by Olivia Gates
The memory tore into his mind, blasted apart his soul all over again. His throat sealed on the molten lead of agony. And that was before Caliope sobbed and reached for him, hugging him with all her strength.
He surrendered to her solicitude, grateful for it as he felt the tears he hadn’t known except when Ana then Mikhail had died, surge to his eyes. He hugged her back, absorbed her shudders into his, feeling her warmth flood his stone-cold being. She didn’t prod him to continue, wanted to spare him reliving the details of those harrowing times.
But he wanted to tell her. He couldn’t hold any detail or secret from her. Not anymore. He needed her to make a decision based on full disclosure this time.
“I finally made it to his side, but there was nothing I could do for him except keep him warm, keep promising I’d get him through this. But he knew only one of us could walk out of this alive. I’m still enraged that it was me.” He inhaled raggedly as she tightened her arms around him. “He confessed he’d directed his parachute toward me, afraid he’d lose me in the forest. He reached me as I hit the trees and twisted us in midfall to take the brunt. He killed himself saving me.”
A whimper spilled from her lips as she buried her face in his chest, her tears seeping through his clothes to singe him down to his essence.
“But he didn’t die quickly. It was a full day before he...slipped through my fingers. I lay there with him dead in my arms as night fell and day came over and over, praying I’d die, too. I kept losing consciousness, every time thinking the end had finally come, only to suffer the disappointment of waking up again, finding him in my arms—and feeling as if he’d just died again. It was four more days before his GPS signal was tracked down.” Another wrenching sob tore out of her, shaking her whole body. He pressed her head harder into his chest, as if to siphon her agitation into his booming heart. “I reached the hospital half-dead, and they spent months putting me back together. The moment I was on my feet again, I came here.”
She raised tear-soaked eyes to him. “And followed me and Leo around.” He could only nod. She bit her trembling lip. “How—how long ago was the accident?”
“Less than a month after I left.”
The hand resting on his biceps squeezed it convulsively. “I knew it. I felt something had happened to you. It was what drove me insane when you didn’t answer me. But when I heard you were closing deals, I thought it was only self-delusions.”
“My deputies were responsible for the deals, under the tightest secrecy about my condition to guard against wide-spread panic in my companies or with my shareholders. Though you know now the accident wasn’t why I didn’t answer you. I intended to never respond, but I kept waiting for your calls, rereading your messages incessantly, compulsively. And the day you stopped...”
His arms tightened around her. He’d been counting the days till her due date, and when she stopped calling, he’d known she’d given birth. Knowing that she and Leonid were fine had been the only thing that had kept his mind in one piece. He’d kept hoping she’d start calling again after a while, at the same time hoping she never would. And she never had. She’d given up on him as he’d prayed she would. Yet it had still destroyed him.
“You kept saying, ‘Just let me know if you’re okay.’ But what could I have told you? ‘I’m not? Not physically and not psychologically? And would never be?’”
Her tears stopped as she pulled back to look earnestly into his eyes. “It isn’t inevitable the abused became abusers, Maksim. And heredity is not any more certain. You’ve displayed none of your menfolk’s instability, certainly not with me. Why should you believe you’d turn into a monster when the record of your own behavior doesn’t support this fear in any way?”
“I couldn’t risk it then. But everything has changed.”
Contemplation invaded her incredible gemlike eyes. “Because you faced death, and lost your only friend to it? Did that change what you believe about yourself?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t facing my mortality that did it. It was that last day with Mikhail. He told me he didn’t risk his life for me only because of what he felt for me as his best friend, but also because I was the one among the two of us who had others who needed me...you and Leonid, and my mother. He made me promise I wouldn’t waste any of the life he’d sacrificed himself to save, to live for him, as well as myself. The more I thought of what he said as I recuperated, the more the hatred toward my father, and by extension myself, dissipated. I finally faced that my paralyzing fear wasn’t a good enough reason to not reach out to you, the one woman I ever wanted, to the child you’ve blessed me with. And here I am. But I’ll make sure you’ll both be safe, from me...and from everything else in the world.”
She pulled back in the circle of his arms, eyes stunned.
And he asked again. “Will you take me as your husband and father of your child, moya dorogoya? I want to give you and Leonid all of me, everything that I am and have to offer.”
Her eyes... Bozhe moy... He’d never hoped he’d see such...emotion in them. Was all that for him, or was it maybe relief at the possibility of not being a single parent anymore?
Whatever it was, he hadn’t told her everything yet.
He had to. It was the least he owed her.
He caught the hand that trembled up to his cheek, pressed his lips into its palm, feeling he was about to jump out of that plane again, without a parachute at all this time.
Then he did. “There’s one last thing you need to know. I had a skull fracture that resulted in a traumatic aneurysm. No surgeon would come near it—as there’s an almost hundred percent risk of crippling or killing me if they do—and no one can predict its fate. I can live with it and die of old age, or it can rupture and cost me my life at any moment.”
