teams operate on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. It’s how you’ve learned much from us, but knew nothing about ON-YX, right? It’s how Farhad could get no information from you during your kidnapping. It’s why Aksel doesn’t know about others in his training camp, why he was told so little about his parents’ death, yet just enough.”
Aksel shifts his body so we face each other. A streak of black soot runs along his jawline.
“So, what now?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says reluctantly. “Training? Recruitment? Joining up? It all feels too far away to think about.”
He doesn’t want to admit it, and neither of us wants to confront it, but the future is a thick cloud of rain, hovering.
“And what about us? Now that you know …” I trail off. Now that he knows my parents are spies? Killers? Traitors? Liars? That my mother sent his parents to their deaths? That terrorists know my name—chased me across the world to ransom me? That because of me, Chechen terrorists now have a nuclear weapon?
The plane rocks again, and we secure the buckles across our laps. There is so much I want to tell Aksel, so much I need to tell him, but none of it seems important. Not right now.
Words can’t heal us. Only time. One breath at a time.
Aksel stares down at me. “I realized something the night I first asked you out. None of this stuff matters. It didn’t then, it doesn’t now, and it won’t in the future. Sophia, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and nothing, nothing, can change that.”
My fingers find the hem of his shirt, and I cling to it. “But I’m entangled in some very bad things.”
“We both are, now,” he points out.
“And you’re okay with that?”
“If accepting this means being with you?” He touches his bandaged hand to my cheek. “Then, yeah, I’m more than okay with it.”
I stare up at Aksel, half smiling, and trying not to cry, and wondering how in the world this can ever work between us. “You’ve saved my life, like”—I tick off my fingers—“three times?”
Aksel pushes aside a stray lock of my hair sticking to the gauze on the side of my neck. “Nah.” He grins. “You could have taken the grizzly. And you’ve saved me, so on my ledger we’re more than even.”
But behind his smiling expression is a somber acceptance.
I bite my lip, fighting back the emotion. I never wanted this life for myself, and I certainly don’t want it for Aksel.
“I guess all I want to know right now is: What do you hope happens in your future? Beyond all this?” I wave my hand at the cargo net.
To my surprise, Aksel looks at me emphatically. “Nothing’s changed.” He bends over me, his lips next to my ear. His voice is a low, coarse hum. “I want to be with you, Sophia.”
I stare at the bandages down the side of his neck, worry seeping into my skin. I’ve been naive, while Aksel has been right. He shouldn’t have become involved with me. I felt it that first night in the avalanche, a gut feeling compounded by years of fear. Now, it has morphed into reality and I am as uncertain as ever. No matter what happens, our lives are irrevocably linked and we must confront this unknown territory.
Aksel notices the concern on my face. “Hey,” he says soothingly. “All we have to worry about is going back to school and”—the corner of his lip tilts upward—“hanging out.”
“Hanging out?” I murmur. It seems such a foreign, intangible concept from thirty thousand feet up in the cargo hold of a NATO jet.
Aksel gazes across the plane. His eyes return to mine, and he runs his thumb down the center of my hand. “I suppose I kind of like you.”
I look up at him from beneath my lashes. “Still only kind of?”
Aksel’s emerald eyes pierce mine. “Sophia Hepworth, I’m in love with you.”
CHAPTER 64
The pilot steps out from the cockpit and walks over to us. He is tall, with high cheekbones and a square jaw. He introduced himself earlier, when we stopped at Northwood in England to refuel and take on more passengers.
A small Latvian flag patch is sewn on his right sleeve, and he is wearing a sidearm in a shoulder holster. He eyes my mother a few seats away. Then Aksel. Then me.
He is clearly unaccustomed to briefing two teenagers and an elegant woman wearing pearl earrings and a cardigan sweater.