Page 85 of Bratva's Vow
He didn’t respond.
He sat there still. Slumped forward in the chair like the weight of it all was pulling him apart from the inside. And his shoulders started to tremble.
It took me a second to realize he was crying.
Not sobbing. Not loudly. Quietly, like he was ashamed of it. Like each tear had to sneak its way out past everything he’d been trained to suppress.
And I… I’d never seen anything so terrifying.
Maxim Morozov didn’t cry.
He ranted, he roared, heruled.
And now he was sitting here like a shattered man, with vodka on his breath and my betrayal in his chest.
I did this to him.
The fight drained out of me.
I crossed the room, legs weak, heart pounding, and lowered myself slowly into his lap. Not to seduce. Not to plead. Just to be near him.I curled my arms around his shoulders and tucked my head into the crook of his neck, breathing in the scent of him—warmth and smoke and something faintly bitter now.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t move.
Then, slowly, one arm came around my back. Then the other. And finally, finally, he buried his face in my shoulder and let himself cling.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his hair, my fingers trembling as I slid them over the back of his neck. “I’m so sorry, babe. I was scared, and I ran. I thought I was protecting myself, but all I did was hurt you. I didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t cry.”
A shudder went through him, and he crushed me tighter against his chest like he didn’t trust me not to vanish again.
“You said you loved me,” he murmured, voice so low it vibrated against my collarbone. “And then you left when things got tough. I was worried sick about you, Wren. Didn’t you know the way you left would drive me crazy until I found you? Don’t you know you’re my everything? That life’s not worth living without you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MAXIM
Icouldn’t remember the last time I’d cried.
Not when my father beat me half to death after finding out I was gay. Not when I stood over Vova’s mangled body earlier. Not when I killed my first traitor and vomited behind a dumpster afterward.
But now, somehow, this had broken me.
Some boy I didn’t even know two months ago.
My arms were wrapped so tightly around him, I worried I might bruise him. I should loosen my grip, give him room to breathe, but I couldn’t get myself to let go. I didn’t want to find out what it would feel like if I opened my arms and he disappeared again.
He didn’t ask me to stop.
He didn’t flinch or squirm or whisper that I was scaring him.
He kept rubbing my neck in slow, steady strokes, fingertips tracing the tense line of my spine like it might soothe therage locked there. And when his lips brushed my hair, soft, warm, patient, something in me broke even more.
“I didn’t plan on sleeping with you that night,” Wren murmured into my temple, voice low and a little hoarse. “But it had been days without you. Everything felt too loud, too quiet, too wrong. Even when I hated you, I missed you.”
I pulled him closer. Buried my face in the hollow of his throat.
“I missed your arms around me,” he said. “So when you came into the shower, I didn’t think to say no. I didn’t want to. I… I craved being close to you again.”