Four
Maksim stared into Caliope’s eyes and felt his marrow freeze. It was as if all life had been snuffed inside her.
He captured the hand frozen at his cheek. “I only told you so you’d know everything. But you don’t need to be alarmed...”
She snatched her hand out of his hold, pushed out of his arms and heaved unsteadily to her feet, taking steps away, putting distance between them.
Without turning to face him, she talked, her voice an almost inaudible rasp. “You come seeking absolution and the sanctuary of a ready-made family, just because your crisis has changed your perspective and priorities. And you expect me to what? Agree to give you what you need?”
He opened his mouth, but her raised hand stopped his response, his thoughts.
She turned then, her voice as inanimate as her face. “Based on your own fears, you made the unilateral decision to cut me from you life without a word of explanation when I needed you most. And now you’re back because you feel your life might end at any moment, and you want to grab at whatever you can while you can? How selfish can you be?”
When I needed you most.
That was what hit him hardest in all she’d said.
Had he been right just now, when he’d hoped she’d once felt more than desire?
He rose, approached her slowly, as if afraid she’d bolt away. “I never thought you needed me. You made it clear you didn’t, only enjoyed me. It was one of the reasons I feared myself, since I started needing more from you than what you appeared to need from me. Had I known...”
“What would you have done? What would have changed? Would you have disregarded the ‘overwhelming reasons’ you had for leaving?”
He stabbed his hands in his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe I would have told you what I just told you now and left it up to you to decide what to do. Maybe I would have stayed and taken any measures to ensure your safety.”
“What measures could you have possibly taken against turning into the monster you feared you were bound to become?”
“I would have found a way. Pr
obably some of the measures I intend to install now. Like telling Aristedes of my fears so he’ll keep an eye on me. And having someone there all the time to intervene if I ever cross the line.” He took her gently by the shoulders, expecting her to shake him off again. She didn’t. She just stared up at him with those expressionless eyes that disturbed him more than any reaction from her so far. “I knew you had no use for the material things I offered, and I thought you didn’t need anything else from me. Feeling of no use to you, then being unable to be with you, made me feel my existence was pointless. It wasn’t conscious, but maybe I suggested that record-setting stunt to Mikhail wishing I’d self-destruct.”
“Instead, you caused Mikhail’s death. And ended up with a ticking time bomb in your head. A literal one, on top of the psychological one you feared would detonate at any time.”
He hadn’t expected cruelty. Not after she’d shown him such compassion. But her words were only cruel for being true.
His hands fell off her shoulders, hung at his sides. “Everything you say is right. But I am not after absolution, just redemption. I pledge I will do anything to achieve it, to earn your forgiveness, for the rest of my life.”
“The life that can end at any moment.”
Her bluntness mutilated him. Yet it was what he deserved. “As could any other’s. The only difference between me and everyone else is that I’m aware of my danger, while others are oblivious to what’s most likely to cause their death.”
“But you’re not only aware of a ‘danger,’ you’re manifesting its symptoms quite clearly.”
She must mean how much he’d deteriorated. He’d somehow thought this wouldn’t be the point where she’d show no mercy.
“The aneurysm is a silent, symptomless danger. I’m far from back to normal because I didn’t make any effort to get over the effects of my injuries and surgeries. But now I...”
“No.”
The word hit him like a bullet. So harsh. So final.
But he couldn’t let her end it without giving him a real chance. “Caliope...”
She cut him off again, harsher this time. “No, Maksim. I refuse your new deal.”
“It’s a proposal, Caliope.”
She took a step back, then another, making him feel as if she were receding forever out of reach. “Whatever you want to call it, my answer is still no. And it’s a final no. You had no right to think you can seek redemption at my expense.”
“The redemption I’m seeking is for you. I’m offering you everything I can, what you just admitted you need.”
“I only said you left at a time when I most needed you, not that I need you still. Which I don’t. If you were thinking of me as you claim, the considerate thing to do was to stay away. The last thing Leo and I need is the introduction of your unstable influence in our lives. You had no right to force these revelations on me, to make those demands of me. And I’m now asking that you consider this meeting as having never happened, and continue staying away from me and Leo.”
Every word fell on him like a lash, their pain accumulating until he was numb. But how could he have hoped for anything different?
In truth, he hadn’t. He’d come here not daring to make any projections. Still, her coldness...shocked him. After baring his soul to her, he’d thought she’d at least let him down easy. Not for him, but because of who she was. He hadn’t thought she had it in her to be so...ruthless. And for her to be so when he’d divulged his physical frailty—something beyond his control—was even more distressing.
It had been when he’d confided his medical prognosis that all the sympathy she’d been showing him had evaporated. And he had to know if his observations were correct. He hoped they weren’t.
