Page 75 of Bound By Debt
Dmitri climbs to his feet, and I watch him cautiously.
“I won’t tell him about it,yet.” He jerks his chin toward my rounding middle. “But he has to know.”
I take a deep breath in through my nose and let it out. “I’ll think about it.”
Dmitri nods, satisfied for the moment with my answer, and leaves as unobtrusively as he arrived. I’m still not sure how a guy that big can move so quietly.
I stand at the counter, staring at the empty doorway. At the window Evgeny had replaced the day following the incident.
I think of how Evgeny looked at me, as if I were the only other person in the world. As though I was the only person in theworld he wanted to be with. The way his touch and the way he held me told me the same.
I think of the softer side he had shown me, the way he had cared for my family and me, even when he knew I didn’t want to see him.
Could I trust what Dmitri said? That I’d seen the real Evgeny? I’d been so overcome with grief and shock when I saw Jordan’s body, my mind had immediately moved to the worst. I hadn’t been able to think, hadn’t been able to reason, hadn’t been able to do anything other than scream and cry and rage.
Just give him five minutes, Eva. Just talk to him.
Marco passes by the window holding a 7-11 bag, the bell jingling yet again, too cheerful for the storm bubbling up inside me as my brother comes back in.
“I have to go.” The words are out before I even have a moment to think about them. “Can you watch the store? I’ll be back. I just—” I’m already grabbing my keys and purse without waiting for Marco’s reply. “I’ll be back.”
“Eva, what?—?”
“I’ll be back soon,” I call over my shoulder, closing the door on his next question, heading for the old car parked halfway down the block.
It takes me three tries before the engine finally turns over, my heart racing a mile a minute as I curse at it, my palms sweating as I finally get it going.
As I head across town, it’s all I can do to remain calm as I navigate through traffic. I seem to hit every red light on the wayto Palos Verdes. I just hope Dmitri is right and Evgeny will talk to me instead of turning me away.
Things were going smoothly until they weren’t.
I see the car out of the corner of my eye, large and black, and speeding toward me without a sign of slowing. The force of the impact reaches me at the same time as the sound of shrieking metal and shattering glass. The sensation of being jerked back and forth makes everything blur, pain erupting in my head and shoulder, and then the world goes black.
29
EVGENY
Never before in my life have I been so scared.
Not angry. Not energized. Not buzzing with nerves I can burn off with a run or a boxing session.
I’m scared. My palms sweating, my heart racing, my chest tight, and blood rushing in my ears.
Eva’s been in a car accident.
On his way to the hospital, Marco didn’t have any more information to give me. He’d called my personal phone, the number I’d given him in case something came up. I hadn’t expected it to be Eva’s life hanging in the balance.
Eva’s brother said she’d run out of the bookstore without telling him why, just yelling back at him to cover for her. Then she was in an accident in that damn car I should’ve replaced, the twenty-year-old lemon without airbags on every side and with rust in several spots. The thing probably had a safety rating of zero.
I should have put Eva in a tank. But in my folly, I believed she wouldn’t have to drive that old beater again, that the power of my feelings would keep her with me, where she would be safe.
What did I know about love and relationships? Absolutely nothing. But telling a woman I love her was not enough to keep her by my side or show her who I truly am and how much I care. It feels far too late to realize that I care for Eva in ways I didn’t know were possible, to depths I didn’t think I had.
And now, I’m afraid I’ve lost the chance entirely. All I can see, running on a loop, is the image of Eva, small and broken in a hospital bed.
“Move your fucking car!” My fear comes out as rage at the other drivers on the road. It doesn’t matter how fast my car can go when traffic sits like a wall. And it’s raining, on top of everything.
Of course.
