one second of disadvantage when I come from the stairwell instead. Though I’m just as likely to collapse as attack them.
I utter a silent prayer before inching open the heavy door, but the hall is empty. There are no bullet holes in the walls, and the door to my apartment is intact. I even bend to peer at the lock for scratch marks. Nothing. It’s the same shiny silver it’s always been. And that’s when I realize I have no keys. No way to actually get inside my own home.
I close my eyes, exhausted.
Then I knock.
After a second, there’s a scuffling noise and the door is yanked open and Chris is dragging me inside. An impressive bruise is forming on his cheek and his left eye is puffy, but he looks better than me, and he’s wearing his own clothing.
He slams the door shut and twists the lock, then pulls back to examine me. He lifts my hands and takes in my torn palms, raises the hem of my new skirt to study my scraped knees. Slowly he straightens to examine my face, the emotions swimming in his eyes mirrored in mine. This is the third worst day of my life. I’m terrified. I’m exhausted. I’m confused. Five minutes ago I thought I had no one, but here he is, waiting.
It’s only now that I realize I hadn’t allowed myself to hope for this. I hadn’t dared pray that he was okay, that I wouldn’t come home to an empty apartment. It’s an odd wish for a hostage, but he’s the first person in a very long time to know me, the first person to laugh at my jokes or hold a door for me or look at me with anything other than contempt or suspicion. Even if it was just an act, it meant something. It shifted something in me. It showed me what was possible, and I’m not ready for that possibility to be over.
He steps toward me and I meet him halfway, a fresh surge of adrenaline fuelling the fire. Everything hurts, but I thread my fingers through his hair and he grips my face. The kiss is rough and desperate. Tongues and muttered curses and promises. My sore head thuds against the wall when he backs me into it but we don’t stop, and when he presses a thigh between mine I moan, relieved and bewildered and a million other things I don’t have time to name.
The rough tips of his fingers undo the knot in my shirt and scrape the exposed skin beneath. It reminds me of the times he’d done this before, the feelings that touch foretold. Everything I thought it meant and everything it didn’t. I want this, but I don’t. There are too many lies between us. If I’m willing to fight to live, then I want to live better, too.
“Stop,” I gasp, pushing weakly at his chest.
He immediately backs away, lifting his hands. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
My breathing is labored and so is his. I touch my swollen lips and feel an ache low in my belly, a new unrequited pain to join the others. I’m too overwhelmed to appreciate the irony of him apologizing for a kiss instead of everything else.
He uses the back of his hand to wipe his mouth, the other adjusting the crotch of his jeans. “I didn’t want to, anyway,” he says after a moment.
I laugh, the sound rattling around in my chest. “Good,” I say. “Me either.”
“Great. We’re totally on the same page, then.”
The laughter fades, but the tired smiles linger when our eyes meet, a kind of resigned indifference that it’s this page, the most fucked up page in the whole book, on which we should finally meet.
THAT NIGHT WE WATCH the news. There’s blurry security camera footage of us entering the lounge, meeting with Angela, then following her into the back. The cameras in the kitchen and hallway weren’t working, so that’s where our story begins and ends. There are eye witness accounts of screams and shooting. Someone says there was a fire. They have zoomed in shots of our faces as well as Johan and Davor and their lookalike cronies, too hazy to identify, but obvious if you know who you’re looking for.
“It’s just a matter of time,” Chris says, adjusting the pack of frozen blueberries against his cheek.
“What is?” I switch my bag of frozen corn from my left knee to my right. Chris gave me three ibuprofen