“Then why didn’t you tell him?” She asks, voice fierce now. “He deserves to know what you’re sacrificing. If he loves you like you say he does, he’d at least want a say in this.”
“He’d never sign the papers if he knew.” I stare at my bare ring finger. It looks wrong. Naked. “He’d throw himself in front of a train before he let me go back to Maxim just to help his father. He’d call my grandmother, tell her to shove her offer, and then she’d pull it. The trial spot would disappear.”
“So your plan is to… what? Break his heart, break your own, go back to Moscow and let him think you chose your old life over him?”
“Sort of. I told him I got a big break in New York,” I say, knowing she’s going to yell at me for lying, but I had to… for him. “I couldn’t tell him I was going back to Moscow. I had to let him hate me for breaking his heart so that he’ll let me go. He’ll sign. He’ll move on.”
Irina makes a frustrated noise. “This is crazy.”
“It’s not crazy… It’s love,” I say quietly. “His father gets a shot at walking. Scottie gets to keep playing without being eaten alive by guilt. His family gets hope. I… I’ll survive, you know that. After all, I was built for a loveless, miserable life.”
“And what do you get?” she demands.
“I get to know I did the right thing,” I say. “And that for one moment in my li,fe I got to know what being loved by a man felt like. I never would have known that if I hadn’t followed Luka to Seattle. I got a moment.”
“And that’s enough for you,” she snaps.
“It has to be,” I whisper.
There’s a long pause.
When she speaks again, her voice is softer, heartbreak tucked into every word. “I hate this. I hate your grandmother. I hate your father. I hate this stupid trial and this stupid legacy obsession and Maxim and his stupid necklace.”
A laugh escapes me. “You haven’t even seen the necklace.”
“I don’t need to. I can already tell it’s tacky. Too many diamonds. No taste. ”
“It is tacky,” I mutter.
“You should throw it in Puget Sound like Rose does at the end of the Titanic. It would make me feel better, at least,” she says, and it earns a small chuckle from me at the thought of it.
She’s trying to make me feel better; I get it.
“Listen to me, Katerina. I love you. I will support you even when I think you’re making a horrible decision. But promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t disappear,” she says. “Not from me. Not from the girls. Not from yourself. If you’re going to do this—if you’re going to break his heart to save his father, then you at least owe it to yourself to keep living. Do you understand? Call me. Text me. Let me be mad with you. Grieve with you. Don’t do this alone.”
My throat clenches.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I promise. Will you be my maid of honor at my second wedding? It’ll be stuffy, boring, and outrageously expensive to show off before his election coming up.”
“I would love to, and this speech will be my best work yet,” she says, and I can only imagine the shocking things she’s going to say.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re going to be okay. No matter what happens.”
“I know.”
I hang up feeling… not better, exactly. But less alone. Like, there’s at least one person in the world who knows the truth, besides my grandmother and me.
Rehearsal is a blur.
My body moves on autopilot. The director gives notes I absorb and respond to because that’s what I do, but my mind keeps sliding back to the locker room hallway, to Scottie’s face as I told him I wanted out.
Tell me you can see me happy with someone else, he said,and you’re going to be okay with it.
