“I’m fine,” I say.
Vera purses her lips. “Liar.”
The word is gentle. Maybe even teasing, almost. She reaches out and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You’ve barely left this room in two days,” she says. “You’ve been working yourself to exhaustion. Talk to me, Dimitri.”
I love you.
The words are right there, pressing against my teeth. Three syllables that would change everything.
But I can’t say them. I don’t want to put that burden on her when she still loves my brother and is carrying his baby.
So I say what I can, which is true even if it’s not the whole truth.
“I’m here,” I tell her, squeezing her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her eyes search mine, and I wonder what she sees. If she can read the things I can’t say written all over my face.
“Promise?” she asks quietly.
I nod, my heart in my throat. “Promise.”
She shifts closer, tucking herself against my side with her head on my shoulder. My arm comes around her automatically, holding her like I’ve been doing every night for two days.
God, I never want to stop.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For staying. For taking care of me. For…” She pauses, and I can nearly feel her struggling to figure out what to say. “For caring.”
I love you.The words echo in my head, desperate and impossible.
“Always,” I say instead.
And I hold her while the afternoon light fades to evening, thinking three words over and over.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
But what I tell her is, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s the closest I can come to the truth without speaking it aloud and risking everything we’ve built.
Without betraying my brother one more time.
So I stay silent, holding the woman I love, protecting what’s mine and my brother’s and somehow both and neither all at once.
And I wonder when silence became the same thing as lying.
19
VERA
Freedom tastes like leather-bound books and afternoon sunlight.
I’m back in the library and sitting in the window seat (the first time I’ve been allowed out of my room in five days) with a worn copy ofThe Bronze Horsemanopen in my lap. The story of Tatiana and Alexander has always been one of my favorites, epic and tragic and beautiful. Two people who shouldn’t be together, separated by war and circumstance and impossible choices.
Fitting, really.
I try to focus on the words, on Tatiana’s first glimpse of Alexander in the Summer Garden, but my mind keeps drifting to the man currently holed up in his office downstairs. To the way he held me last night, his face buried in my hair, his comforting weight surrounding me.
