40. Adam

40

ADAM

E verything is welling up inside me like water rising behind a dam. Just when my life was turning a corner and the business was picking up and I felt something for the first time when I looked at a woman that wasn’t fear, I end up in hospital. I groan and shift in the bed.

“Adam?”

The room is dark, a dim light coming from a bank of machines monitoring something. Anna appears at my bedside.

“Anna?” Her dark hair is spilling over her shoulders, and she has never looked lovelier or more out of reach. “What time is it? What are you doing here?”

My eyes meet hers and something shimmers between us, some warmth and understanding that feels like a lifeline. She takes my hand and squeezes my fingers.

“It’s 9 p.m. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

I swallow down the sandpaper that has taken over my throat. “You went to Russia. What happened?”

She closes her eyes. “Not my best decision. I didn’t want to drag you and Fabian into Konstantin’s orbit. It seemed sensible at the time.”

“I was going to come after you. I was booking a flight and then … I started to feel ill. Food poisoning, I think.”

“It wasn’t food poisoning. It looks as though you were somehow given a shot of insulin.”

I stare at her. “ What? By who?”

“Konstantin, or rather someone he employed.”

“But how? … Fucking hell. Is insulin dangerous?”

“It can kill you if you’re given enough, according to Kate.”

“They tried to kill me?” I blink down at my hand resting on the bedclothes, the catheter going into the back of it, and turn my head to study the machines next to me. People don’t do this kind of thing to me: I’m Mr. Quiet Life. Maybe not so much anymore.

“If Janus and Fabian hadn’t got to you …” She rolls her lips together, and I reach out and squeeze her hand. “The doctors have no idea how it got into your system, though. We wondered if it might have been the delivery driver if you ordered takeout.”

“No, I went out to the grocery store. Chelsea Market.” I close my eyes. “What the hell happened?” Oh shit, the man who reeled into me. My sore arm! “That guy. In the corridor.” Oh, fuck.

“What guy?”

“Someone bumped into me. I thought it was odd at the time. But there were a lot of people around, celebrating. He lurched into me and hurt my arm. I thought he was just some drunk. He could have followed me from the apartment, I guess.”

Anna chews her lip. “Perhaps that explains it.”

“How the hell did I get here?”

“I was at a breakfast with Konstantin in St. Petersburg and he said some strange, loaded things about you enjoying your evening that worried me. I phoned Janus and he enlisted Fabian. They came to your place and called an ambulance. They’ve been here by your bedside ever since.”

All the times I waded in for them in college, and only once did Fabian have to rescue me, and that was from Celine. I mean the fact that I was injected with something is awful, but I’ve really lived the most risk-averse life. “Where are they now?”

“I persuaded them to go home and grab some sleep while I took a shift this evening. They were up with you all last night. They’re coming back in the morning.”

I groan. “They don’t need to be doing that. They’ve got work to do.”

She squeezes my fingers. “They were very happy to do it.”

“What happened with Konstantin?”

“He threatened me. Pietr was there, saying I should be back in Russia at his side, and then Fabian took down their systems, and they let me go. I mean, I don’t know what they were thinking I’d do given I’m playing tennis in Australia in less than two weeks.”

I close my eyes. I can’t believe she went to Russia. Willingly stepped back into the orbit of men she knows are dangerous criminals. I’ve seen flashes of this kind of steely determination in Anna, but the contrast between her and Celine, the strange role I took trying to rescue her, makes my eyes tighten and tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks.

“Oh shit, Adam. I didn’t mean …”

Anna bends down and kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry. So sorry, Adam,” she whispers. “I know I’m not the person you need. I’m amazed you’re even talking to me after everything that’s happened and the trouble I brought to your door and your peaceful life.”

I grab her hand, pull it to my mouth, and kiss it. “You’re just the person I need.”

She makes a face at me like she doesn’t believe me, but I’ve never been gladder to find someone at my bedside in a hospital.

“Anna, I’m so sorry.”

“ What? What are you apologizing for?”

“Being in here. You don’t have to stay. You have a tournament to prepare for and food to eat that’s not from a vending machine and …”

“Quit worrying, Miller. I’ve canceled my practices for the next couple of days. Jo and Janus took Pepper home with them.”

