Page 100 of Vasily the Hammer

In his sneakers.

Ana sighs. “We’ll work on that.”

“It’s fine. We have housekeepers.” I shrug but have to grit my teeth as it rubs wrong against my bruised shoulder.

“Vasya,” Ana chastises. “You need to put me down.”

“Absolutely not.” I haven’t let her feet touch the ground since I carried her out of the church. A dozen federal agents tried to stop me, but I wasn’t about to put her down. I can talk to them later.

I have to talk to Blazing Hell, too. They came through in a big way. We’ve had an uneasy relationship ever since Artyom’s death, and I think that needs to change now. I see now how manipulative Kostya was.

I’m still blown away by it.

“Hey. Hey, hey,” Ana whispers, placing her hands on my cheeks and forcing me to focus on her again. “You need to stop thinking about the bad stuff.”

“He almost killed me. Right here, in my own home. And Tony tried to kill you. Or sell you, and it would have been worse. Every time I think about it, I...” I feel the need to do all the things I’m used to doing when I’m stressed and things aren’t going right. We were both checked out at the hospital. Ana got some stitches in her leg and I got a compress for my forehead and a muscle relaxant for my shoulder. It’s still in the pharmacy bottle. I needed to get everyone home safe, and once we’re settled in for the night, I’ll talk to Ana about taking it.

I’m going to make this work. I’m going to be the father Artom needs me to be, and even if her head is still fuzzy and likely always will be, Ana knows best what Artom needs. I’m not going to be perfect, but I have to do my best.

“So that means you need to not think about it,” Ana says. “We just have to figure out how.”

“Stop talking like that. Artom is right there.”

“I wasn’t talking about that!” she giggles, squirming in my arms to kiss my cheek, which is a hell of a way to prove that’s not what she’s talking about. “Now go on, set me down.”

The best I can offer is sitting down on the sofa with her on my lap, but the moment my butt hits the cushion, I’m starting to stand again.

“No, don’t,” she protests.

“This is where Dima found me. I took my shot, and then I sat down here to play my game, and then...” I point to the controller, still discarded on the floor. Once I started hallucinating, I don’t know how long it was before I dropped the controller or if I was still holding it, still attempting to play when Dima ran in.

“And that time I almost died here? Where was that?”

I gesture to the reclining chair closest to Dima’s door. “Right there. You, ahh, you thought I was sleeping in there. We had a fight the night before, and I ran off and you thought I’d come home and closed myself in there. See, there’s still a stain on the carpet where you dropped your fruit bowl.”

“Huh. Was that our first fight?”

I laugh awkwardly as I settle back on the sofa. Everything about this place has good and bad memories. The last I had here was a bad memory, so now it’s time to replace it with a good memory. “I would have to say that we were fighting the second we met.”

“Oh. Right.”

We’re still in the clothes from the funeral. We both have blood on us, we’re both scuffed all over. We’re both limping, too, although I’m doing my best to hide it. I have an easy life now. I don’t take much damage anymore. So I can let myself heal once Ana is healed. “I should probably draw us a bath. We have good bath memories here, too.”

“Wait, no. In a minute, but not yet. I want to know about our first day together. I don’t remember any of it.”

“They’re not good memories.”

She sits up, careful with how she moves to avoid tugging those stitches in her leg. She gets herself upright, her head on my shoulder, her legs stretched across the cushion next to me. “Are you sure? Are they all bad memories?”

“Well, for starters, I was—”high,I mouth, not wanting Artom to hear. His world is going to be darker than a lot of kids. I’ll only be able to shield him so much. But I’ll shield him when I can.Tripping balls.

Ana shakes her head, but she’s grinning. Her eyes meet mine, and I don’t have a single doubt that she isn’t every bit as in love with me as she was when I left my mark on her.

Which is good because I love her more than I ever have before, and I think every day I wake up will be the day I love her the most.

“It sounds like you were always like that. What else? Were you mean to me?”

“Never.”

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