“Yes. I didn’t ask for another one.” I exhaled slowly. I didn’t want to argue with this man anymore. “Now I’m the one who hasto explain my way out of whatever you just told her. You make me look like the problem every time. I just want to leave. Why are you making it this difficult?”
“You can leave.” He said. “Leave, Inna. It won’t change anything because we’ll leave together.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You’re not comfortable in this house?” His gaze moved briefly around the room. “Let’s go somewhere you’re comfortable then. Is it your old apartment? I can make that call.” He pulled out his phone and started tapping the screen before I could even respond.
He was actually calling someone.
“Get us the apartment my wife used to stay in,” he said into the phone. “Actually, get the entire building. Immediately.” He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the couch. “Happy?”
I stared at him, struggling to follow whatever was happening.
“What are you doing?” I asked because I was confused.
“What you want.” His voice shifted, and I knew he was angry. I had heard it once before, at the party, when he got angry about the hug I gave Roman. He rarely showed this side of himself. “Because it looks like you forgot you’re the one who came into my life first, rearranged everything, and made me think about nothing else. I adjusted my life, my business, my sanity, without even realizing it was happening.” He paused. “Do you think I didn’t want this to end? I did. But I couldn’t, because I always looked forward to coming home to my wife. I started finding calm in your stubbornness.” He let out a breath that sounded almost like a scoff. “Now you want to leave? Then leave. But you’ll have to take me with you.”
I swallowed around the lump forming in my throat. “You don’t understand.” My voice barely came out. “You don’t understand because you’re not standing where I am. It’s easy for you to say these things because when you decide to walk away, it’ll comeeasy to you. You act as if I matter, but eventually you’ll leave. That’s what people do. That’s what my mother did.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“That’s exactly the point.” The tears fell. “If my mother could leave, then who are you not to? You’re a man who took a desperate girl off the street. You have no real reason to stay.”
“I do,” he said. I shook my head and wiped at my tears. My head was already throbbing behind my eyes. “How would I live without my heart?”
I stared at him, and he was serious. There was no amusement in his face, no sarcasm, no attempt to corner me into agreeing with him. He looked completely open, as if he were standing there with nothing left to hide.
“You stole not only my money but also my heart. And you expect me to let you leave?” He moved closer until I could feel the warmth coming off him. “You expect me to stay away from you?”
“Dmitri.”
“I have every intention of going wherever my heart is.” His voice dropped lower. “I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth just to stay where my heart is,” he murmured. “Just to breathe.”
A sob rose in my throat, and I forced it down before it could break loose. He reached out and lifted my chin, making me look at him when I tried to turn away. His eyes held mine for a long moment before dropping briefly to my lips and returning to my face.
“We can move to the apartment tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll help you pack.”
He held my gaze for another second, as if waiting for something unspoken to surface, then stepped back and headed toward the bathroom. I stood there wanting to say something, wanting to call him back so we could finish this properly. I could tell him all the reasons this still felt like stepping into somethingI didn’t know how to survive. But the bathroom door closed, and a few seconds later the shower came on.
My hand moved to my mouth as if I could hold everything in place. I cried while I crossed to my side of the bed and lowered myself onto it, my body going weak as if it had finally stopped pretending to hold itself together.
Why did he say that? Why did it sound like every word came from somewhere he didn’t let anyone near? Why did he look at me like I was the answer to a question he had stopped pretending he wasn’t asking?
Would he really never leave?
The shower ran on the other side of the wall, and I sat on the bed crying until my chest hurt. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother, who left without looking back. I wondered why leaving was easier for her, but when I tried to do the same thing, it felt like tearing myself apart from the inside.
I shifted and lay under the duvet, staring at nothing while Dmitri’s words replayed in my head. Was that a confession dressed up as something safer? Because if I had stolen his heart, then that meant he loved me. Somewhere between the fake marriage and reality, Dmitri fell in love with me. Did he even know what love was, or was he just naming it without fully understanding it?
I bit my lower lip and pressed my face into the pillow.
Yes. I fell in love with him too, but loving someone who would eventually leave was the kind of pain I have been trying to avoid my entire life. Leaving first felt like protection. It was choosing the exit before he chose it first.
The shower stopped, and I buried myself deeper into the bed. Dmitri moved around the room for a few more minutes before he dimmed the lights the way he always did and came to his side of the bed. I was already facing the wall, my eyes dry now, but I kept still, pretending to be asleep the way I had been for days, asif stillness could pass for peace.
He stayed on his side, and I stayed on mine.
I thought about my father. It was Dmitri who brought him back to me. That alone should have meant something, but it wasn’t just that. He found my mother too, and I met her again after years of silence that hollowed me out in ways I never fully admitted. He was also the reason I saw Roman again, someone who was once close to me, to my family, to the version of my life that still made sense. This man brought every person I lost. I was fighting someone who kept rebuilding my life with his own hands while I convinced myself I should run from him.
