I pause and avert my eyes downward. And then I step away from her. Her hands fall away from my face.

I swallow hard. “I won’t force you to stay with me,” I compel myself to say, despite what I feel. “But just know this…if you leave, you will become a burden. If you think that by being here you’re fucking up my life, you have no idea how true that will be if you set out on your own. Because I will spend every waking moment of my life trying to protect you!” My heart is racing. “I won’t be able to sleep, knowing that you’re out there, trying to fit into a life that’s nothing but a death sentence when you’ve not had proper training! Sarai…IT WILL KILL ME! DON’T YOU SEE? YOU’LL KILL ME IF YOU CHOOSE TO LEAVE!” I’m shaking all over, my entire body wracked by pain and fear and heartache.

Sarai is in front of me again so fast, standing mere inches from my chest, her fingers dancing upon my face again, just like before. She appears calm. But there’s something else in her eyes now that wasn’t there moments ago. Relief? Happiness? I can’t quite decipher the emotion when all I want to do is pull her against me and hold her until we both die.

She reaches up and brushes the tip of her index finger underneath my eye. A tear.

A tear?

Consumed by confusion, I can’t speak and I can’t move. I look down at her hand first, where the remnants of the tear glistens on the edge of her finger. I look back into her soft green eyes, which are smiling back at me, not with arrogance, but with warmth.

Clever little wolf…

Victor

“I’m sorry,” she says with nothing but kindness. “But I needed to know how you really felt, Victor.”

I sit down against the black wrought iron patio chair, extending my legs out before me. I prop my elbow on the arm and rest my head exhaustively upon my fingertips.

Sarai kneels down in front of me, between my splayed legs.

“To be with you,” she says, “means more to me than to be part of your job. I needed to know that you want the same from me that I want from you. And…when we’re together, I always feel like I’m more a part of your job than a part of your heart.” She tries to catch my gaze, but I’m too focused on the concrete. I hear every word she’s saying to me, but I’m still too perplexed by the emotions that she pulled out of me to look down into her eyes.

I feel like I can’t face her. Not because I’m angry with her, but because I’m ashamed.

“You’ve been this impenetrable man since the day I met you,” she goes on, her fingers coiling around those of my free hand. “The only time I’ve ever felt a real emotional connection with you is when we’re sleeping together. I would get so frustrated. Because I knew, deep underneath your many layers, that this, this right here,” she tightens her fingers against mine with the emphasis of those words, “what you showed me, it was there all along just wanting to be set free. I—Victor, please look at me.”

Reluctantly, I raise my head from my fingertips and look down into her eyes.

“I don’t want to be your job,” she says. “I want to work alongside you. I want to learn from you. But I want to feel like I’m yours emotionally when business isn’t getting in the way. Victor, I know it’s not your fault. I know you can’t help the way you are, how emotionally detached you are from the world. But I needed to try to help undo what Vonnegut and the Order did to you.”

“You manipulated me,” I say simply.

She lowers hers eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I raise my back from the chair, leaning over and fitting my hands underneath her arms. I lift her onto my lap. “Don’t ever be sorry.”

Reaching up with one hand, I turn her chin toward me so that she’ll look at me.

“You did what you had to do,” I say and I can only hope that she will remember that later. “I cannot fault you for that.”

“You’re not angry?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No. I think ‘thankful’ is a better term.”

She smiles. I smile, too, and kiss her on the mouth.

“It seems we’re helping each other,” I say.

She tilts her head thoughtfully and listens.

“I’m helping you become what you want to be, to live the life you choose to live. Something you’ve never had—a choice—because it was taken from you. And you’re helping me take back the kind of life that was taken from me, showing me what it’s like to be something more than a killer, to feel something more than the need to kill. And for that, I could never be angry with you.”

Still propped on my left leg, she leans over and kisses me softly on the corner of my mouth. I wrap both hands around her waist, interlocking my fingers. We sit quietly together for a few moments. The sun has fully set and the stars are awake in the dark expanse of sky that lingers over us in all of its breathtaking dominance.

“So, how much of it was true?” I ask her.

“All of it,” she says, “except the part about me leaving you.”

I nod absently, thinking heavily about all of the things she revealed to me tonight.

“You know there’s no payday in going back to Mexico,” I say. “It would all just be settling scores and cleaning up.”

“I know.” She nods. “But it’s important to me. Those girls are important to me.”

I slide my left hand up the length of her back and then rest it at the back of her head. Pulling her toward me, I press her head carefully against my shoulder and hold her there.

“Then it’s important to me,” I say. “It might take months, a year or two even, to gather all of the information we need, all of the resources, but we’ll get it done. And we’ll do it together. But you have to promise me that you’ll be patient and that you’ll—”

“I give you my word,” she cuts in. “I don’t care how long it takes. And I’ll follow your lead and your instructions every step of the way. I’m not going to make the same mistakes again.”

Soon after our conversation on the patio, I take Sarai into the bath and I wash her hair as she sits between my legs in the tub.

We talk for the longest time about life the way it was before. About her time growing up with her mother, before her mother found drugs and men. When she used to sit curled next to her watching Saturday morning cartoons. We talk about my life before I was taken by the Order. About how I used to play Dosenfussball (‘tag’) and Verstecken (‘kick the can’) with Niklas when I was six-years-old back in Germany.

We get so lost in the memories of when our lives were so much simpler, so innocent, that for a long time we both forget how things are now.

I also forget, just for a moment, that things between us are still not set in stone.

And that they might never be.

Sarai

Victor is gone when I wake up the next morning, his side of the bed empty and cold. I crush his pillow against my chest and hold it close to me. He had an eight o’clock appointment with a contact in Bernalillo. He wanted me to go along with him, but I’m quite exhausted by travel, especially when it doesn’t involve a plane.

Since the Krav Maga studio location has been ‘compromised’, as Victor calls it, he feels it’s best that we move from New Mexico as soon as possible. My goal for the day is to pack as much of the house as I can, though that shouldn’t be too difficult since Victor’s closets and such are devoid of the average person’s daily living. He doesn’t have a ‘junk drawer’ where he tosses miscellaneous items that will sit there unused for a lifetime. His closets are not cluttered with old shoe boxes and stacks of keep-just-in-case paperwork, or clothes that he hasn’t worn in five years. The cabinets in his kitchen aren’t stocked with expensive matching dishes that only get taken out of their neat little spot on holidays and special occasions. There are no family portraits hanging in a neat line on the walls down the hallway, or keepsake items sitting on a shelf given to him by important people which he can’t bear to part with for sentimental reasons. A few boxes should do it. His suits. My growing collection of clothes and wigs and jewelry and makeup and plethora of shoes. Looks like I’m mostly packing my own stuff.