I scrape the sliced veggies off the wooden chopping board and into the bowl she hands me.
Setting the knife down, she hands me a bottle of wine and tells me to pour each of us a glass.
While I’m pouring, she watches me. I can see there is something else she wants to say.
“What is it?” I ask.
“The reason he called me was to speak about you,” she admits.
“Oh,” I answer, my voice sounding strangled.
“He called me to tell me what he’d done.”
“Did you tell him…”
“That you’re here, no, absolutely not. I didn’t even tell him you asked me for help.”
I scrunch my nose, handing her a glass of wine. “What did he say?” I ask nervously.
“He’s broken, Athena. I’m not telling you that for any reason other than because it is the truth. He was open about how badly he messed up, and he is drowning in regrets over it. I hope that gives you some relief, to know he isn’t storming around denying what he did?”
“It does,” I say quietly, picturing him alone in that massive mansion. It causes my heart to ache.
“He spoke about how he thought he was protecting you. He drew distinctions between what he did to me and what he did to you, realizing he was repeating the same mistake. He knows he was wrong. He does want a chance to fix it, but that isn’t for him to decide. It’s for you to decide.”
She keeps talking while she cooks, and we sip wine, and I ask questions.
The way she is describing her brother is cutting into me. He is a strong man. He protects. He defends. But with her words, he sounds vulnerable, shattered, and lost in regret and remorse.
“Do you think he can change?” I ask quietly.
“Oh, to be honest with you, I think he has already changed. Think about this. What happened between him and me in the past spanned over the space of years. It took him years and a very heavy confrontation for him to break down and even consider that he might have been the one in the wrong. With you, he knew it instantly. He knew he’d made the same mistake.He admitted it right away, and he is suffering from guilt over his actions. Yes. I think he has already changed. It doesn’t make what he did right, though. You have every right to be furious with him.”
She tops up my wine. I’ve already had a glass and a half on an empty stomach, but the fuzzy feeling in my head is a welcome relief from the past few days of heartache.
I look up at her through tired eyes, my heart now focused on Adrian, picturing him struggling and alone in the mansion.
When I say the words out loud, they surprise me more than they surprise her.
“I love him,” I blurt out.
My heart somersaults. It’s true.I love him.I’m not falling in love. Iamin love.
And now that I’ve admitted it, I realize that I have been in love with him for a while already.
Anka smiles. She tilts her head to the side and watches me while she thoughtfully twirls her wine in her glass. “I know,” she says with a grin.
“You do?” I ask, furrowing my brows.
“It’s in the eyes. The way you two looked at each other that night we ate a truckload of spaghetti.”
“That was… that was ages ago!” I argue.
“It was, but that’s the thing about love, your body knows before you do. And the eyes never lie.”
She turns to stir the veggies in the pan, and I stare down at my wine. “I can’t bear the thought of hurting him,” I mutter quietly.
She speaks gently.
