Page 120 of Santa Daddy
Men like us.
Born into violence. Fed on fear.
“He used to beat emotion out of me,” Konstantin went on, jaw flexing. “Said feelings were good way to get killed. So I buried everything. Buried it so deep I forgot it was there.”
“And now?” I asked softly.
“Now I am terrified,” he said.
The word landed between us like another confession.
“Because loving you—” his voice hitched briefly, like the syllables hurt “—makes me vulnerable in ways I do not know how to guard.”
Loving.
Not fucking. Not tolerating. Not accidentally catching feelings and hoping they’d go away.
Loving me.
My chest squeezed so tight it hurt. I’d waited, in some secret, shameful part of myself, to hear those words. I’d told myself I didn’t need them. That I couldn’t afford to want them.
I’d been lying.
“I keep trying to stop,” I whispered. “To hate you cleanly. To go back to who I was before the lot, before your car, before your bed.”
He held my gaze like the whole cabin might fall away if he blinked.
“But I can’t,” I said. “I don’t want to anymore.”
The admission burned and soothed at the same time.
“I love you, Konstantin,” I said. Saying his name with it felt like setting something in stone. “Through all of it. Through the fear and the blood and every bad decision. I tried not to, and I still ended up here.”
His eyes closed for a second, like the words hit as hard as any bullet. When he opened them again, they were bright and fierce.
“You should be afraid,” he murmured. “Of this. Of me.”
“I am,” I said. “And I still love you.”
Silence stretched between us, thick and electric.
“Konstantin.” His name tasted different now. Heavier. “Are you going to raise this child in madness? Keep us locked in some gilded cage for the rest of our lives?”
Are you going to be a father or a warden?
His hands slid to my hips and tugged me closer until I stood between his knees.
“If you leave,” he said, looking up at me with that terrifying certainty he used for threats, “I follow.”
He didn’t soften it. Didn’t dress it up as romance.
“That is my truth,” he said. “I follow you to ends of earth.”
Mad.
We were both completely mad.
The coffeefrom the cabin’s ancient tin tasted like something dug out of a bunker, but it was hot and caffeinated. We sat at the shaky little table—him shirtless and bandaged, me swallowed in one of his sweaters that smelled like cologne and gun oil.
