Ciara

 

I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see blood. Damir murdering that man in front of me. My parents’ broken bodies in the plane wreckage. Blood pouring down Misha’s chest, except that this time his attacker is Damir, not his father, and Damir’s eyes are lit with cold, demonic light.

Several times I go to my bedroom door, wanting to go into Misha and wake him up. And then what? I don’t know what I want to say to him. I don’t even know if there’s anything to say. It’s only right that he does this. He could have stopped Damir long ago, and he didn’t. Now Misha’s using himself as bait to catch his brother, so I can be free.

I shove my hands through my hair, anger racing through me, and I’m not even sure with who. With Damir, definitely, and with my father, and probably with Misha, as well. With all of them, for creating this storm of fear and danger that’s led me here to a beautiful, tropical captivity. I fling myself back onto the bed and clench my arms tight around my pillow, imagining it’s Misha, as I’ve done every night since we arrived on La Digue. I imagine his arms around me, holding me close and whispering to me in English and Slovenian that everything’s going to be all right. I’ve wanted to go to him a thousand times, rail at him, cry, have him fuck me, hard, to get all the anger and frustration out. I know he feels it, too, the unfairness of what’s happened to us. That we were thrown together in impossible circumstances and found something even more impossible.

Love.

Only to have it snatched away, just as it began to blossom. When he leaves tomorrow, I know I’ll never see him again. He may die at his brother’s hands or he may survive, but either way I know that he’ll never come back. I saw the finality in his eyes. This is his way of getting closure, for everything that has happened between him and his brother, from the day his mother took his hand on her deathbed and not Damir’s.

At seven in the morning I hear the shower turn on in the bathroom and I get out of my sleepless bed and dress. I wait outside by the car, two men from the security detail watching me from a discreet distance. Twenty minutes later Misha comes out. He’s dressed in a crisp white shirt and carrying his laptop bag, a jacket slung over his arm. It’s an attitude I’ve seen from him so many times, the neat, reserved businessman, except that today his eyes are haunted.

“Coming to see me off?” he asks, his voice husky in the thin morning light.

I nod, and he opens the car door for me and I get inside. We sit in the back, rigid with unspoken words, as one of the guards drives us to the airport.

A jet is on the tarmac being refueled. I get out of the car and stare determinedly at the plane, not knowing where else to look or what to say. There are no words to bid farewell to a man who might be about to go to his death for you, not when you can’t say the only three words that matter.

Misha comes around to my side of the car and looks at me for a moment. “Can I tell you something, ljubica? I will tell you in Slovenian so that you don’t understand what I mean. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to say it once in my life, and then I’ll leave you alone forever.”

My throat feels so tight that I can’t speak, so I nod instead.

He puts his bag and jacket aside, and reaches tentatively for my hand. I let him take it, focusing on his fingers twining through mine.

“You have given me more life, more happiness, than anyone I’ve ever known. Ljubim te. Moje srce je resnično in srce je za vedno.”

Ljubim te. I never got the chance to look it up but I know instinctively what it means. My eyes smart and I reach out with my free hand and run my fingers down the seam on his shirt, trying to distract myself. Trying to keep myself together, like he is.

“What—what was it you said? After I love you.”

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle “I said, My heart is true, and my heart is forever. I don’t know how I will live without your sweetness. I have known you, and now you will be an open wound in my heart for the rest of my life.”

I trace the place where I know the scar is over his heart, and tears spill down my face.

Misha takes my face in his hands and wipes the tears away with his thumbs. “Ljubica, please don’t cry. I can’t bear it.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I say in a cracked whisper. “I won’t die, but I will be an open wound, like you said. I will bleed out and live a half life from this moment on. A cursed life.” I put my hand on his chest and seek out the steady, strong thump-thump of his heart. “I think you’re going to die. You think it too, don’t you?”

“Ljubica,” he says, enfolding me in his arms. His grip is so tight I feel like he might crack my ribs, but I don’t care. However hard he holds me it will never be enough.

“You will always live in my heart, for as long as it keeps beating,” he says fiercely. “But I have to go, so that one day you can be free.”

He kisses my quivering, tear-streaked mouth and for a moment the world comes to a perfect stillness, like a raindrop suspended in the sky. There’s just Misha and his arms around me, and I want to live here forever, frozen in time and love.

But he breaks the kiss, and the raindrop plummets toward the ground. Time moves on. Misha turns away.

“Goodbye, ljubica. I will never, ever forget you.”

He picks up his bag and jacket and walks toward the plane. I stand with my arms wrapped around my shaking body, leaning against the car for support. I have to let him go. He’s doing what needs to be done and I have to let him do it. I watch him walk up the steps of the jet and see the figure of a flight attendant, ready to seal and lock the door behind him. He steps inside, and it starts to close.

“No!” I shout. I run to the steps and up them as fast as I can and slam my hands against the door. “Misha, no, open this door.”

The door swings open again and I see the flight attendant’s bewildered face. Then Misha comes back and I take hold of his arms. I’m no match for him but I drag him back out again. I’ll summon superhuman strength to keep him right here. Tears track down my face. “Please, don’t.”

He tries gently to pull away but I wrap myself around him. The whine of the engine is so loud and my hair is blowing all around us. I speak as loud as I can through a throat ragged with emotion. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here with me.”

Misha’s arm comes tight around my waist and his other hand smooths my hair back from my face. He gazes down at me. “Ljubica, you will never be free unless I do this.”

“I don’t want to be free. I just want to be with you.”

He groans and pulls me to him, slanting his mouth across mine in a bruising kiss. Then he’s holding me so tightly, kissing me like we’re drowning in each other and we never want to be saved.

Misha pulls away and looks down at me. “We’re fools, you realize? We’re absolute fools.”

I wrap my arms around his neck, determined to never let him go. “Then we will be fools here, together. I’d rather die by your side than let you go.”

Misha closes his eyes and cups my face in his hands, savoring my words. I sense the conflict in him, the desire to both leave to protect me and to stay here and love me.

“Ljubim te,” I whisper, and he pulls me even tighter against him until I’m devoured by his embrace. His heat and love burns through me and I feel that small, hopeful glow that he lit within me flicker into life once more.

Happiness.

Love wins out in the end. Love will always win. I will believe that until the day I die.

Hand in hand, we walk back to the car. To the security detail, to refreshing news reports again and again, to looking over our shoulder and waiting for the unthinkable to happen. But we will have each other, which is the most important thing of all.

We are fools. But we’re fools in love.