After years of being nothing but her kidnapper, her husband’s best friend, the man she’s spent so much time hating, I finally have a chance to take care of her.
After so long watching her look after Daniil and Niko, I can finally take some of the weight off of her shoulders and help ease her burdens.
I just have to convince her to let me.
It’ll happen eventually, but I’ve spent years lamenting lost opportunities with Blair, and my patience is running thinner than I’d like it to.
My phone dings with yet another text from Maksim demanding I attend to even more bullshit I don’t care about, and I bite out a curse, tempted to chuck the damn thing at the wall.
So much for my plan to join Blair and Niko for dinner.
After everything is a little more settled, I’ll be free to start incorporating myself into their lives. Last night was everything I could have ever asked for, but I want more.
I want her to do more than just accept me into her life; I want her to crave me the way I do her. I want Blair to understand the depth of my feelings, and I want more than an occasional night in her bed.
I want to spend every day and night by her side. I want her to love me the way I love her.
Maybe tomorrow people will learn to handle their own shit, and I’ll be able to savor Blair’s laughter the way I want to.
I snatch the jacket off the top of my bag and head toward the sound of her melodic laughter. If I have to leave, at least she’s going to know I’m coming back later.
Chapter 16
Blair
“Where’s Niko?”
I peek over the top of my book at Andrei as he leans against the door jamb, eyes assessing.
“It’s Thursday,” I shrug. “He’s at Mila’s.” He’s quiet for a moment, and I go back to my book, assuming the conversation’s over.
“When will he be back?”
“At the normal time.”
“Which is when?”
His brows are furrowed in confusion, and if I weren’t so annoyed with him, it’d be endearing. “I typically drop him off with her in the morning,” I say, sliding my bookmark between the pages. “They like spending time together and it’s nice to have a day off from being a parent. I’ll go pick him up after dinner.”
I kept Niko home last week, wanting to keep him close with so many things changing at home, but I couldn’t refuse to take him to Mila’s again.
Andrei doesn’t reply, but I don’t expect him to. Instead, I’m treated to the sound of his footsteps as they fade down the hall.
I shouldn’t have expected sleeping together to have changed anything between us, but, apparently, I did. When I woke up the next morning, Andrei was long gone, the sheets where he’d been were cool to the touch, and I was left pretending I wasn’t disappointed.
That disappointment slowly turned to anger as the day went on.
It’s not that I expected him to wake me up with breakfast in bed or anything, but it would’ve been nice if he hadn’t rushed away at the first opportunity.
He didn’t need to make his regret so obvious.
I try to tell myself that he did his good deed in defending me against Pavel, and he got what he wanted out of it. And I try to ignore the little voice in my head that’s so eager to point out that when I looked up whatzolotsemeant, it did, in fact, mean exactly what he said: Precious.
It doesn’t matter if that doesn’t align with something a man who just wanted to get laid would say. Accepting he might have cared about me before that night would mean I have to accept that sleeping with me changed things for him, and I might not be enough for him, either. And I’m not ready for that. Not now, and maybe not ever.
I just have to accept things as they are and hope Andrei doesn’t turn his back on me when this arrangement gets inconvenient.
If I felt a flicker of hope things would be different when I fell asleep in his arms, that’s on me, not him. It was a foolish mistake, and I don’t plan on letting it happen again.
