More Than Life (5 page)

It was Isa’s baseball cap, the grubby, shapeless hat he’d worn to conceal his poorly dyed hair.

Mik sank to the ground as new pain flared in his chest. How was that possible? It couldn’t be, he had to be wrong, but as he raised the hat to his face and inhaled the faint smell of spicy smoke, he knew he wasn’t. He’d recognize the scent of his lost love until his own heart stopped beating.

Dazed, he drove back up the forest track to his sister’s home. Leka met him at the door, taking the cap from his hands and turning it over.

“Oh, God. Is this Isa’s?”

Mik nodded and sank into a chair at the kitchen table and falteringly explained how it had come into his possession. Leka was quiet while he listened, as was his way. When Mik’s voice trailed off and he hid his face in his arms, Leka’s hand on his shoulder was the only answer his oldest friend could give.

Later, when the haze of despair had lifted somewhat, Leka reasoned that maybe Isa had not been the lone ranger they thought. That when he fell in the field, perhaps an American comrade had seen fit to retrieve a token of his life and send it on to him. The CIA had eyes everywhere. It wasn’t that farfetched that they could’ve tracked Mik and the others all the way to Albania. If Leka was right, then maybe the Americans even knew about the clandestine evacuations of young Kosovan children. Indeed, it was the plight of one the infants they’d smuggled into Albania that had brought Mik away from his mountain-top seclusion in the first place.

His soul ached as he recalled with painful clarity the image of Isa tending to the youngest charge in their care so long ago. Isa had cradled the baby girl for hours as Mik slept, slumped against him on the back of the cattle truck. That bitter winter night when they’d delivered the children to Doric and Rita, they’d believed they were leading them to a better life. Not so, it seemed—when spring had come around for a second time, word reached them that the baby girl had been left at an orphanage not far from Rea and Leka’s forest home.

A few days later, Mik accompanied Leka and Rea into town. He glanced around as he drove through the tidy, undamaged streets. He’d spent so much time alone in the mountains he sometimes forgot that his memories of a broken Pristina were not how civilization was supposed to look.

Distracted, he pulled the truck to a stop outside the orphanage. The building was utilitarian and bleak. He had every intention of waiting outside, but a glare from his sister persuaded him to stub out his cigarette—a habit he’d acquired helping Doric rebuild the roof of the mountain cabin—and follow her inside.

He drifted behind Leka and Rea as a Catholic nun led them through the orphanage. He’d always pictured such places as loud and noisy, full of wailing and screaming infants, but it wasn’t so. The desolate eyes of the abandoned children haunted him as he passed their beds. They were so hollow and empty, they reminded him of his own reflection.

“Mik?”

Startled, Mik blinked and focused on his sister’s face. He hadn’t realized they’d come to a stop. “What?”

Rea smiled a real, wide smile he hadn’t seen from her since the birth of her own child. “Mik, look. There’s someone who wants to see you.”

Confused, Mik followed her gaze to a nearby cot. His heart shuddered. An infant girl stood with her arms outstretched to him. With her dark curls and defined features, she bore no resemblance to the warm bundle of bones Isa had soothed in the back of the cattle truck all those years ago, but somehow, Mik recognized the hazel gleam of her eyes.

The rest of the world faded away. He reached down and lifted the girl from her bed. Thin, olive skinned arms locked around his neck, and suddenly, his soul felt like its axis had shifted. The girl fixed her solemn eyes on him and he stared right back. The sensation of her in his arms felt right, like she’d belonged there all along. With Rea and Leka standing resolutely on either side of him, there was no question that he would ever let go.

It took a matter of minutes for Leka and Rea to sign some papers for the little girl and bring her home to live as one of their own. With times so hard, such adoptions were rare. The orphanage seemed to care little for her fate.

Mik carried her all the way back to Rea and Leka’s forest lodge, his intention to leave her there to be raised in the warmth and safety of their home, but a cry of alarm from the little girl stayed him. She didn’t want him to go, and besides, with an extra mouth to feed, Leka needed his help to scratch a living from the small timber yard he’d set up on the outskirts of the forest.

