“Vera.” I narrow my eyes at her.
She looks down at her hands, and I notice how she’s picked the skin around her nails. Her cuticles look swollen and bloody. “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep. I keep seeing it—the window exploding, the bullets, all that blood…” She takes a slow breath. “I keep thinking about my father not even checking on me. He didn’t once look to see if I was okay. He just ran.”
The bitterness in her voice makes me uncomfortable, but I stay silent.
She sighs and turns her head so I can see her profile. “I knew he’d sold me off. I knew I was just a bargaining chip to him. But I thought…” Her jaw tightens before she shakes her head, her face falling. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. Yesterday proved what I actually am to him. Nothing.”
This is what I wanted—for her to understand that her family doesn’t care about her, that she’s alone, that she has no one.
But watching her hurt, watching her realize the depths of her father’s betrayal, doesn’t feel like victory. It feels… it feels really fucking sad.
“You’re not nothing,” I hear myself say.
She turns to look at me. “Huh?”
“You’re not nothing,” I repeat. God, what the fuck am Isaying? “Your father’s a coward. That’s on him, not you.”
We stare at each other across the desk. Something shifts in the air between us, some indefinable change I can’t quite name. It’s not forgiveness. God, it’s not evencloseto that. But maybe it’s the beginning of something. Understanding? Truce?
Alliance?
“Thank you,” she says softly, tucking some hair behind her ear. “For yesterday. For saving me. I don’t think I said that before.”
I can feel my ears burning. God, this is so fucking embarrassing. “You don’t need to thank me,” I say gruffly. I don’t like the way this conversation is going.
“Yes, I do.” She stands, smoothing down the skirt of her dress. “It’s probably the only decent thing you’ve done for me since we got married. I should acknowledge it since it probably won’t ever happen again.”
Goddamn, she knows how to cut a man down. Her words should make me angry, but instead, they make me feel something uncomfortably close to shame.
“Vera—”
“I should go,” she interrupts. “Let you get back to work. Unless you need anything else?”
Yes, she should leave and end this conversation before it gets any more complicated than it already is. But I find myself saying, “No more hostile dinners.”
She blinks. “Come again?”
“The dinners. The ones where I…” I stop, not sure how to finish that sentence. Where I verbally abused her? Where I used every weapon in my arsenal to make her miserable? “They’re done. No more.”
She looks confused but also, a little hopeful. “Why?”
“Because they’re not helping anyone.” Because watching her flinch at my words every night is making me feel like a monster. Because somewhere between yesterday and today, I realized I don’t want to be her tormentor anymore. “We’ll still eat together,” I clarify. “But civilly. Like two people who are trying to solve a problem together instead of enemies.”
She stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “I don’t understand you.”
“Join the club,” I mutter.
Vera shakes her head. “First you’re cruel. Then you save my life. Then you accuse me of trying to kill us both. Then you ask for my help. Now you’re being…” She searches for the word. “Almost nice? I can’t keep up with what version of you I’m supposed to be dealing with.”
“Yeah, well.” I lean back in my chair, suddenly exhausted. “I can’t keep up either. So we’re even.”
The corner of her mouth twitches into almost a smile. “This is very confusing.”
“Welcome to my world,” I say dryly.
This time, she does smile. It’s small, tentative, like she’s not sure she's allowed. But it’s a real smile and it transforms her face by softening the worry lines and bringing light to her eyes.
Beautiful. She has such a beautiful smile.
