“Run!” he shouted, but Zoe only moved closer. He’d kicked off a blanket and the gash in his side was angry and red but it wasn’t bleeding—yet. He tossed again. His leg kicked the vodka bottle and it fell to the floor but didn’t shatter.
“Sawyer . . .”
“Zoe!” he shouted, still fighting ghosts in the darkness. He was going to open his wound again. No glue was that super.
“Sawyer!” She tried to pin his arms down, but even injured—even asleep—his body knew what to do and in the next moment she was flying through the air and landing on the soft rug in front of the fire. Sawyer was on top of her. His hands were on her throat.
“Saw . . .” All Zoe could think was that she was getting really tired of almost being strangled. But this time Sawyer wasn’t going to show up to save her.
“Saw—”
She tried to pry his fingers free, but he was too strong. She tried to do The Move—the one that had flipped a Russian assassin on his butt—but Sawyer was too heavy.
She tried to say his name, but the word wouldn’t come. Maybe it was the late hour and dying fire but Zoe was pretty sure the room wasn’t supposed to be that dark—the stars weren’t supposed to be inside, swirling and growing at the edges of her vision.
So she let go of his arms and reached out, searching, looking for the vodka bottle. For something. Anything. When her fingers found the pillow, she didn’t think twice. She just grabbed it and swung.
She couldn’t have hit him very hard, but still, it jarred him. He stumbled back, even though, technically, he was sitting down, legs on either side of her hips as he leaned over, looking . . . stunned. Blinking slowly. Eyes coming into focus as he took in her ragged hair and old T-shirt, wild eyes and . . .
She knew the moment he saw the red rings around her neck because his gaze turned dark and vicious, but the person he wanted to hurt was himself. Hands that had been like steel around her throat were soft as they cupped her face. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so . . .”
He tried to push away, but Zoe wrapped her hands around his wrists, holding him there. “I’m okay.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m—”
“I’m okay.” She made him look at her. “Sawyer, I’m fine.”
Suddenly, his body went slack, like a wire that had just been cut, and he slumped against her. “You were dead.” He pulled her closer, held her tighter—like he needed to feel her heart to know it was still beating. “You were dead. You were . . .”
He looked like he wanted to get up, to leave—to run—so Zoe moved, rolling on top of him, her legs straddling his this time, settling more and more of her weight atop him. “I’m okay,” she said, but his hands were still touching her face as if trying to memorize every pore and eyelash and freckle.
“You died. You were dead. I couldn’t save you,” he said so low she almost didn’t hear it over the pounding of her heart.
“You did save me.” She couldn’t hold back her laugh. “You saved me plenty.”
“I can never save Helena. But this time . . .” He screwed his eyes closed and pulled her tight against his chest, arms around her like a vise. And Zoe understood.
“It was me? This time? In your dream?”
She felt his nod, but he didn’t even try to speak.
It was too hot, all of a sudden, with the heat from his body radiating through her too-thin shirt.
“I couldn’t save you.”
“Shh.” She ran her fingers through his thick hair and the subtle scrape of nails against scalp made him shiver. “You save me. And I save you. We’re a mutual saving society,” she told him, but he didn’t say a thing.
They lay there for a long time in the flickering light, breathing in time like a dance. Had it really just been three days since he’d found her—since he’d been a stranger? She felt like she knew all his smirks and his huffs—what it meant when his jaw ticked or his hands flexed. She felt like she knew him. She just didn’t know . . .
“Who was she? Who was Helena?”
“I told you. She’s no one.” He tried to push her away again, but Zoe had the leverage and the willpower and she wasn’t going to let it go that easily.
“Tell me. Please.”
He stared up at her, waiting, thinking. Then he pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. “I was new and young and cocky. I thought I had to make a name for myself, so when we learned that Kozlov was moving large sums of money through a German bank . . . Well . . . That was my first big mission. Find someone with access—someone who could help us trace the money. That’s who Helena was, Zoe. Just a nice woman who had access to a server and was willing to stretch the rules to stop the bad guys. She was . . . expendable.”