For better or worse, it seemed Mik’s time to grieve in isolation had come to an end, and it was a consequence he couldn’t bring himself to resent. The name given to the baby girl by the parents who’d loved her enough to send her away was long forgotten, but Mik named her Arta. She shared no blood with his father, but the stubborn way she planted her feet on the ground when she was cross never failed to remind him of Artan.

She reminded him of Isa too, with her quiet determination and wide, curious eyes, but with time, the joy the little girl brought him began to ease the pain of all he’d lost. Isa had laid down his life so he could live, and now Arta had given him back a reason try.

In the years that followed, Mik helped his sister and his oldest friend raise their children. He marveled as he watched them grow, often awed that they’d been gifted with such innocence and beauty out of so much pain and loss. He knew he would never father children of his own, but as the years passed, he found it mattered less and less. He loved his nephew and Arta as though they were born of his own seed, and he wanted nothing more than to cherish and protect them from the cruelty that had torn his own life apart. With their unwitting help, he slowly learned to function again. When Arta began to call him Papa, it seemed he’d found his reason to live.

The war in Kosovo had been over for just four years the day Arta came running out to the timber yard to warn him that a strange man was calling his name. An ingrained tension prickled Mik’s skin. He lay down his axe and reached for Arta’s hand. Leka did most of their business in town, so it was rare that anyone approached the lodge. Wary, Mik considered retrieving the pistol he had concealed in his toolkit, but unwilling to frighten Arta, he left it behind.

He lifted Arta to his hip and made his way back towards the wooden lodge they called home. He ruffled his almost-daughter’s dark curls as he walked. The little girl feigned a pout, but he knew she enjoyed the affectionate gesture. For a long time, Arta had known no such thing and her rare, enchanting smile was almost enough to make him forget there was another soul in the world but her.

Until the forest cleared and he saw the tall figure that awaited him in the distance.

Mik froze. His stomach lurched, his heart stopped beating, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

“Mik?”

The shaky, tentative voice called him from far away…so far away it was distorted by the time it reached his ears. He tried to respond, but his voice failed him. He realized too late the forest was tilting around him.

Strong hands steadied him. He felt Arta being pried from his arms, and Arta’s frightened voice calling his name before he turned and fled into the forest.

The little girl squirmed in Isa’s arms as Mik disappeared into the forest. “Papa! Papa!”

Isa absorbed the term of endearment.
Papa…
but that meant…the girl had dark hair and olive skin…but, no. It couldn’t be. He refused to believe it.

He heard footsteps behind him and spun around. Leka and Rea ran into the clearing. Isa’s legs wavered. Another dark haired child—a boy this time—was just a heartbeat behind them.

Rea’s hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with confused recognition.

Leka stumbled, his face much the same. “I—Isa?”

“It’s me, Leka.”

The young girl in Isa’s arms fought to be free. Isa released her and she ran to Rea, her sobs eerily resonant in the cleared area of the forest.

“He hurt Papa. He hurt my Papa!”

Rea reached for the tearful child and tucked her behind her skirt. “Leka,” she said quietly. “Take the children up to the cabin. I will follow you in a moment.”

Leka looked as though he might protest, but he didn’t. He scooped the young girl from the ground, summoned the younger boy to his side, and with one last, wide-eyed glance at Isa, he was gone.

Isa stared at Rea as conflicted emotions raged inside him. He’d spent four years dreaming of the moment he might see Mik’s face again. His young Kosovan lover had been the one thing that kept him alive during long years of captivity and torture. The fantasy of holding Mik in his arms again had been the only reason he hadn’t succumbed to the hell of a Serbian jail, the only reason he hadn’t taken a plastic knife to his wrists.

Four years was a long time. He knew Mik would’ve believed him dead. Hell, his own father had left this world believing he’d died on the streets of Pristina, but though he’d prepared himself to find Mik had moved on, that his life was already rebuilt without room for Isa, never in his lowest moments had he imagined Mik would find love with a woman.

The thought made him want to puke. He’d loved Mik, and he’d known Mik had loved him. What they shared was a rare thing, a bond so deep it couldn’t be matched by another. Or so he’d believed.

Rea’s hand on his arm brought him back to the present. “We thought you were dead, Isa. All these years…the Serbs. We thought they’d killed you.”

Isa clenched his shaking hands into fists. “They weren’t that kind.”

