It was worth it.
• • •
“Relax,” Pav murmured against the shell of Viktoria’s ear.
She shivered at the action, but at the same time, he felt the tension in her back melt away slightly. Not entirely, but it was enough to say she had listened to him. Outside the airport, they waited for the driver Konstantin had arranged for them to make his way up the arrivals. Another couple of minutes, likely, and they would be on the road.
“Another minute or so and we’ll be away from all the people,” he told her.
She nodded.
He was learning that he really didn’t need her to voice what was going on in that broken mind of hers—sometimes, her cues were more than enough to go on. Like right now, and the way she tried to tuck herself in closer to him on the sidewalk. Or the way her gaze continued to dart from person to person who walked around or climbed into a waiting vehicle.
Too many people.
He understood that well.
Letting his hand slip around her trim waist, he coiled his fingers against her side and held on tight. That closed the small bit of distance that was between them and let him kiss the side of her head again. The smell of whatever sugary-scented shampoo she used soaked into his senses, and for a brief second, the rest of the world disappeared.
He didn’t think she knew.
Not that she did that for him.
Pav didn’t know how to explain it, either.
“Pav?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m terrified,” Viktoria whispered. “Of being here, I mean.”
He nodded, his lips still grazing her temple as he spoke. “I know.”
Pav wasn’t sure if her fears were unfounded or not. Could they really all keep her safe and away from the threat that was currently wild and on the loose? Were they capable of keeping their eyes on her twenty-four-seven?
He wanted to say yes, but he knew that would be a foolish pipe dream to do, and he didn’t want to give her reassurances that he couldn’t promise. He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. His word was the only thing he really had at the end of the day. Why would he want to break his word to this woman?
He was a pessimist and a realist, anyway. He looked at the facts first, and worked his way back from there. The facts said nothing good about this.
But she’d decided.
He said nothing about it.
“But this is my home,” she said to him. The same thing she’d been telling him for the last couple of days; what she’d repeated to him on the flight each time she’d woken up from her naps. He believed that she said it so many times because she was intent on convincing herself it was a fact, and not him. If someone told themselves something enough, they started to believe it was the truth. “Chicago is mine.”
“It is.”
“I don’t want to be afraid in my home. I don’t want to be afraid at all. Not anymore. I hate that this is what it’s done to me. That this is what he did to me. He made me afraid of my home—of my own shadow. Now, he sent me running away from the place that’s mine. I don’t want to run anymore, you know?”
Pav grinned a bit, the warmth of her skin brushing against his lips. “Learning to love it, are you?”
He saw the brief narrowing of her gaze before she asked, “Love what?”
“The fear. Remember what I told you?”
She let out a weak laugh. “I wouldn’t say that, no.”
“I would.”
Her hand slipped up between them, and she grabbed onto the bit of his shirt just below the collar. Those deft fingers of hers wrapped tightly into the fabric, and she pulled just enough to bring him in close again. The silent action, to him, meant she wanted him to do what he had been doing just moments before.
Kissing her temple.
So, he did it again.
“Fear creates hate,” he told her. “People take the things we fear, and then they amplify it so that it seems worse than it really is. All we see is this horrible idea that the thing we fear the most will take something from us, and we begin to hate it for that. We hate it because it makes us live in a constant state of fear.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Hate and love is a very thin line, babe.”
“I can say with absolute certainty that I don’t love my rapist or what he’s done to me, Pav.”
“Perhaps not, but there are other things that have come from it that you may love. Parts of you would not be who you are without the things that have happened.”
And him, too. Although he chose not to say that out loud, but it didn’t make it any less true. If these horrible things never happened, he honestly believed that he would still be exactly where he had been not too long ago. Stuck in the deepest pits of hell, with cement walls and dying men to keep him company. He would never have known her, and wouldn’t that just be a shame?
Pav couldn’t imagine being without her.
How did he tell her that?
He didn’t know where to start.
This was new.
Too new.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Viktoria mumbled. “Love, I mean.”
“Why’s that?”
“I never had the chance to love something that strongly. I’ve only ever known how to hate something like my life depended on it because … I think it did for a while.”
“Taking control of fear is the same as learning to love it. When someone cannot use it against you anymore, then it’s yours to do
