Her voice floats over to me. I register the tangy smell of lemon soda. A shadow passes across my closed eyes.

Another voice. Sara’s. “Don’t worry. He’ll wake up. I got the bullet out and the primary wound is clean. The other two are afterthoughts. He’ll be back to terrorizing everyone in his vicinity in a few days, tops.”

“How does a man survive three gunshot wounds?”

“He’s not just any man,” Sara sighs. “He’s Kolya Uvarov.”

June whimpers. That—her fear, her uncertainty—hurts as bad as any of the pain in my limbs. “I’m nervous, Sara,” she admits. “He’s going to blame this on Adrian. He’s going to go after him.”

An onrush of cold. Not physical—this is a bone-deep cold. The kind of cold that precedes a white-hot rage.

After everything we just went through because of him, how is he what she’s concerned about?

“You can’t exactly blame him.”

“You saw what they did to him, to the hotel. It’s not worth it.”

“Sweetheart, don’t go there. There’s no point trying to stop something that’s already started.”

“Fucking men,” she spits. “This is all just one giant pissing contest. If they would both just listen to each other, we could—”

“I’m not sure it’s quite that simple.”

“Then I’ll make it simple. I can get through to Adrian. I know I can.”

I force my eyes open and struggle upright, ignoring the blazing agony that ignites in me. Sara sees me first. “Kolya!” she exclaims. “You need to take it easy. Don’t try to—”

I ignore her and sit up anyway. The day I let a doctor tell me what I can and can’t do is the day I put a fucking bullet in my own head.

The two women keep their distance at the foot of the bed, both wary for their own reasons. I don’t take my eyes off June. “Sara, excuse us, please.”

She glances over her shoulder at June. “Of course,” she mumbles before she clears out, leaving us alone in the suite.

Even after she leaves, June stays marooned by the foot of the bed. Her body language is stiff and uncertain, her facial expression carefully composed. She’s wearing a white shirt that’s too big for her and soft blue jeans. Her feet are bare and her hair hangs carelessly down one shoulder.

She’s a fucking angel.

“Tell me the truth,” I say, my voice chipping like ice.

“The truth?” she asks innocently.

The crazy part is that I buy the innocence on her. There’s no hint of insincerity about the woman.

The crazier part is what it does to me. Even when I want to strangle her, I still want to fuck her. Even when I hate her, I can’t help but love her.

“Did you give him our location?”

Her eyes go wide with incredulity. “What?”

“Answer the fucking question, June.”

She flinches back a half step before she gathers herself and stands tall again. “You think that the attack was my fault.”