"Artem, I need you to wake up. I need you to come back to me," I whispered, my lips brushing against his skin. "Who's going to protect me if you aren't here? I don't have anyone else."
I love you.
The words were there, burning on the tip of my tongue, but I wouldn't say them. Not yet.
The first time I told Artem I loved him, it was going to be because I was sure.
It would be after he had healed and we had come to some compromises about the life I wanted with him.
I wouldn't be his caged pet, but I would be his.
And I wanted the first time I told him I loved him to be because that was all I felt, not because I was terrified of losing him before I had the chance to really know him.
"Please," I whispered in his ear, close enough that only he could hear. "Come back to me. I need you."
Something changed in that moment, I felt it in my soul.
The realization crashed over me with the force of a tidal wave.
I really did love him.
I loved his strength, his determination, his unwavering dedication to those he cared about.
I loved that he had walked into hell for me without hesitation.
His hand tightened around mine, so slightly I might have imagined it.
But I knew I hadn't.
The bullet from his arm clinked into the metal dish as Mikhail extracted it.
"He's going to make it," Mikhail said, meeting my eyes across Artem's body. "He's too stubborn not to."
I nodded, tears streaming freely now.
Let them flow.
I wasn't running anymore…not from Artem.
Not from these feelings.
Not from this life that had chosen me as much as I had chosen it.
Mikhail was still working, but I knew with absolute certainty that Artem wouldn't let a few bullets stop him from coming back to me.
And I was never going to run from him again.
CHAPTER38
ARTEM
"Why didn't you leave?"
Those were the first words I managed since waking up in the lake house. He words scraped against my throat like sandpaper.
I had drifted in and out of consciousness for days.
Mikhail had patched me up with brutal efficiency, and since then, reality had been a series of fragmented moments.
