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)
More vague bullshit. Could the con be more obvious? And yet… “What kind of choice?” I demand.
Sonia shrugs helplessly. “She didn’t say.”
Of course she didn’t. Because she was talking out of her ass, making up the most plausible-sounding thing that could apply to hundreds of different couples and all sorts of situations. Come to think of it, Sonia didn’t even need to tell this con woman about my parents.
For most young people, “trauma” and “tragedy” could mean anything from losing a favorite pet to getting rejected from their first-choice college.
Still, as Sonia starts telling me about all the things the psychic predicted about her hamster, I can’t help but think about choices.
I’ve made mine.
Yesterday, I admitted to myself and to Alexei that I love him.
And he didn’t say it back.
I’m trying not to dwell on it, to remind myself that he’s going through a traumatic loss of his own, his second one in as many years. I tell myself that he’s shown and told me in a dozen different ways how he truly feels. Yet a small, insecure part of me can’t help but wonder if the reason he didn’t say the words was because he didn’t want to lie to me.
If, after everything, he’s made his choice as well… and I’m not it.
I’m still ruminating on the topic when Alexei comes to retrieve me. As the service begins, the priest launches into a monologue about what a great man Boris Leonov was, and I only half-listen, all my attention on Alexei.
His expression is remote. Emotionless. Even as his fingers curl tightly around mine, keeping my hand warm in the frigid wind that smells of approaching snow, he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t acknowledge that I’m there.
I know he’s hurting. I feel his pain and grief as if it were my own. But all I can do is stand by his side and hold his hand instead of embracing him as I would if we were alone. That is, if he’d let me embrace him. There seems to be an invisible wall between us, a barrier that I can’t penetrate.
I don’t understand why it’s there. Is it because he’s hurting? Some kind of tough-man act where he doesn’t want to show weakness? Or is it what I said? Did the admission of my feelings, coming as it did after all these years, seem… anticlimactic to him?
Presumably, this was his goal all along: to make me fall in love with him. Everything he’s done, all the manipulations, all the blood spilled, has been in service of that. But maybe that’s the thing… Maybe the fun was in the chase, not the getting. He could be realizing that he only wanted me for as long as I didn’t want him back—or claimed not to.
That he doesn’t actually love me and never will.
“How are you feeling, Alinyonok? Are you tired?” Alexei’s low-pitched voice cuts into my gloomy thoughts, and I all but jump.
He’s looking at me now, his gaze filled with familiar concern. The priest is still speaking, but Alexei doesn’t seem to care, his focus on me once more.
A warm glow kindles in my chest, chasing away the insidious doubts. “I’m okay, thank you.”
It’s mostly true. Though I slept for several hours on the plane, jet lag is pulling at me hard, much harder than it would’ve in the past. My head feels heavy, my eyes are gritty, and my stomach is unsettled, possibly from all the healthy drinks Sonia forced on me. But I’m nowhere near as exhausted as I would’ve been even two weeks ago.
“Okay, let me know if you need us to leave. We’ll go right away,” Alexei says, squeezing my hand, and turns his attention to the priest, who’s finally wrapping up.
It’s time for family and friends to say a few words, but neither Ruslan nor Alexei move to do so. After an awkward pause, other relatives step up, followed by business associates and whoever else wants to demonstrate their loyalty to the deceased and, by extension, to the remaining Leonov clan.
After each sycophantic speech, I sneak a glance at my husband, but his closed-off expression gives nothing away. That’s another reason I feel insecure, I realize—his refusal to tell me anything about his relationship with his father.
Thanks to his accessing of my therapist’s files all those years ago—not to mention, a decade of relentless stalking—he knows my family’s deepest, darkest secrets, whereas I know next to nothing about his family and the source of their dysfunction.
Finally, the speeches are over, and the post-service mingling begins. By now, I am tired. Barely hanging on, in fact.
I’m about to fess up to Alexei, but he beats me to it.
“It’s time for us to go,” he says, ignoring the people approaching us. “You’ve had a long day.”
With that, he says goodbye to Sonia and a few others and hustles me to the car, where I drift off as soon as I close my eyes.