“I’m not joking,” I burst out, frustration cracking through my fear. “I don’t even know if what I feel qualifies as love. I’ve never felt it before. But I don’t hate you like I should. I find you—” I faltered, then forced myself onward. “I find you attractive. My heart races when you’re near, like it’s trying to escape my chest. I don’t understand it, and I don’t trust it—but it’s real.”
He leaned back slightly, studying me with narrowed eyes. “We’ve known each other for forty-eight hours,” he said coolly.“In that time, I’ve shown you cruelty. Contempt. Control. And you claim to feel something for me?”
“Maybe it isn’t love,” I admitted, my shoulders sagging under the weight of honesty. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had the chance to learn what love looks like.”
The words spilled out then, unstoppable.
“My life ended before it really began,” I continued. “I dropped out of high school just before I turned fifteen—right after my parents died in that plane crash. Twisted metal. Shattered glass. One moment they were alive, the next... gone. And with them went everything normal. No dances. No crushes. No first kisses or awkward relationships or stupid teenage mistakes.”
I swallowed, my throat tight.
“From then on, it was survival. Scrubbing motel bathrooms until my hands cracked and bled. Washing dishes in diners that smelled like grease and despair. Flipping burgers, sorting trash, doing anything—anything—to keep myself fed. I never had the luxury of romance, Ruslan. Or choice.”
I looked up at him again, my eyes burning but dry.
“So if what I feel for you is wrong, or misplaced, or foolish... it’s because I’ve never known anything else. You’re the first man who’s ever made me feel anything at all.”
The room fell silent once more.
And this time, the quiet wasn’t threatening.
It was dangerous in an entirely different way.
My voice wavered, but I forced myself to keep going.
“There was never a place I could call home in the past ten years, Ruslan.”
A hollow laugh escaped me, brittle and sharp, like glass breaking in the quiet room. “My father’s lawyer... he blocked me from the house within days of my parents’ funeral. Something about legal loopholes, inheritance papers I didn’t understand,signatures I’d never given. Overnight... I went from grieving daughter to unwanted trespasser. Security escorted me out like I was nothing more than a thief, a stranger in my own bloodline.”
I swallowed hard, my throat raw from reliving it. “And the worst part? No one cared. Not my aunt, not my so-called family, not the world that should have protected me. I was left alone... utterly alone. That’s been my life ever since.”
The memory burned.
I wrapped my arms around myself, as if the room had suddenly grown colder.
I swallowed.
I met his gaze again, steady now.
“I’m not telling you this to earn pity,” I said. “I just need you to understand something. Fate never gave me room for romance. Or softness. Or choice.”
I exhaled slowly.
“The men who came onto me at work? Supervisors. Coworkers. Customers who thought exhaustion meant desperation. I felt nothing. No spark. No curiosity. Just... numbness. Maybe I’m broken. Maybe I shut that part of myself down too young.”
Then my voice faltered.
“But you,” I said softly. “When you appeared at that altar—so still, so intense—it felt like something inside me woke up. Like a switch I didn’t know existed flipped on.”
I shook my head, embarrassed, angry at myself.
“Maybe it was love at first sight. Maybe it was fear dressed up as attraction. Maybe my mind latched onto you because I needed something—anything—to survive that moment.” I swallowed hard. “But I feel it. This pull. It won’t leave me alone.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“I want you, Ruslan,” I admitted, the words tasting like both truth and shame. “Not as a fantasy. As my husband. As my man. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
I laughed, a short, broken sound that ended in a shiver. “But then I see it—the fire in your eyes. The way you want to punish me, to destroy me for my sister’s sins... And whatever fragile dream I thought I’d built, it shatters the moment I look at you. Every hope, every moment of trust, crumbles.”
