He chuckles, but it’s strained. “I guess it is, but it’s true.”
“You can’t tell me that you haven’t been with anyone for half a decade.”
“Actually, I can.”
“What?” I sit up.
“I haven’t touched another woman for half a decade. Well, longer than that. But I didn’twanttotouch one for five years.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say, narrowing my eyes on him but there’s no shifting, no shifty eyes that are trying to lie. Severin just stares at me with all that truth in his gaze. “You—you…you haven’t been with anyone all that time? How? Why?”
This time his chuckle is free and unrestrained. “You make it sound like it’s a bad thing, malysh. Is it?” He quirks an eyebrow at me, his hand landing on my bare thigh as he strokes my skin.
“Um, no. No, it’s not. I just have a hard time believing that a guy like you hasn’t had a woman in your bed.”
“A guy like me?”
I roll my eyes at his cheeky fishing for compliments. “Yes, a hot-as-sin hockey player.”
“Mm-hmm, what else?” His mouth hooks in a teasing smile and I lightly slap his chest.
“Stop that. I’m serious—” Severin catches my wrist and pulls me into his embrace.
“I really haven’t been with anyone, Aurora. My last relationship was with my wife.”
Something in my heart pinches and the pit of my stomach drops. “W-wife? You’re married?” I try to get up, but he won’t allow it. How could it feel like I’ve known this man for my whole life yet there’s nothing I actually know about him.
“I was, before she died five years ago.” Another pinch inside my heart. Five years.
“Oh God, Severin…I’m so sorry.” I want to say more. I want to comfort him but something in his silence makes me pause. And his next words pierce it like a bolt of lightning.
“I’m not.”
This time he doesn’t object when I unwind myself from his embrace and sit up, finding his gaze in the dimmed light streaming from the outside.
“You think I’m a heartless monster for saying that?”
I swallow hard but shake my head. “No, I know you better than to think that. But I do want to understand.”
Severin’s jaw hardens, his gaze trained toward the sleepy Boston outside as if the memories are too heavy for him and I’m about to tell him it’s none of my business and we need to go to sleep when he speaks up.
“Nastya. That was her name. We were married for six years, or so I thought.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we were married on paper, and I was led to believe she loved me…but in reality, she was my father’s pawn, planted to keep an eye on me. And I was a convenient enough cover forherto stay close tohim.”
My mouth drops open. “Wh-what? Why?”
Severin’s gaze comes back to me, but it holds none of the warmth I know. “Because it’s much easier to fuck his daughter-in-law who is always there and lives under the same roof then to go out looking for whores and be caught on camera. After all, image is everything for the Minaev Dynasty. Not that it stopped him from having plenty of those whores on the side anyway. And that’s just the drop in the ocean of filth that is my family. Anyway…” He composes himself. “In the end, their affair is what got her killed.”
“How?” I’m not sure why I keep asking these questions when what I already know is making me sick to my stomach, but Severin’s next words add another pit in there.
“A car accident. She was on her way to see him, and she was in a car accident that took her life. I knew for a while at that point that she was seeing him. Denis told me but not until years and years after it started.”
When all I can do is just blink and stare, Sava lets out a humorless laugh. “Not the story you expected, huh?”
“No,” I admit, and he nods in acknowledgment. A deep hurt is burning a hole through my chest. Hurt for him. For my Severin who had to live through that betrayal. “Did you love her?”