Comprehension flashed in Rea’s eyes, like a fabled nightmare had become reality, but when the next voice came, it wasn’t hers.

“You were captured?”

Isa spun around again, and for a moment he could see nothing but the vision of the man his young lover had grown into. Gone was the lanky frame and scattered stubble, and in its place were broad shoulders, cut muscles and a man’s thick scruff. The Mik of Isa’s dreams was no longer a boy.

Rea disappeared. Isa felt Mik’s coal dark gaze rake over him.

“Answer me,” Mik said. “Were you captured?”

Isa opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The jerky nod of his head was the only answer he could give.

Mik took a step closer. “The Serbs?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

Mik took another step forward, one Isa wanted to match, but his legs wouldn’t move. “It felt like forever,” Isa said, his voice hoarse from emotion and years of disuse. “But I was released by US Special Forces six months ago.”

Isa watched as Mik computed the time in his head. His heart skipped and thudded. For those endless moments, he couldn’t bring himself to take a breath. He felt lightheaded, as though the breathtaking man in front of him was a cruelly vivid delusion and his dreams in captivity had been just that, dreams.

A warm, calloused hand cupped his cheek and coaxed his eyes open. “I’ve been without you for so long,” Mik whispered. “I don’t believe you’re real.”

Isa leaned into Mik’s gentle touch. Logic and reason abandoned him and all he could feel was the heat of his lost love’s blood pulsing through the palm of his hand. The thrum of it held everything he’d been without for so long—warmth, life,
love
, but as he closed his eyes, the distant call of a child was a brutal reminder that the all-encompassing warmth was no longer his to feel.

Coldness seeped into Isa’s bones. He opened his eyes and pulled away.

The confusion in Mik’s eyes was quickly replaced with a weary resignation. He folded his arms across his strong chest. “Why did you come here?”

Isa sighed. “I had to know…I had to know you made it through. I looked for you in Greece, Pristina and all over Kosovo. The lodge was the last place I could think of. Strange, really, I don’t know why I didn’t come here first.”

Four years of silence hung over them as they stared at each other. There was so much to say, but the words just wouldn’t come to Isa. Mik’s face was, all at once, that of a stranger and of everything he’d ever known.

“You know, I heard the gunshots,” Mik said. His voice quiet, but Isa felt each word like an ax to his heart. “When I was running…I thought I heard you cry out. I thought you’d been hit.”

“I took two bullets, not enough to kill me, apparently.”

A tired smile briefly brightened Mik’s beautiful face. “I always knew you were a superhero. But what happened next, Isa? The Serbians killed all their prisoners in Pristina. They took them to the forest and executed them over mass graves.

Isa shrugged. His sorry tale sometimes didn’t feel real, like it had happened to someone else, and despite it all, he knew he’d been lucky. “Once they realized I was American, they kept me alive for…well, they kept me alive. Let’s leave it at that.”

Mik caught his slip. Of course he did. Years of war and persecution had taught him that his worst fears could become reality in an instant. “What did they do to you?”

Isa shook his head. “Don’t make me tell you, Mik. I can’t…”

Isa stopped and fought for the breath caught in his throat. It hadn’t taken his captors long to figure out he’d been so deeply entrenched in the Kosovan resistance, he’d been on the edge of betraying his own country. They’d known nothing of the boy who’d stolen his heart, who he’d laid down his life for, but they’d known he’d spent months working with the KLA, hindering the Serbian invasion and betraying their positions. They’d known he had knowledge of the underground smuggling routes.

That alone made his captors determined to extract information from him by any means possible. Isa had seen torture before, but he’d never truly understood how low human nature could sink until he was strung up in a cell, battered and broken, pleading for mercy. He’d thought for sure he was going to break, but his saving grace had been Mik. To betray the Kosovan people would’ve have betrayed Mik too and Isa could never do that.

And so he’d held out. For the first year, he’d been interrogated every day, his body and his mind beaten and abused until he lay bleeding on the cold stone floor, but he’d given them nothing and eventually, his captors had become bored with him, and left him alone in a cell to rot. He’d been half mad from his solitary confinement by the time US Army rangers broke into his cell. When they’d carried him onto a waiting chopper, it was the first daylight he’d seen in years.