Chapter 21 - Maxim

My head is pounding like a son of a bitch as I sit up, bright fluorescent light shining above me. Groaning, I look down at the sharp pain coming from my arm, seeing an IV sticking out. I grab it, ripping it out of my elbow ditch and tossing it to the side as one of the machines starts to scream.

Yegor stands by the window, his mouth moving. His words are too soft to hear. He's got an ear pressed to his phone, his back to me as he looks out of the window. When he turns slightly, his gaze connects with mine and he hangs up, the phone sliding into his back pocket.

"I didn't know you were getting up. You need to rest. You should be sleeping." He walks over and turns off the screaming machine.

"Where is Pearl?"

"She's not here right now. You need to calm down." Yegor gets into my space as I try to get out of the bed.

"Get the fuck out of my way. Now where is my fucking wife?"

Yegor grabs me, forcing me back down on the bed, his hands sinking into my shoulders and pressing me hard into the mattress. "You need to calm down."

Uncertainty in his eyes as he looks down at me like he's torn between telling me where she is or keeping me here and shooting me up full of painkillers to put me back to sleep.

I swing my arm at him, but he dodges out of the way, but my knuckles punch his nose.

"She is fine, you need to stop." He drags them of his shirt to his nose, dabbing at the blood that trickles down his face. "Fuck, that hurt."

"What do you think you're doing right now? If you don't tell me where she is, I'm going to kill you."

"I'd advise against doing that. We may pay for the private medical center, but nothing is stopping them from calling the cops if you decide to kill me. Either way, Pearl's here. She's just outside taking a walk. She needed some fresh air. You've been unconscious for the last day or so and it's been a lot for her."

"What do you mean I've been unconscious?" It's only then that I notice the dull throbbing in my head, my fingers drifting up to my forehead and touching the edge of a bandage. "What the hell happened?"

"It looks like when you're in the car crash, you took a hit to the head. Some man was hunting you through the woods. Although it wasn't much of a hunt. You went off the road and he found you pretty quickly."

"Where is he now? I'm going to kill him."

"Unfortunately, Pearl already beat you to the punch."

"What do you mean? What did she do? Was it only one guy or were there more?"

"Only one. From what she says, she took your gun and shot him between the eyes."

"She shot him? Impossible. I took the fucking woman hunting and she was hopeless."

"Yeah, I think there's probably some things you need to talk to her about." Yegor clears his throat, glancing toward the door like he's expecting Pearl to walk through at any moment as if his loyalties lie with her and not me anymore. "She bandaged your head, tore off a piece from her dress, and wrapped you up. She's kept you upright until I got there, trying to stop the bleeding the best that she could."

"Was she hurt? "

"I don't think so, but she hasn't spoken since I came to get you. Shocked me a little on the phone and she sounded like she was fine, maybe a bit shaken up but nothing too bad. But then when I arrived her mouth sealed shut and she hasn't spoken a word since."

Just as he speaks the tip tap of heels against the floor comes down the hall.

Pearl appears in the doorway like an angel, though there are deep purple circles beneath her eyes like she hasn't slept in a week. She tucks her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, her head hung like she's not expecting to see me there.

"You're not even going to say hi to me?" I ask, my voice raspy as I try to get out of bed again.

Yegor grabs me by the shoulder and shoves me back down. "You're going to end up unconscious again if you don't stop this shit."

Pearl's eyes widen as she looks up. Her lips press into a tighter line, but she doesn't say a single word, instead crossing the room and pulling me into a tight hug.

She buries her face in my shoulder, her dark hair tickling the underside of my chin. Yegor stares at us for a minute, shaking his head before he walks out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

I run my hands up and down her back, trying to soothe her as her body shakes. "It's okay. We're fine. We're going to be safe. I promise. Nothing will happen to us."

Pearl pulls back to look at me, perching herself on the edge of the bed. She toys with a thin hospital bang blanket, picking at one of the little pieces of fabric pilling on the surface.

"Why did you kill that man?" I ask. I put my fingers beneath her chin, tilting her face up so I can look her in the eyes. "You're going to have to talk to me, Pearl."

She takes a deep breath like she's trying to steady herself. "He was going to kill you."

"He could have killed you too. You should have run. I told you to leave me if anything happened."

She chews the inside of her cheek, shaking her head as a tear slips out of her eye.

I catch the tear before it can fully fall. "You should have run."

"And leave behind the only family I have?" Her voice cracks as she throws herself at me again, careful not to hurt me as she hauls me into another tight hug.

When she pulls back, there's apprehension on her face. She looks like she's trying to find a way to put as much distance between us as possible without actually getting off the bed.

Finally, she settles with standing, moving to the foot of the bed, gripping the rail like it's the only thing keeping her upright now.

"I've already lost my family once." She takes a moment to clear her throat, looking up to the fluorescent lights to stop the tears. "I saw you lying there on the ground, and I knew I had to do something, so I took your gun. He was going to kill you if I didn't kill him. You're all I have, Maxim. And I know that this isn't the relationship either of us thought it would be. But I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you."

"Come here," I say, opening my arms, keeping my voice soft and gentle.

Instead of coming to me as I expect, Pearl takes a step back, wringing her hands in front of her. "No, there's still more I have to tell you. Things I should have told you a long time ago."

"You can tell me anything, just come here. I thought I was going to lose you too. Right now, I need you."

"I can't." Pearl paces back and forth at the foot of the bed for so long that I'm sure she's going to wear a hole through the ground and fall right through to the floor below us.

Since she won't come to me, I get out of bed going to her and wrapping my arms tight around her. I pepper kisses along side of her face in her neck trying to calm her down as whatever storm she's got going on rages inside her.

If any of my cousins were to see me right now, they would tell me that I was whipped.

They wouldn't be wrong.

"Everything's going to be okay. You can tell me what's going on. I fix problems for a living Pearl."

She nods, her arms looping around my waist, holding on to me. "I should have told you a long time ago who my father is. Aaron Miller. He was murdered in cold blood, and I found his dead body. I was fifteen at the time and we had been fighting more than usual. To be honest, I can't remember a day when I wasn't fighting with him. I was an asshole as a teenager, and I took it out on him."

"You don't blame yourself for your father's death, do you? You know that wasn't your fault, right?"

"I don't know how you can say that when you haven't even heard the story."

"I can see it in your eyes that you're blaming yourself and you shouldn't. If you weren't the one who pulled the trigger or ordered the trigger to be pulled, then you're not the reason he died. Do you understand me?"

"What if I had just skipped school like I planned and come home earlier in the day? I thought that the two of us should talk. If I had been an hour or two earlier, he might still be alive right now."

"You're going to make yourself sick considering all the what-ifs," I say, my tone stern as I try to banish any doubt from her mind.

I've seen a lot of people lose themselves to what they attribute as the first death they're responsible for. Some people never recover from it.

Pearl is stronger than all of those people though. She's been through hell and she's still standing here in front of me. She's holding her head high and telling me the truth, even when she's not entirely sure she can trust me.

It speaks volumes about the kind of woman she is.

"Maybe I think that things would have happened a different way if we hadn't been fighting, but I know that he was murdered in cold blood. It took some time to accept. I still carry a lot of guilt. But I carry a lot of anger too."

I pull back enough to cut her face in my hands, looking down at her as I swipe the tears from beneath her dark eyelashes. "Who killed him?"

Her gaze hardens as she looks up at me. "That's what I want you to find out."