Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Except he wasn’t, I remind myself. Somehow, he was prepared for this. He knew this was coming. But how? And if he knew, why didn’t he stop it?
My head feels like it weighs a ton, but I force myself to lift it so I can meet his gaze. “How?” I ask, and I know I don’t need to elaborate.
He understands. It’s there in the dark intensity of his eyes, in the way his jaw flexes as he says quietly, “I didn’t believe you.”
I stare at him, confused, then push up higher, sitting up despite how shaky I’m still feeling. “What do you mean, you didn’t believe me?”
He sits up as well and picks up his shirt from the ground. “Put that on. We should go get warmed up. It’s freezing out here.”
My face heats as I realize that what remains of my dress is hanging halfway off my hips. Swiftly, I put on the proffered shirt, but I don’t move.
I want him to answer before we go anywhere.
He shoves his hand through his hair, further disheveling his dark locks. His face is taut, his eyes black with some bleak emotion. “I didn’t believe you when you said you loved me. I thought you said it to lure me into complacency so your brothers could come and take you away.”
I gape at him. “What? How could you…. I mean—” I stop because I don’t know what I’m saying. My thoughts spin like clothes in a dryer. He didn’t believe me? All this time, as I willingly embraced him and bared my soul to him, he thought I was just playing him so my brothers could steal me away unimpeded?
I gasp as it dawns on me why he was looking at me with grim resignation when his guards put down their weapons and stepped aside, clearing the way to my brothers.
It’s because he expected me to run to them.
Away from him.
He thought I was in on today’s attack. That I wanted it.
Fuck.
I should be mad. Furious with him for mistrusting me all this time. But I can’t be.
For a decade, I pushed him away, not caring how it made him feel. I let my fears drive us apart. I ran from him, time and time again. Why would he trust me after that? And yet… there’s something more there, something he’s not telling me.
Something that the dark hollow inside me recognizes in him as a mirror of itself, I realize with a jolt.
“Alexei…” My voice shakes as I reach for him. The biting cold is seeping into my body now, chilling me down to the bone. “Why didn’t you believe me when I said I loved you?”
His lips press together. “Alinyonok…”
“No, listen.” I grip his hand in both of mine. “You’ve always been able to read me. You knew I wanted you before I could even admit it to myself. All along, you’ve known me better than I’ve known myself. You would’ve known if I were lying. You would’ve felt it. So why didn’t you believe me when I told you I loved you? When I finally admitted the truth to you and to myself?”
He doesn’t reply, but his nostrils flare, the cords in his neck tensing as if he wants to say something but can’t.
“Tell me.” I bring his hand to my chest. My eyes burn because I can feel it in him, the struggle, the pain buried so deep that unearthing it feels unbearable, untenable. “Please, Alexei, is it… because of your father?”
He flinches like I’ve struck him with an arrow, and I know my hunch was right. There’s something there, something beyond simple grief—not that grief is ever simple, especially with families like ours.
I don’t push him further. He’ll speak if he’s ready. And if he isn’t—
“She was seventeen when it happened.” The words that emerge from him are filled with such raw torment that it’s all I can do not to shrink back under the weight of it. But I don’t. Because it’s my turn to be strong for him. To support him under the weight of his trauma.
“We didn’t know, Ruslan and I, not until we found her diary some weeks after her death,” he continues, his voice like gravel scraping over glass. “But we should have known. The signs were there, in hindsight. Ksenia was always shy, choosing to hide away in her room with a book rather than go out and party. But that year, a few months before her eighteenth birthday, she started to emerge from her shell. She started wearing high heels, short dresses, the works—and for some reason, he couldn’t bear it.”
“Your father?” I venture cautiously, and Alexei nods, his face so dark it’s terrifying to watch, like a funnel cloud about to turn into a twister.
“He came to her one night to castigate her for her choices. He couldn’t deal with the fact that his daughter was growing up, turning into a woman.” Alexei’s face twists. “Right before he died, he called me. Tried to justify his actions that night, to tell me how sorry he was. Said he’d been sleep-deprived and on pain meds for a slipped disk in his back, that he got confused and thought she was our mother. But even if that was true, it doesn’t change what he did—and what it did to her.”