Page 126 of Sapphire Tears

I silence her with a kiss. She grips the bedframe and kisses me back hungrily. When we finally break apart, her lips are plump from the pressure and her cheeks are flush with color.

She tucks herself into my side and kisses my chest. “Sara told me you’d wake up eventually. But sometimes, it was hard to believe her.”

“I wasn’t about to leave you to fend for yourself.”

I notice that there’s a ring on the hand she has splayed across my chest. My ring.Ourring.

I reach out and touch it with a single finger. She gives me a sheepish smile, then kisses my chest again. “You scared me.”

“It won’t happen again.”

She smiles, but there’s a sadness in her eyes that’s not going away. I wonder if she’s mourning him, too. Just like I am. “Was he buried?”

“Yes,” June whispers. “I saw to it myself.”

“And Milana?”

Her spark dims and she drops her gaze as her whole body is wracked with a bone-deep shiver. “I’m sorry, Kolya,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

I lean back and close my eyes for a moment as a fresh wave of pain roils through me. It fades eventually, but the echo, the memory of it, remains.

“I was with her when she… went,” June says tentatively. “If it’s any consolation, I think she wanted to go, Kolya. I think—I think she was ready for something else. Something better.” Her voice is strangled in a strange way, like there’s something she’s not telling me, but I chalk it up to grief.

“Don’t be,” I say. “She was not happy. She hadn’t been happy in a very long time. Maybe ever. Wherever she is now, I hope that’s changed.”

June smiles, looking every bit as enigmatic as she sounded. I must be seeing things, though. Comas will do that to a man.

She buries her face in my neck and takes a deep breath. “You smell like vanilla. Three days in a coma, bloody bandages wrapped around you like a freaking mummy, and you still smell like vanilla. God, I love that smell.”

I laugh and pull her close. She nuzzles against my chest for a second before something occurs to her and she rears back again. “I’ve never asked you this question,” she says suddenly. “What do I smell like?”

Her eyes are bright and curious. Tears glisten on her cheeks like sapphires in the sun.

I kiss her forehead and breathe her in. “Like my future.”

EPILOGUE: JUNE

ONE YEAR LATER

I probably should be getting dressed. But I can’t stop staring down at the garden below. At the now-finished gazebo where Kolya and I will be exchanging our vows.

The lawn in front of the gazebo is decked with row after row of seating. Pretty little Tiffany chairs with ivy and fresh flowers wound around the arms. Everything looks picture perfect. Even the sky is bright and cloudless.

And yet I’m anxious.

What if something goes wrong? What if a last-minute threat pops up? What if Adrian rises from the dead again?

I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment. I only open them when the door clicks open. Geneva walks in, dressed in a champagne bridesmaid’s dress.

“You should be dressed by now,” she scolds.

I smile. “I know. I just needed a moment to appreciate the garden.”

“Guests are arriving,” she tells me as she takes a seat and checks her flawless makeup in the mirror. “I don’t recognize any of them.”

Her dress billows down to the floor. She looks lovely. Radiant, really. And happier than I’ve seen her in a long time.

“Do you mind it?” she continues. “That they’re not here?”

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