She moves forward, her steps cautious.
Her mouth tilts higher when I don’t pull away this time. Don’t look at me like that. The love we once shared has turned into a battlefield, and we’re both wounded soldiers struggling to stay alive.
Even fighting with her, I’ve breathed more in the past three days than I have in the past three years.
As Emerson removes the shard of glass from my hand, she confesses, “If I could change anything, I swear to you that the first thing I would change is that I would walk through those doors instead of walking away from them.”
Doors?
The truth smacks into me like a ton of bricks and pulls the world out from beneath my feet—not in a good way.
She was there.
Outside the church.
She made it that far but didn’t enter.
That hurts to acknowledge.
It hurts so fucking bad.
It shouldn’t maim as much as it does, but the betrayal cracks something deep inside me. It makes me a shell of a man I had hoped to be and has me lashing out.
“If you’re handing out genie wishes, I guess I’d wish to have never wasted my last coin on a jukebox in a pub no one outside of Lidny had ever heard of.”
I don’t know what hurts more. The physical discomfort of ripping Emerson’s heart out of my chest and handing it back to her, or the way she looks past me, as if she can’t see me standing directly in front of her.
I shouldn’t be surprised she can’t see me. I don’t recognize myself when I say, “You should go. There’s nothing here for you anymore.”
The alcohol dulls the pain in my foot as I race for the bathroom, but it can’t numb the ache in my heart when Emerson doesn’t come after me.
Chapter 30
Emerson
The darkness of the owner’s suite matches the murkiness sloshing in the area my heart once sat. Tears threaten to stream down my face as I replay my fight with Mikhail and the cruel words he spoke for the umpteenth time. I would have given anything to hurt him as he had hurt me, to lash out with the same level of vindictiveness, but I made my bed when I suggested we keep quiet for now about Andrik’s part in Mikhail’s heartbreak, and now I must lie in it.
In my heart, I have to believe Mikhail didn’t mean the words he spoke. Alcohol was making him ballsy, and his heartache added a touch of cruelty his usually free-going nature rarely displays.
Furthermore, I don’t mind taking his wrath if it will spare those undeserving of it.
Zoya is a recent recruit for this circus, and as much as I can see how much she cares for Mikhail, the love a woman has for her soulmate far exceeds the lengths she will go to for her family.
I gave proof of that only an hour ago.
For years, I’ve prayed to go back and change my mother’s work environment to a less smoky, less dangerous setting.
Tonight, I only wished to go back ten years instead of thirty.
The bathroom door creaks open, and I quickly wipe my cheeks to ensure they’re dry before stilling my erratic breaths. The room is pitch black, but I know Mikhail senses my presence before he leaves the bathroom.
As he stares at the lump of my body under the bedding, I silently pray that he won’t kick me out. The embarrassment that would cause after begging Kolya to let me sleep in the owner’s suite is too much to bear, so I won’t mention the heartbreak it would stir up.
After clearing his throat, Mikhail acts oblivious to my presence. He heads to the walk-in closet, his movements deliberate and detached. He dresses into slinky pajama pants and a plain white T-shirt before bandaging his foot at a dressing station in the closet.
I watch him like a hawk, my heart aching with guilt and regret. I want to tell him the truth, to explain that I didn’t break his heart—his brother did. But I am a woman who keeps her word, even when it feels like it is clutching my heart, strangling it of blood.
Once dressed, Mikhail slips into the bed next to me, and silence stretches between us like an unbridgeable chasm.
