then, just as the light outside grew brightest and I figured it was noon, my mom stopped breathing. And the cold in the car crept into me, burrowing down into my heart and my soul and froze me solid.
I was in there for two days. Towards the end of the second day, I passed out. I woke up in the hospital.
The doctors told me that I’d been dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia. They told me that my parents were dead.
A guy walking his dog had found us. He’d leaned against the buried car, thinking it was a rock, and some of the snow had fallen away. The newspapers called it a miracle. It didn’t feel like one. It felt as if the ice that had frozen me inside isolated me from everyone else.
I was twenty, so I was old enough to bury my parents and go back to college. I concentrated on my studies and gradually edged away from my friends. It was easier to be on my own. I couldn’t really connect with them. The ice dulled everything.
I existed like that for over a year. And then, just as I was about to enter my senior year, single and almost friendless, Roberta showed up. She was elegant and professional and yet warm and kind, and the same age as my mother would have been. She asked if I wanted to help my country and I said yes. She bought me hot chocolate and said that she knew a place where she thought I’d be happy, and all I had to do to get there was to make sure I aced all my classes.
So I did. I wanted to make her happy. And a year later, I went to work for the CIA.
I did my basic training and then I started translating phone calls. If anyone noticed that I was a little cold or that I didn’t seem to have a social life, they didn’t say anything. As I said before, a lot of us in the CIA aren’t exactly normal.
I worked. I slept and ate. But the ice inside me never melted. I was twenty-two, but I still felt twenty, unwilling and unable to think about things like relationships and marriage and my career. I did what I was told and I tried to keep Roberta and then Adam happy. I’m not sure why their opinion mattered so much to me, but it did.
And now I was in Moscow, and the ice should have been an advantage. This was the one situation where I couldn’t afford to let myself feel. And yet, for the first time, I’d felt things crack and thaw inside me.
“Arianna.”
My name, but not the sound I recognized. This was all harsh R s and long A s that sounded like poetry. My name, but made beautiful.
A hand slid around the back of my neck, warm and strong, the thumb rubbing at my hairline. I could feel the heat pumping into me, and that was when I realized how cold I was.
“You’re freezing,” said Luka. He told Yuri in Russian to turn up the heater. Then I heard the concern in his voice. “It’s not just cold, is it?” he asked. His hand was still rubbing at the back of my neck and now his other hand started to stroke up and down my bare arm. Not a sexual touch—a healing touch. One I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
I turned my head to him. Somewhere, alarm bells were clanging hysterically, reminding me that I was meant to be being the perfect dream girlfriend, that I was meant to be sexy and happy and laugh at his jokes. But the alarms were muffled by the ice. I didn’t feel sexy—I was dripping wet and bedraggled. I opened my mouth to tell him that everything was fine, but nothing came out. He studied me, those blue eyes searching deep inside me, straight past any barriers I could throw up. I saw his frown as he realized something was really wrong.
It didn’t make any sense. Guys, if they looked at me at all, just thought I was distant and cold. How could this man—this monster—be the one to see past that?
He reached across me and I felt my seat belt disengage. I shuddered. Just the sound of it hissing back into its reel, that glorious sound that I’d imagined so many times when I was trapped, was enough to fill my eyes with tears.
And then he was
I was in there for two days. Towards the end of the second day, I passed out. I woke up in the hospital.
The doctors told me that I’d been dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia. They told me that my parents were dead.
A guy walking his dog had found us. He’d leaned against the buried car, thinking it was a rock, and some of the snow had fallen away. The newspapers called it a miracle. It didn’t feel like one. It felt as if the ice that had frozen me inside isolated me from everyone else.
I was twenty, so I was old enough to bury my parents and go back to college. I concentrated on my studies and gradually edged away from my friends. It was easier to be on my own. I couldn’t really connect with them. The ice dulled everything.
I existed like that for over a year. And then, just as I was about to enter my senior year, single and almost friendless, Roberta showed up. She was elegant and professional and yet warm and kind, and the same age as my mother would have been. She asked if I wanted to help my country and I said yes. She bought me hot chocolate and said that she knew a place where she thought I’d be happy, and all I had to do to get there was to make sure I aced all my classes.
So I did. I wanted to make her happy. And a year later, I went to work for the CIA.
I did my basic training and then I started translating phone calls. If anyone noticed that I was a little cold or that I didn’t seem to have a social life, they didn’t say anything. As I said before, a lot of us in the CIA aren’t exactly normal.
I worked. I slept and ate. But the ice inside me never melted. I was twenty-two, but I still felt twenty, unwilling and unable to think about things like relationships and marriage and my career. I did what I was told and I tried to keep Roberta and then Adam happy. I’m not sure why their opinion mattered so much to me, but it did.
And now I was in Moscow, and the ice should have been an advantage. This was the one situation where I couldn’t afford to let myself feel. And yet, for the first time, I’d felt things crack and thaw inside me.
“Arianna.”
My name, but not the sound I recognized. This was all harsh R s and long A s that sounded like poetry. My name, but made beautiful.
A hand slid around the back of my neck, warm and strong, the thumb rubbing at my hairline. I could feel the heat pumping into me, and that was when I realized how cold I was.
“You’re freezing,” said Luka. He told Yuri in Russian to turn up the heater. Then I heard the concern in his voice. “It’s not just cold, is it?” he asked. His hand was still rubbing at the back of my neck and now his other hand started to stroke up and down my bare arm. Not a sexual touch—a healing touch. One I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
I turned my head to him. Somewhere, alarm bells were clanging hysterically, reminding me that I was meant to be being the perfect dream girlfriend, that I was meant to be sexy and happy and laugh at his jokes. But the alarms were muffled by the ice. I didn’t feel sexy—I was dripping wet and bedraggled. I opened my mouth to tell him that everything was fine, but nothing came out. He studied me, those blue eyes searching deep inside me, straight past any barriers I could throw up. I saw his frown as he realized something was really wrong.
It didn’t make any sense. Guys, if they looked at me at all, just thought I was distant and cold. How could this man—this monster—be the one to see past that?
He reached across me and I felt my seat belt disengage. I shuddered. Just the sound of it hissing back into its reel, that glorious sound that I’d imagined so many times when I was trapped, was enough to fill my eyes with tears.
And then he was
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