Page 28 of Beautiful Ruin

The distance between us feels colder than usual. Like he is punishing me for having the gall to ask about what happened during whatever meeting Nikolai had with my uncle. In a strange way, it isn’t exactly new. It always seems like he’s punishing me for noticing things and wanting answers. The more I refuse to sit quietly in the dark while my life is rearranged behind closed doors, the more irritated he grows.

The portraits along the walls blur past us, the stern Kuznetsov faces watching from their gilded frames.

“Did Nikolai threaten him?” I demand.

Rowan keeps walking.

“Did he accuse him of something? Is that why he came here?”

Nothing.

“Was it about the attack?”

That gets a reaction.

He stops abruptly and spins around on his heel so fast that I nearly slam into his chest. My heart beats harder when he towers over me, using his massive size to practically herd me back until I hit the wall and flatten myself against it. For one second, there is nothing but the small sliver of space between us that narrows even more when he leans in to glare at me.

Rowan doesn’t need proximity to intimidate. He can do it from across a room with only that awful, beautiful face carved into displeasure. Yet for some reason, he stands close enough to me now that I can smell the faint traces of his aftershave.

“You need to learn when to stop asking so many questions.”

I lift my chin, refusing to back down now. “I wouldn’t have to if I ever got any straight answers around here.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“That’s because no one will tell me,” I snap back.

A maid appears at the far end of the corridor and stops short when she spots us. She takes one look at us and immediately disappears through the nearest doorway. Rowan’s gaze flicks briefly in that direction before returning to me. “This is not the place or the time for any of that.”

A bitter smile pulls at my mouth. “Is there a place in this house where people actually tell the truth? Where is it? I’d love directions so I can go there.”

“Sofia.”

My name in his mouth sends a shiver rolling down my spine.

I hate that even as furious as I am, enough to slap that expression right off his face, I still feel heat coiling low in my gut. It spreads slowly, traitorous and molten under my skin, curling beneath the sharp edges of my anger until I can’t tell where one sensation ends and the other begins.

Somehow, my body mistakes this tension for something else. Something I absolutely refuse to examine under the bright, unforgiving light of reality.

This should repel me. Hell, it does repel me, how irritating this dance between us has become. He is infuriating to deal with most days and impossible on others. It would be so much easier if Rowan were simply cruel for the sake of enjoying denying me. If there was satisfaction in his eyes every time he told me no or cut a conversation short or steered me away from doors I’m not supposed to open. I could harden myself against that and turn this anger into something more useful.

But there never is.

His harshness feels more like a reflex than gratification for turning it on me and seeing me flinch from it. It’s in these moments that I hate that small voice inside my head that believes he’s doing this and acting this way in order to protect me. Not only because my uncle ordered him to but because some part of him genuinely thinks the truth might do more harm than good.

Rowan owes me nothing outside of whatever his orders from Ivan are forcing him to do, that much is obvious. He did not ask for me to be placed under his guard. If anything, he has made it painfully clear that he would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else than being stuck following me like a reluctant shadow. Probably like hunting down the people responsible for my uncle’s attack.

I know I am an assignment, a burden he can’t escape until the order is given. And yet every time he looks at me, I feel something between us… change. It is subtle, but I’m starting to understand despite his best efforts to keep me at arm’s length that there is more beneath the surface of that blanket irritation.

Maybe I’m foolish enough to mistake duty for care. Instead of finding rationality in that and pushing him away, it only makes the ache inside me feel more complicated. I don’t know what to do with a man who frustrates me this badly and still makes me feel, in some inexplicable way, like I’m safest when he’s in the room.

The contradiction is unbearable.

He is the dog guarding my cage, snapping anytime I try to reach my hand outside the bars. He is one of the biggest culprits denying me the truth while also being one of the only people in this house who might understand exactly how dangerous that truth might be once the veil is lifted.

My hands remain clenched at my sides as I continue to stare up at him. If I don’t keep them there, I fear I might do something reckless. Like hit him or reach for him.

Both impulses feel equally catastrophic.