“And?” His voice carries across the room, steady but quieter now, like he already knows where this is going.
“Well, like… not really normal things?”
“Normal things,” he murmurs, “like how a groom may get something blue for his bride?—”
“You have sapphires in my choker,” I interrupt, tripping over the words.
“Or like something old,” he continues, unhurried.
“Your mother’s earrings are being restored,” he says, cutting me off gently. “They should be here in an hour?—”
“Oh, um, that’s amazing, but like?—”
“Everything else you’re wearing is new, but Nadia has the garter,” he says, his tone unbothered.
“Aleksandr!” I snap, my eyes fixed on the ruby-red carpet between us because looking at his back is already doing enough damage. “You picked the perfect color palette for my wedding, and the perfect dress, and the right location. You know thingsabout me like you have been watching me our entire lives, which doesn’t make sense?—”
“Lily—”
“You told me to run! You told me no, and you are obviously like in love with me.” My voice rises with every word as I cross the room in quick, uneven steps, clutching the skirts of the dress in my fists so I don’t trip. My pulse is so loud it’s dizzying, and I can’t stop moving because if I stay still, I’ll explode.
“That’s putting it lightly?—”
“How did you know about my mother’s earrings, or the wedding she planned that I wanted to be for me?” I stop behind him, close enough that the heat radiating off his back seeps through the suit jacket. My fists clench, knuckles aching.
“You told us about it. Lily, can I?—”
“No!” I groan, smacking the heel of my hand against my forehead and spinning away from him. The silk hem of my dress whispers against the carpet as I pace in a tight circle. “When, Aleksandr? When did I bring it up?”
“After your father died. Nadia and I found you looking at her binders and you told us.”
“Nadia didn’t remember?—”
“Nadia has shit memory. I am going to?—”
“Don’t you dare turn around! It’s bad luck!”
“Can you not yell at me when my back is turned?” His voice sharpens slightly, but I can see, even with his back to me, the way his shoulders bunch and flex beneath the suit. His handsgrip the edge of the desk so tightly his knuckles pale, muscles tense all the way up his forearms.
“No, because you’re going to do that thing!”
“What thing!”
“The thing with your eyes, and you get close, and you touch me and then I can’t think, and I need to think right now,” I blurt, spinning around again and resuming my pacing. My hands twist together in front of me, untwist, then press flat against the bodice of my dress because I can’t stop moving. Every time I pass behind him my gaze drags over the perfect line of his shoulders, the way his jacket pulls tight across his back, and the hard set of his arms as he braces himself like he’s holding back everything.
“Tell me the truth,” I say finally, my voice dropping as I slow my steps, planting myself just a few feet behind him. “Tell me why you have been watching me so closely after telling me not to be with you. Tell me how this isn’t insane.”
“I can’t tell you this isn’t insane.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you what I feel about you isn’t completely fucking consuming,” he says, his voice steady, but lower now, like a breath he has been painfully holding in for years. I see his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, then flex as if the words themselves tighten every muscle in his body. “I can’t tell you that this isn’t obsession, Lily, because it is. It always has been.”
As he speaks, he slowly straightens, pushing away from the desk. His hands uncurl from the wood, the veins in his forearmsstanding out as he flexes his fingers like it takes everything in him not to reach for me, not to turn around and look at me like I know he wants to.
“From the second I learned what the word love meant, it’s been you. You think I just love you? No. I need you. I don’t breathe right without you. I don’t function without you. My entire life has been moving toward this moment.”
He pushes back from the desk and stands tall. His hands flex at his sides, once, twice, before curling into fists like he’s fighting himself.
