As we climbed into the back of the car, Mikhail asked, “Home, knayz?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but at the last minute I changed my mind. “To our cove, please, Mikhail.”
Kisa lifted her head from my shoulder, her eyebrows pulled down in confusion. She must have seen something in my eyes as she sighed and contentedly lay back down.
When we arrived at our cove, Mikhail opened our door. As we stepped onto the sand, I said, “We won’t be long.”
Mikhail signaled that he understood. He got back in the driver’s seat as Kisa linked her arm through mine. The warm breeze drifted over our skin as we walked along the soft sand. I inhaled the salty air and filled my lungs.
When we reached our spot, I helped Kisa navigate the stone wall and we sat down where we always did. I leaned my back against the wall and Kisa lay on her back, supporting her head on my lap.
She was staring up at me, smiling. “What?” I questioned, my hand traveling down Kisa’s pretty face and neck.
“You are still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.” She smiled her smile just for me, then added, “Those eyes, those eyes that tell me to whom they belong.”
Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to her lips. When I lifted my head, I stared out over the dark sea, listening to the waves crashing against the shore. “You’ve never seen anything like the Blood Pit, solnyshko,” I confided. I shook my head. “I thought the gulag was bad. Then with Zaal and Valentin, I wondered how it could possibly get worse.” I huffed an incredulous laugh. “But it did, it was worse. A nightmare.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Kisa asked. When I stared down at her looking up at me in concern, I knew she meant it. Every word. Kisa had always been there for me. She had never shied away from the hard times and the gruesome details that were never easy to hear.
Moving my hand to her stomach, I opened my mouth to confide in her, to tell her all that I did … but then I just … didn’t.
I slowly shook my head and genuinely surprised myself by saying, “No.”
“No?” Kisa questioned, now confused.
I shook my head again, and with a newfound peace, I repeated, “No.” I lifted Kisa’s hand to lie over my steadily beating heart and whispered, “It’s over.” As those words left my lips, the reality really sank in. Kisa had stilled. With the heady sense of completion settling within me, I confidently voiced my thoughts, “It’s really over.”
Kisa moved until she was on her knees beside me. She pressed both her palms to my cheeks. “Luka,” she hushed out and wiped away a tear I didn’t know I had shed. “Baby…” she murmured, kissing my dampening cheeks.
“It’s over, solnyshko,” I rasped, “all of it. Everything that chained me. Us.”
Kisa swallowed back her emotion and softly asked, “And how does it feel?”
I searched for the right word. I smiled, when the only thing I could think of was, “Free.” I inhaled, my lungs no longer heavy and my heart no longer pained. “I am free.”
“Luka,” Kisa cried, and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held my wife. I held my wife and unborn baby in my arms.
When Kisa leaned back to meet my eyes, I said, “It was this cove where we made memories as children. It was this cove where you brought me back to you. You made Raze remember he was Luka, the male made just for you.” Kisa blinked as she listened to me, and I added, “And it is in this cove where I realized all that we have been fighting, everything that had kept me imprisoned, has disappeared. It is gone…”
“Luka,” Kisa whispered, an uncontained happiness shining through her bright smile, “I love you, lyubov moya. Forever.”
“I love you, too,” I rasped, and took her lips with my own. When Kisa drew back from the kiss, she lay back down on my lap. I stared out over the ocean, with a new calmness in my heart. Feeling Kisa’s stare, I glanced down. She was looking at me and raised her hand to ghost around my eye—the brown eye that was smudged with a little of Kisa’s blue.
“Luka Tolstoi,” she said nostalgically. “God put a piece of my blue eye in yours so we matched. So we would always know that we were meant to be together, and that our souls were fused. So no matter where you went, you would always find your way home.”
As Kisa’s words washed over me, I knew they were true.
“And it worked,” I said, smiling back at my solnyshko so wide. “It was you who brought me home. Your soul called to mine when I was lost. And it’s still here now, when I am found.”
Kisa smiled through her tears and reached out to thread her fingers through mine. There was nothing left to say. Right now, as I sat in this cove with the other half of my soul, I knew that life had played out as it should.
Through tragedy, we were both stronger.
And through distance, our love was stronger.
She was mine.
I was hers.
Her, the girl, whose soul matched mine.
And I, the boy, who was made perfectly for her.
Finally home.
Happy.
At peace.
16
INESSA
Four days later …
“Inessa.”
The low voice pulled me from sleep. I was panting, my body slick with sweat. My muscles ached, and it felt like my legs couldn’t move.
“What’s wrong with me?” I questioned, confused.
I looked up into Valentin’s scarred face, my heart splitting with sorrow seeing his metal collar tightly around his neck.
“Shh,” he soothed, “it’s okay.”
“She’s hurting you,” I said, and cried out when I tried move.
“Calm,” Valentin whispered, checking around us to make sure we were alone. “I’m fine. It’s you I worry about.”
“How long do we have?” I asked, my stomach cramping in the aftermath of the drugs. I clenched my eyes, not able to look down at the evidence of whoever’s release had soothed the drug’s hold on me.