And now, he finally looks at her.
As she meets his gaze—hard, and exhausted, the sharpness of gentle things, kindness once, closed to her—she thinks, again:It won’t get better. It will just change.
It is changing, already: between them.
His glance slips down to her throat. The marks on her skin are probably not yet bruising but were placed there with enough force that the shape of his hand is likely already visible.
The splinter of something he quickly shutters in his eyes—but it’s clear.
Regret.
For having touched her, or for having hurt her?
Lili brushes her hair over her shoulder, hiding the marks. She curls forward around her drawn-in knees, waiting for him to speak.
“What do you want?” he asks, finally. “Why did you come here, really?”
Why did you leave?
“To apologize,” she says.
He laughs, without any humor. The sound startles her. “For what? For running away because you wanted to fuck someone else, rather than ending things like an adult, first?”
Lili frowns. “What? No, that’s not—I didn’t end things because I wanted to sleep with someone else, Jesus, that’s... no,no—” She breaks off, dragging her hands down her face. The mess, the sheer mess she has made. “I didn’t realize,” she starts again. “What it all was—what it meant. How deep in we were, I didn’t realize it until the gala, and you—you—sorry,fuck—” Wiping her face, she tries to get rid of her fresh tears. Selfish, it feels so selfish to cry in front of him.
But Aleksandr frowns, crease between his brows. “What about the gala?”
“Afterwards,” she whispers. “When we were waiting for the car... I was teasing you about your ex, Nathalie, and you’d said—you said, when I asked why it ended, that it wasn’t fair to her. That you hadn’t let her into your life—your home, your days, your thoughts—that you didn’t see yourself marrying her, and I—I got so scared. Of what that meant, for how you had let me in. For how we’d both started letting each other in—I... I was so scared.”
His jaw tightens. “And that made you go fuck somebody else? You ran because I implied that I could see myself marrying you? That’s how much you didn’t want it?”
“No, I want that,” Lili admits, hugging her knees closer. “I want that so badly.”
The tense anger in his face shifts suddenly, taken off guard. “What?” he asks, cautious. “What do you mean?”
“I want you so badly it makes me feel sick,” she whispers, hoarse throat. “The not-having you, I mean—I feel sick with it. And in the car, after the gala, when I was holding your hand, you were talking to Michael and Andrew, and I was looking at your hand, without a wedding ring, and I—Iwantedthat, and I wasn’t prepared for it—the idea of you and me, making a life together, how we’d already started? I wasn’t watching out for that, or intending for it to happen, and it was just—too much. It was too much to lose.”
“And that was a problem, to you?” Urgent, insistent, his gaze is severe and hurt. “Christ, why didn’t you fucking talk to me? Why did you—why thefuck—” He breaks off, dropping his head into his hands.
Lili can barely breathe. “Ask me,” she whispers, eyelashes cluttering together with tears. “If that’s what you want, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you anything.”
He exhales, heavy. “Why did you do it?” he asks. “Why did you leave, instead of saying any of this?”
“Before you did.”
He glances at her, a hard frown of confusion. “What?”
“I thought it was easier to hurt myself first. Before you did.”
A cold huff, the shape of laughter. “Have you considered that you hurt me, too?”
“Yes—but I didn’t think it would matter enough to you. In the long run, I mean.”
“Excuse me?” Sharp words, angry gaze.
“I tend not to think that I matter,” she whispers.
“Fuck, Lili.” He leans back against the bench, with exhausted exasperation. “I showed you how much you mattered to me, didn’t I?”
