Maybe my wife was teaching me give and take. Like even if I wanted to fuck her on that bed, I knew she needed to sleep because despite the refreshing shower, she could barely keep her eyes open from exhaustion, and I sensed her oncoming crankiness. She was teaching me empathy, and I didn’t mind.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Lucy
“Stop!”
It took me a few seconds to clear the cobwebs from my dead sleep and realize we were in the cabin and Kirill was in a nightmare. He was thrashing beside me, but I was facing away from him, facing the window. He slept on the side closest to the door. I wasn’t sure whether I should wake him. If it was a PTSD episode, I had to be careful.
“Let him go,” Kirill shouted. “Roman!”
The anguish in my husband’s voice was more than I could bear. It sent a blizzard of goose bumps up my arms and spine and scalp. I’d never heard such emotion coming from him uttered in a single word. His dead brother’s name. I cautiously shifted around to face him.
But he was already awake. His chest was rising and falling rapidly as if he were catching his breath. He was facing me, eyes intensely focused on my face. Deep pain etched in glassy blue, before they hardened into ice and lost all emotion.
“Go back to sleep,” he said gruffly.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Go back to sleep,” he repeated. He rolled off the bed and left the room, quietly closing the door.
He expected me to go to sleep after that? My stomach grumbled, and I checked the time on my phone. It was a little after two p.m. and I debated what to do. Knowing Kirill, he needed to regroup, but wasn’t it time he told me about what happened to his older brother? If we had any chance of making this marriage work, I needed to know the tragedy that shaped the man he was now. What caused the rift between him and his father?
But did you need to know though?a taunting voice said inside my head.You’re going to divorce him, anyway.
My heart contracted painfully. This whiplash of events led to a whiplash of emotions in the last week. We had trouble navigating a truce and especially last night, and with my pesky eavesdropping, I jumped to conclusions that almost had fatal consequences. And yet, other than Kirill punishing me, which if I were honest with myself wasn’t punishment at all, it was an insight into his dominance when it came to sex. He didn’t seem bothered that his wife had shot him. In fact, he almost seemed to relish holding the incident over my head, with him acting as the aggrieved party.
Manipulative asshole.
But he was my asshole.
Still, I had to be careful not to confuse lust and love.
Shit. Love?
Urgh. I'd better get up and see what my husband was up to. Act like the concerned wife. Except this was not acting anymore. There was no one here to keep up pretenses for. I had no ulterior motive. I was genuinely concerned for my husband.
Double shit.
I left the bedroom and went to the bathroom to freshen up. There were fewer shadows under my eyes, but they still bore the remnants from a stressful night. I winced at the mess we left behind. I was a clutterbug, but personal hygiene was something else. I hung up the wet towels and used the spare plastic bag to gather up the trash.
When I exited the bathroom, the cabin appeared empty. It had an open interior. The kitchen opened up to a living room and a hearth. A square table was in front of the kitchen island.
I shuffled to the front of the house and found him standing on the stoop. He had a glass in his hand, and he was smoking. The vodka bottle on the counter indicated his drink of choice.
Well, I should get food on the table at least. I was afraid to use the cast-iron pan because I knew how finicky those were. Luckily, I found a nonstick one. Making the tomato and Parmesan soup was easier. I didn’t need to go the gourmet route since I didn’t have cream, and all I had to do was fancy up a canned tomato soup instead of starting from scratch.
Luckily, there was an enormous block of Parmesan cheese and other fancy cheeses. No fancy bread. American white bread, sharp white cheddar, and butter.
When next I looked up, it was to see snow flurries. When did that happen? Didn’t we just have a sunny morning?
The front door opened, and Kirill stepped in. A grin softened the stoic lines on his face. “Smells good in here.”
“Butter and burnt cheese,” I muttered. “Don’t expect anything gourmet.”
Kirill chuckled. “I’m not.”
