Page 174 of Mile High Ex's Dad
I let out a scoff. “Is that how much he means to you? You can put a price tag on him?”
She looks like she’s moments away from slapping me.
Before I can say anything else, footsteps come down the corridor behind Alina.
Maksim.
I don’t know how long he’s been there, or how much of the conversation he heard, but the moment Alina sees him, something in her face changes.
Not guilt. Not exactly. Just a brief, unmistakable shake in her composure, as if his presence has caught her without the armor fully in place.
“Maksim,” she says.
He looks from her to me, then to the nurse with the medication cart, and takes in the whole scene with one quick, unreadable glance.
“Alina.”
The way he says her name is simple. Familiar. Too familiar for this to be nothing, and too restrained for me to understand what it is.
Alina straightens at once, but the recovery isn’t perfect. I see the crack before she smooths over it. “I was just leaving,” she says.
“That would be wise,” he replies.
She holds his gaze for a second longer than she needs to, then looks at me.
Her face is controlled again, almost calm, but I can still feel the echo of whatever passed through her when he arrived.
“We’ll speak another time,” she says.
It isn’t a threat. It isn’t kindness either. Just a promise that this isn’t over.
She turns and walks away down the corridor. Maksim watches her go, expression unreadable, until she disappears around the corner. Only then does he look back at me.
“You shouldn’t be sitting out here,” he says.
The nurse, who clearly has no interest in whatever complicated history just brushed past her cart, nods briskly. “That’s what I said.”
Maksim steps behind my chair and puts his hands on the handles.
“I can walk,” I say automatically.
“Of course you can,” he says. “That isn’t the point.”
And before I can argue further, he starts wheeling me back toward my room. The motion is smooth, careful. Not rushed. Not gentle in a pitying way either. Just competent, like everything else about him.
I look up at him over my shoulder. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough.”
That tells me nothing.
I study his face, hoping for some clue, but he gives me very little. If he heard the worst of it, he isn’t going to say so in the hallway.
He gets me through the doorway and turns the chair neatly toward the bed. The nurse follows us in, sets the medicine down, checks something on the chart, then leaves again.
For the first time since Alina stopped me, I exhale properly.
But then, suddenly, my head grows heavy and the world starts to blur around me.
