Once Upon A Lie 2

Four:

The door to the balcony opened. He smelled iris perfume. Aleksander turned around, and he saw Alina. Her brown eyes were soft, and her hair was mused as if she had spent some time out in the wind. "Alina," he breathed. He walked over to her, closing the space between them. He hugged her tightly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened. I ran off, didn't I?"

Alina looked up at him. "To be completely honest, I don't know what happened, Aleks. You and I----"

"Well, I'm not going anywhere," he cupped her chin in his hand, and he kissed her deeply.

A small moan escaped from her. "Aleks...."

Aleksander pressed his forehead against hers. "I know I can't remember what happened, but I know that I missed you, Lina. Now that I'm back, the two of us can be together finally. I'll have to start college next semester, but we could get an apartment in Os Alta together. I'm sure father would let me live in the company ones."

Alina looked up at him. "You want us to live together?"

"Of course," said Aleksander, "why wouldn't we? We're married, exactly like we were always supposed to be. We'll go back home, and we'll start our life as a married couple."

Alina opened her mouth, and she looked like she wanted to say something. "That sounds wonderful, Aleksander. Why don't we spend the night here, and then we can head home in the morning?"

Aleksander nodded. "I like the sound of that. How'd you get here? Did your parents drive?"

"Er...I took my motorcycle."

He glanced down at her. "A motorcycle? When in the hell did you get a motorcycle?"

"Um, it was a graduation gift. Our parents had a really big deal go through that I helped with. They gave me some money for it, so I bought it. It was after you...vanished. I was kind of lost."

Aleksander glared at her. "You're getting rid of it."

Alina flinched. "What?"

"You're going to be the mother of my children," said Aleksander, "I can't have you riding a motorcycle. It's a hazard. You can leave it here with Kaz, and we'll rent a car. I called my parents and they know that I'm alive. They've already turned on all of my cards. I just told them that I wouldn't go home until I saw you first."

She pulled away from him. "Aleksander, no. We're not doing this. I've worked really hard to get to a place to where I can stand up on my own. The motorcycle was part of it. If you want to ride home in a car, you can ride home in a car. But I'm keeping my motorcycle."

Aleksander raised an eyebrow. "When did you get such a backbone?"

She glared at him. "When you left."

"Alina---"

Alina knew he had memory loss, and she didn't want to make things worse for him by telling him the truth. She picked her words carefully. "Aleks, I thought I was never going to see you again. That I would never be with you again. I had to figure out how to be on my own. We're not going back to the way things were where I do everything that you say. I'm eighteen now. I'm an adult. I have a mind of my own, and you....if you want this, you're going to have to listen to it. Otherwise, you can stay here and rot."

"Alina!" Aleksander hissed. "I'm your husband."

"And you left," she hissed, "and you didn't just leave me. You left with Zoya!"

Aleksander's face fell. "What did I do?"

"You left me and went with Zoya! There's a lot more to it than that, but I don't want to upset you too much. But I'm not the same Alina that you left. And if you want to be with me, you are going to have to accept that I am going to have a mind of my own. I'm not the teenage girl that bends to your will because she's scared."

"I'm sorry," he apologized, "I'm sorry...you're right. I fucked up. But...why did I leave with Zoya? I never cared about her. I've only cared about you."

Alina scowled. "I don't know. You'd have to ask her. Although that might be a little hard since she disappeared around the same time that you did. Everyone thought that you two killed each other or something for a while, but then they found out that your plane----well her plane---had crashed on a deserted island."

"I was in a plane crash?" Aleksander said.

She nodded. "Yes. That was the last I heard from you. To be completely honest, I thought that the two of you were dead."

Aleksander furrowed his brows together. "Does anyone know what happened to Zoya?"

Alina shook her head. "They've looked for her, but they weren't able to find her at the crash site."

"I remember marrying you," he said, "there was a church and everything. The Apparat was there. You are the only thing that I have ever wanted in this whole world since I have known what wanting was. Me being with Zoya doesn't make sense. It sounds like something wrong."

Alina opened her mouth again, then closed it quickly. "Yeah, something went wrong. That was kind of how the two of us just are. We're a complete mess."

"Yes, but you're mine," he told her, "and now that we're married, and I'm back, I am never, ever going to let you go."

He kissed her again. "Keep the motorcycle. But if you keep it, you've got to let me drive it. Like the idea of having you wrapped around my back."

She smirked at him. "I suppose that wouldn't be such a bad idea, Morozova."

"I never have bad ideas, Mrs. Morozova."

Alina had a sad look in his eyes that he didn't quite understand. "Yeah, you do, Mr. Morozova. You left me."

"I won't do that ever again," he promised.