Nah. She’ll have to deal with those demons on her own and come to me when she’s ready to talk about them. I can’t help her with whatever internal battle is waging inside her until she’s ready to approach the topic herself.
Jaw grinding, I think back to my own demons. They hang out with the skeletons in my closet that date back to my childhood. Bones that I dug up for the sake of relatability. And Winter may as well have slapped me in the face with them.
As I approach the top floor of the building where Mikhail’s office spans almost a third of the floor plan, anxiety sinks into my gut. I wish I didn’t feel this way whenever he’s involved, but I’ve always had to be cautious around him.
“Come in,” he calls out after I knock on the partially open door.
I take a deep breath, roll my shoulders, and enter the space that’s far too white and warm to fit the brooding, calculated man sitting behind the desk.
“Hi, si—”
“Sit,” he cuts me off, not looking up from the papers he’s scanning. Some of them are highlighted. Some of them are redacted. There’s ink written in the margins. I don’t bother asking what he’s doing, because he won’t tell me. It’s likely a new deal, because he never seems to know when enough is enough. Frankly, ignorance is bliss when it comes to the Russian businessman.
I claim the same seat I did last time, which is far enough away from the desk not to feel overtaken by his personal bubble or the smoky scent of tobacco from the cigars he loves. “Sir, what is this meeting about? If it’s regarding the gala, everything is set. I made sure Dawson has a suit, and Clarkson is going as well. Everyone will be on their best behavior.”
Usually, I know exactly why he wants to speak to me because it’s typically not good. But the only press I’ve been getting lately is the positive kind, and the mixed reviews that surrounded me have cast me in a better light more often than not. I’m captured with my team and not with women. I keep to myself, living under the radar. There isn’t anything for him to complain about. Andhe’s not the type to praise me for my good behavior, which leaves me at a loss for what this entails.
“I don’t care about the gala,” he informs me.
You’d think he would, since he’s a donor to the Historical Association hosting it. When Hoffman spoke to him and Janel about doing a meet-and-greet to gain extra money for the Association and put positive attention on the Fireflies, he seemed to appreciate the idea. I’d told Hoffman to keep my name out of it because he would have shot it down if he knew it was mine.
“My daughter,” he begins slowly, still writing down something with his ballpoint pen that has his name engraved in gold lettering, “is hiding something from me. And I don’t appreciate it.”
There are a lot of things he could have said, but I wasn’t anticipating that. “What makes you think that?” I ask curiously.
When his head lifts, there’s no amusement on it. In fact, he doesn’t offer me any emotion. His face is completely unreadable; save the unimpressed glint to his dark eyes that’s a permanent fixture whenever I’m around. Emaly has the same color eyes as her father, but hers are always full of light that makes the brown far less threatening. “How dumb do you think I am?”
His thick accent makes the question sound like a warning, as if I need to be very careful with my answer.
“Is that a trick question?” I reply, tilting my head as I try to relax in my seat. If he sees how tense I am, he’ll know how uncomfortable this is for me. Then he’ll use it against me, which I have no intention of allowing him to do.
His nostrils flare as he slowly puts his pen down onto the papers scattered across his desk, which means this conversation is about to get messy. “We both know that my daughter’s priorities have always been unbalanced.”
That’s his opinion, not mine. “I think her priorities are hers to focus on alone without any of us stepping in.”
Mikhail, to nobody’s surprise, does not agree with the sentiment. “When she put herself through college, I didn’t stop her because it was clear she’d never make it as an athlete the way Sasha can.”
It takes everything in me not to point out why that is, which never seems to matter to him. She’s always been sick. For years, nobody could figure out what was wrong with her. When the professionals told her and her parents that it was “simply fibromyalgia,” her father accused her of trying to fake her illnesses so that she didn’t have to skate. But I saw her—the pain she suffered through. The dizzy spells. How pale she’d get when she tried pushing herself for her parents’ approval. She was prone to migraines that would wipe her out for hours. There was more to it than some cop-out diagnosis the doctors slapped on her file and sent her away with.
I was the only one who saw it.
Not her father.
Not her mother.
Me.
Ever since the day I moved in next door to her family, I’d seen Emaly for who she is. Kind, considerate, and passionate. There isn’t one day that goes by that she hasn’t tried her hardest at something. She wasted years of her life trying to earn her father’s approval, only to finally accept that she never would. Before fully acknowledging that her body couldn’t handle the physical strain that her brother could.
Mikhail either doesn’t see the resentment on my face or doesn’t give a shit. “And when she informed us that you two had gotten married behind our backs with no prenup, no ring, and no plan, clearly, there was nothing I could do. Trust me, I tried.”
It takes everything in me not to snicker.
Emaly had shown me the texts, voicemails, and emails from her parents after news broke that we’d gone to a courthouse with nothing but a photographer, two friends, and a judge. Neither of our families were there, and they’d found out when the rest of the world did via social media. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when we decided to do the engagement photos hanging in my home. Mikhail and Valeria questioned where the proof was of our relationship, because they didn’t believe the marriage certificate was enough.
Anybody with eyes could see that Emaly and I loved each other. But only those close enough could see what kind of love it is.
Inevitably, that’s why nobody gets close.
