“You’renotfine.” Her voice sharpens and she glares at me. “You’re killing yourself. I know you haven’t slept in days. You haven’t eaten, yes I know that. Mrs. Kozlov says you’re not even touching the food she brings you. This isn’thealthy, Dimitri.”
“I said I’mfine.” I turn back to the files, a silent dismissal. “Now go to bed. You need rest. For the baby.”
She laughs harshly. “Don’t use the baby as an excuse to avoid this conversation. You’re avoiding me”
My jaw clenches, irritated she’s caught on. “I’m not avoiding?—”
“Yes, you are.” She moves closer to my desk, and I can see the anger building in her eyes. “You’ve been avoiding me for three days. Ever since that night in the library when we talked about Alexei. When things got—” She stops and swallows, suddenly looking unsure. “Complicated.”
I stay silent. Admitting that things got complicated would mean acknowledging why I’m avoiding her and it means confronting feelings I’m not ready to face.
“This is literally insane,” she continues, gesturing at the chaos around us. “You can’t keep doing this. You’re working yourself to death.”
“Why do you care?” I ask harshly, not wanting to hear of all the ways I’m fucking up.
Her eyes flash. “Because someone has to! You’re going to collapse, and then where does that leave us? Who protects us then?”
Us.That loaded word again.
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “There is no ‘us,’ Vera. You’re here because of a treaty. Because your family?—”
“I’m not responsible for what they did,” she cuts me off, her voice rising, her cheeks turning pink with irritation. “I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t plant those bombs. And I’m tired of you punishing me for it. I’m sick of you treating me like—like I’m the enemy when I’m?—”
“When you’rewhat?” I push back from my desk, standing. “When you’re my wife? My responsibility? Another person I have to protect while someone out there is actively trying to kill us both?”
“When I’m trying to help you!” She snaps as she steps closer, closing the distance between us. “When I’m worried about you. When I care about—” She stops, like the words are stuck in her throat.
“Care about what?” I demand, suddenly in her space without meaning to be. “Say it. Care aboutwhat?”
Her breath hitches. We’re so close that I can see the gold flecks in her brown eyes and smell her shampoo, vanilla and flowers. We’re close enough that if I just?—
“You,” she whispers. “I care aboutyou. And I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t—I can’t watch you destroy yourself like this.”
My whole body is humming at her admission. The right thing to do is to pull back before this becomes something neither of us can take back.
But she’s looking at me with those beautiful brown eyes, and she just admitted she cares about me, and I’m so tired of fighting this and pretending I don’t feel it too.
“You can’t keep shutting me out,” she says, quieter now. “I’m not going anywhere. Like it or not, we’re in this together. So you can either let me help you, or you can keep pushing me away until?—”
“It’s safer.” I cut her off roughly. “If I keep distance between us. It’s safer for both of us.”
“Why?” She takes another step closer. “Why is it safer?”
Because if I let you in, I won’t be able to let you go. Because every time I’m near you, I lose a little more control. Because I’m falling for you, and if I admit that, everything changes.
But I can’t say any of that so I just shake my head. “It just is.”
She scowls. “That’s not an answer.”
I shrug. “It’s the only answer you’re getting.”
Her eyes narrow. “You’re impossible, you know that? Stubborn and impossible and?—”
I don’t know who moves first. Maybe we both do. Maybe the distance between us has been shrinking this whole time, gravity pulling us together despite every logical reason we should stay apart.
But suddenly there’s no space left and her hand is fisted in my shirt and my hand is in her hair and our mouths are crashing together with a desperation that steals the breath from my lungs.
This isn’t like the almost-kiss in her bedroom. This isn’t tentative or questioning. This is need and frustration and three days of avoidance exploding into something we can’t control.