“Are you turning me down because you can’t forgive me? Or because you don’t want me anymore? Or...are you simply put off by my unstable physical condition?”
“I don’t need to give you a reason for my refusal, just like you gave me none for your disappearance.”
“I had to tell you the full truth, so you’d make an informed decision....”
“Thanks for that, and I have made such a decision. I expect you to abide by it.”
He tried one last time. “If you’re refusing because of my condition, I assure you it will never impact you or Leonid. If you let me be your husband and father for Leonid, you will never have anything to worry about in my life...or death.”
“Stop it. I said no. I have nothing more to say to you.”
He stared into those eyes. They smoldered with cold fire. Whatever compassion she’d shown him had been impersonal. Maybe only an expression of her anguish over Mikhail’s loss, and she’d been sharing it with the one other person on earth who truly understood. Whatever she’d felt for him in the past he’d managed to kill, and in his current damaged state, everything he offered her now wasn’t only deficient, but abhorrent to her.
And he couldn’t blame her. It was his fault that he’d dared hope for what he’d never deserve.
He watched her turn stiffly on her heel, heading to the door. She was showing him out.
Following her, every step to that door felt as if it was taking him closer to the end. Depriving him of the will to go on. Like when he’d walked away from her before. But this felt even worse.
She held the door open, looking away from him as he passed her to step out of her domain, an outcast now.
He turned before she closed the door behind him, his palm a deterrent against her urgency to get rid of him.
Her gaze collided with his in something akin to...panic?
The next moment, what he’d thought he’d seen was gone, and she flayed him with stony displeasure at his delaying tactics.
But he had to ask one last thing.
“I’m not surprised at your rejection,” he said, his voice alien in his own ears, a despondent rasp. “I deserve nothing else. But will you at least, on any terms you see fit, let me see Leonid?”
* * *
Cali collapsed in bed like a demolished building.
She’d held it together until she’d closed the door behind Maksim, then she’d fallen apart. She’d barely reached the bathroom before she’d emptied her stomach.
But that hadn’t purged her upheaval. A fit of retching, the likes of which she’d only suffered once before, had wrung her dry until she felt it would tear her insides up, until she’d almost passed out on the bathroom floor.
She’d dragged herself to the shower after the storm of anguish had depleted her, to dissolve in punishingly hot water what felt like even hotter tears.
She’d told Maksim no. A harsh, final no.
Now her every muscle twitched, her stomach still lurched.
The blows had been more than she could withstand. From the moment she’d found him standing on her doorstep to the moment he’d told her that he...he...
Her mind stalled again, to ward off that mutilating knowledge, swerved again to the lesser shocks. His unexpected return, the reason he’d left...then his proposal.
The first time he’d made it, her only reaction had been numb disbelief. It had been something she’d never visualized, not in her most extravagant fantasies of his return.
But by the time he’d told her everything and proposed again, her response had progressed from incredulity to delight. Acceptance wouldn’t have been far behind.
Then he’d told her. Of his aneurysm. That he could be gone in a second. At any second.
And memories had detonated, with all the brutality of remembered devastation. Of what it had been like to love someone so much, to find out he had a death sentence hanging over his head then to lose him in unbearable abruptness.
Just the thought of repeating the ordeal had panic sinking its dark, bloody talons in her brain...and wrenching the life out of her.
Terror
had manifested as fury. At him, for what he’d done to himself, and at fate, for taking Mikhail’s life and blighting his with this sentence. And she’d lashed out at him.
Her harshness had only intensified at his disappointment.
Had he expected she’d be insane enough to say yes? Did he have no idea what it would do to her? Or how she felt at all?
She’d thought he’d felt her deepening emotions, and that had been why he’d left. But as it turned out, he’d been totally oblivious to her feelings, had just been focused on his needs and fears.
But she’d loved him when he’d been her noncommittal lover. How much more profoundly would she love him if he became her committed husband? She’d barely survived losing him to his seeming desertion. Losing him for real wouldn’t be survivable.
Out of pure self-preservation, she’d told him no.
But she’d said yes to something else. To his seeing Leo.
She couldn’t deny him his child. Especially now.
But now that she’d defused his need for redemption, without the influence of honor-bound obligation, he’d probably see Leo, awake this time, and realize that having a child in his life, even peripherally, was every bit as repugnant as he’d originally thought. Then it would just be a matter of time before he disappeared again.
This time she’d be thankful for his desertion.
Soon was all she could hope for. For no matter how brief his passage through her life would be this time, she had no hope it would be painless.
* * *
The next day, at 1:00 p.m., she’d just finished feeding Leo lunch when the bell rang. She almost jumped out of her skin and her heart stumbled into total arrhythmia.
Maksim. Arriving at the exact minute she’d asked him to. Though she’d been counting down the moments since he’d left last night, his actual arrival still jarred her.
