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Luka slipped off the bed, moving beside her. It wasn’t until his black glove brushed at her cheek that she realized she was crying.
“Sorry,” he murmured in that soft voice of his.
She shook her head. He was like her, apologizing for all the wrong things.
“Thank you,” she sobbed out. The tubes felt cold under her hands, which was wrong when they made her so very warm. She swallowed to try again. “Thank you so much. I love them.”
Luka didn’t look like he believed her. His gloved thumbs brushed over her cheeks as she continued to cry, feeling so very gentle against her face.
Chapter 17
Watching Alina paint was one of the most confusing experiences of Luka’s life. He’d expected it to be when she’d wanted to paint him first. The tingles of having her concentrate on him were uncomfortable, so he didn’t understand why he found himself craving them. He’d never craved pain before, had just accepted it.
The phantom fingers over his scalp and arms, the ones that set his nerve endings on edge, weren’t painful, not exactly. The feeling was too intense to be comfortable. That was the problem. He was often so numb to anything. His wound hurt, he knew it did, but that was a familiar hurt, easily pushed to the back of his mind and ignored.
He could never fully ignore the stabbing pain of touching someone, which was why he avoided it. When he couldn’t avoid it, because killing required it, he wore gloves. A gun kept more distance, but he preferred the knife; it should hurt him in some way to take a life. The gloves kept the sensation from being overwhelming so he wouldn’t be distracted, but he still felt it. The people he killed were killers themselves, and distraction meant death. He didn’t want to die until he took Ivankov with him or died trying.
Alina glanced at him again, making a shudder run through his body, one he suppressed as best he could. His eyes shifted to the gloves he’d discarded. They’d become damp from wiping her tears, and he’d left them off ever since. The arcing pinpricks of rubbing his thumbs over her face felt deserved, though she had claimed she liked his gifts. Tears were the opposite of joy in his experience. His sister had cried often, and he knew it was pointless to tell someone to stop, so he silently tried to wipe the evidence away as long as it dripped. When finally her face was dry, his hands had fallen away.
Then she’d yelled at him to get back on the bed and rest when she’d realized he crouched beside her, and he’d been resting as much as he could ever since. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he didn’t need to. Dread churned in his stomach as the time since he’d last checked in with Ivankov grew.
Ivankov’s anger was nothing like Alina’s. It would burst forth like sudden fire, hurting everything around it, then appear to be gone when it was really lurking under the surface.
His sister’s anger had been similar, intent on burning them both to ashes. Especially Luka. Her words and actions had led to many of his own beatings over the years, because Ivankov had kept his word. He let Willow live, but Willow hated Luka for it. She wanted him to be punished for keeping her alive.
Alina’s anger was about nothing that made sense. She yelled when she appeared worried about him, but there was no reason for her to worry, not about him.
Alina bit her lip as her focus returned to the painting. She talked the least while she was concentrating. Painting was different from the drawings. It took longer. Luka had finally accepted her reassurance that she liked his gift when the small, genuine smile graced her face the second day. It wasn’t present now.
She put the brush in the water cup she’d been using. She preferred to remain in the bedroom the most and had set up the painting canvas on top of the dresser there. “You have a look,” she observed. “Like you want to tell me something that I won’t want to hear.”
Luka’s eyes strayed to her painting, which presented his face in its normal, stoic blankness, so much more accurate than her first drawings had been. He shook his head. “Not possible,” he murmured, the words slightly easier to say after so much time with her.
Alina’s lips quirked, but it wasn’t the sweet smile that made his chest ache. This one held humor but also nerves.
“Well, maybe it’s just your aura then, but I’m not wrong. Am I?” Alina’s eyes met his.
Luka found himself looking at her more and more easily, but the knowledge buried in her gaze made his own skitter away. He stared at the late evening sun drifting through the window.
“You have to leave, don’t you?” she asked.
For an insane moment, he wished it wasn’t true. He nodded.
“Even though you’re still hurt?” The tone that made him nervous shimmered under her words. “I wish you’d wait until you were fully healed, but I know that’s pointless to say. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you sneaking around while I’m asleep. Testing your flexibility.”
Luka turned to her in surprise. He hadn’t noticed her watching him. That was concerning.
“I’m sneaky, too,” she said softly before closing her hand around her paintbrush and swirling it. “I guess I need to finish this quickly.” She used the cloth to dry the bristles, frowning at the mostly completed painting. “Though if I could get you to promise to stay until it was done, I’d never finish. I don’t want you to disappear.”
Luka heard a strange rushing in his ears. “I’ll return.”
Her gaze flew to his. Even without the smile he liked, there was something compelling in the way she stared at him. “Promise?”
He’d never made promises before, and dread curled in his stomach. Ivankov decided his fate. Days had passed, and he’d be angry. That would be okay. It was the manic frenzies when he was most dangerous, but then again, the man was unpredictable. “If I can.” He swallowed. “When I can.”
Her smile was the one that reached her eyes and made him feel like he was suffocating.
Alina saved him by turning back to face the canvas. “Okay. Then can I ask for one more thing?” She took his silence as the acceptance that it was. She’d become good at reading his silences. “I’d like you to come to the diner with me tomorrow. I should check in with them. They’re kind… and probably worried about me. And I want to make you breakfast.”
