain of command.”

“Maria’s nice.”

“I don’t want you to get opinions of her.”

“Because you had sex with her and then lied and said the condoms were ours because we didn’t want kids but I wasn’t on birth control, which was the dumbest lie ever, just so we’re clear?”

Vasily grimaces. “Yeah, that about sums up why I don’t want you to get too friendly with Maria. The doctor said the same thing, that it was heroin, when I woke up—here in the morgue, I might add, which fucked with me in new, exciting ways.”

“What kind of sick joke is this?” I cry out. “Why would they—I need to calm down.”

He takes hold of my chin, runs his thumb along my jaw. Yet again, he leans too close. “Nothing makes sense. I took my migraine shot; that’s it. I swear. I guess Kostya dropped me off, but he talked to a higher-up, paid him off to make it look like I died. Mortician is none too happy, but I promised to behave myself.”

His eyes dip down for a moment in an obvious perusal of my sundress, ridiculously underdressed for Flagstaff. I wasn’t exactly planning ahead when I left my kid with an ATF agent I’ve known for two hours and hopped on a plane.

And then his eyes darken. He shoots me an irritatingly lopsided grin. In the chill of the morgue, I swear I feel his body heat rise between us. “But maybe I could break that promise.”

“Absolutely not,” I snip. “I hate you.”

“I almost died, Ana,” he purrs, his voice going silky as he teases one of my straps. “I still might. You don’t know.”

God Almighty. He’s like a teenager. I bat his hand away. “Yeah, that’s exactly the reason for you to not... misbehave.”

He leans against me, the jerk, and whispers, “If that’s your only reason, that means you’re thinking about it.”

“Are you crazy? We are in a morgue! And I just told you I hate you!”

“Yeah, but that’s a lie.” Again, his hands go for my straps. “You just came all the way from Phoenix to see me. You looked about ready to faint when you thought I was dead.”

I bat him away yet again, steadfastly ignoring the way the spots his knuckles grazed are left tingling. “There is a whole massive world, a galaxy between being scared that you might have died and wanting to have sex with you.” Which reminds me. “I saw the tapes, Vasily.”

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