“You can’t do that! You’ve got a Grand Slam tournament coming up and …”

Her eyes narrow on mine. “Just watch me. I’m staying here with you until they let you out. They’re bringing a cot for me. I can come and go if I need to. It’s all organized.”

“It’s Christmas in four days. I’m supposed to be going home.”

“You’re not going anywhere. If you’re out of hospital by then, you can have Christmas with me.”

I nod as my head sags back on the pillow, too tired to even think about it.

Later, Anna pulls a nutritionist’s meal out of her bag, and the hospital starts to quiet down for the night. It’s like being at Janus’s all over again, except the nurse comes to make me comfortable and records some vital signs for the evening. Anna settles down in the bed beside mine studying something or other on her phone, though I’d bet it’s a competitor’s playing statistics or something else tennis related.

The next thing I know I’m watching a truck barreling down a street behind Anna and she’s walking along, oblivious, talking on her phone. I wave my arms over my head, screaming, “Anna! Behind you! Move!” and I keep yelling at her to shift out of the way, but she’s just talking and talking, and I can’t get her to hear, to look up, to do anything . So, I race across the road and dive for her, and thank Christ I make it in time. But I’m under the truck and being crushed by this huge tire, a searing pain in my stomach, so bad that I want to die. Please let it stop! But it goes on and on and it’s the end … This is how my life ends. Then my eyes pop open to dim green lights and a hospital ceiling.

I gasp as a shadowy figure leans over me.

“Adam, are you all right?”

Anna. She’s okay, she’s okay. Oh my God. “I’m okay. I’m okay,” I gulp out. “What happened?”

My heart rate recedes from the red zone.

“You were talking in your sleep. ”

“Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. It was a dream. Just a dream.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No. Fuck no.”

She climbs onto the bed beside me and, careful to avoid my tubes and wires, she shuffles down and rests her head on my chest. “Is this all right?” she whispers.

I put my hand on her head. It’s silky under my palm and my throat tightens in gratitude. I could lose her. Tomorrow or the next day, someone could get to her or me and she would be gone. They’ve said that I’m okay, but who really knows? We’ve been friends for such a short time. I’ve been cautious all my life and look where I am now—in no different a place than Fabian. He ended up in a hospital, too. Something else put him here, but it was no more or less self-inflicted. All this caution … for what? If nothing ever comes of this, what we’re doing here, I want her to know.

“I love you, Anna.”

She goes still under my hand. Then her face pops up next to me.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

My throat tightens unbearably. “I said I love you. I don’t want us to just be friends. I know this is a crazy time to say it, and I know you want a better man than me, especially now, but in case I don’t get another chance to tell you, I want you to know.”

Even in the dim green light, I can see her frown as she glowers at me. “A better man than you?”

“You said you wanted to be friends, and you told me that at the start, too. I understand, Anna, I do. But it hasn’t happened that way for me and …”

She presses a finger over my lips. “I said just friends in the beginning because being with a tennis player is a problem. I’m not here for ten months of the year. My focus has always been on my sport, not something or someone else. My relationship history, what I had to do … I’ve never met a good man, always dangerous manipulators. But then I found you, and you were a million miles away from that, and I realized that was what a man was supposed to be. That the best men look after you in all the right ways. The way that’s best for you. ”

“But I was a distraction, too.”

“No, you weren’t. I lied about that. You were anything but. But with all the stuff with Arty, my history in Russia, I got worried that I was putting you in danger … I didn’t want them to come after you.” She grins suddenly, and her teeth look green in the strange light. “Rather ironic now, don’t you think?”

She’s so perfectly capable of looking after herself. I’m so relieved she’s here: warm, alive, and so unbelievably okay. I start to cough as my throat closes up and she starts to climb off me, muttering, “I shouldn’t be on the bed with you.”

“I’m fine,” I gasp, tightening my arm around her.

She gazes up at me. “I love you, too.”

Now I really can’t breathe. “What?”

She squeezes my hand and stretches up to place her lips on mine, mumbling, “I love you, too.”

“You don’t have to …”

But she squeezes my hand again. “I nearly had a heart attack when Konstantin implied he’d done something to you … I just … I’ve never felt anything like that before. Like an express train was rushing toward me and I couldn’t get out of the way.”

It’s so like my dream, I want to laugh.

In fact, I want to swing from the rafters and dive off a high cliff, so I slide my hand into her hair and kiss her senseless.