I lift my face as though he were sun, rain, air. Tell myself there is no future and no past. Nothing but the soft sound of his groan. The ragged hiss of his breath. The whisper, when it comes.

I love you, Audra.

Words are eternal.

The moment, however, is not.

28

“Someone else just got back,” I say.

We lie, limbs twined, after the final burn of the night. It’s nearly dawn. I felt the first couple return hours ago. I can hear them, talking in the front room.

Luka smells like sweat and skin. I know this scent, though I don’t remember it. I love it—and him. I know that, too, though it’s only been days. But experience is not love.

And I am done with logic.

We talk in the darkness of the purple lamp, and I tell him everything. He’s quiet the entire time.

“I haven’t been afraid since the day you walked into the Food Mart,” he says at last. “Not really. Not until now.”

Claudia’s words ring through my mind:

I want to live.

I straighten against Luka’s chest, lift my head to look at him.

“Then we’ll go until we aren’t afraid,” I say. I roll toward the package on the bed stand, tangled in my obi.

Luka’s fingers light on my spine.

“Audra . . .” he says strangely.

I peer inside the package and then curse. It’s full of cash, no passports.

“What’s this, on your back?”

I crane around, not knowing what he means.

A scream erupts from down the hall. At first I think it’s an obscene laugh, or a screech from the kitchen, maybe the coffeemaker. Until it comes again, horribly human and hysterical.

I shove my arms into Luka’s damp dress shirt and run into the front room after Luka, who is still buttoning his jeans.

Ana is swaying on her feet; Piotrek grabs her by the waist. Claudia, pale and frozen, holds her phone in a shaking hand.

“What’s going on?” Luka says.

Claudia turns the phone toward me.

I cup my hand around hers to steady it. A picture on the screen—a video. A human form, bound and badly beaten. I take in the angle of the shoulders, stymied by the blackened eyes and swelling cheek. But I recognize the aubergine jacket, which I last saw riding away on a Vespa.

Nino.

I turn away. But I can’t unsee it, or stop staring even after it’s gone from sight. A groan from the video. He’s alive, if not conscious. And somehow the sound makes it worse.

“Nino never showed up,” Claudia says faintly, holding the phone out for someone to take it. Luka does and, mouth grim, turns away to replay the video.

“Why? Why? Nino!” Ana cries, splintering my heart.

And I know, without being told, that this is because of me.