“I love you.Ot vsei dushi,” she whispers.With all my soul.Her hand clutches at my shirt. “I have since… forever.”
I slot my fingers through hers above my heart. “We are kindred spirits.”
“How did you know?”
“I need you to understand that when we met, I knew you were a child. I wasn’t sexually attracted to you. I never?—”
“Maxim, I know. Maybe it’s weird and maybe we won’t tell our daughter how Mommy and Daddy met, but Iknow. If anyone does, it’s me. Only chaperones in the 1800s insisted on as much propriety as you did.”
“I was protecting you!”
“You protected me for so long that I turned eighteen and then nineteen and then twenty…” Her brow arches as I feel myself blush. “Now, we agree. You’re not a pedo like our president. We’ve established that so… carry on.”
“When I made a deal with Camille to marry you, she didn’t take into account the hours I’d spent taxiing you around the city.
“I knew that your father ignored you. I knew that he was distant and cruel and likely to punish you if you got caught with a hair out of place.I knew that you hated choir practice and that he’d make you read the Bible for hours if you displeased him…
“But you never let it get you down. Ever. It made you determined. This little brat, the pampered princess, reared in the same house as Inessa, who was spoiled by comparison… you were so different. You were a kid. A job. But I overheard your conversations with friends?—”
“Some friends! They all dropped me when he died!”
That she proteststhenhas me snorting. “Can I continue?”
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.
“I saw the fight in you. It was the same fight that I had in me. It’s what made it so easy to roll over with this Veronian bullshit. I wanted more. I recognized that in you then, and now you’re living up to that promise.
“I stand here now because of the kid who dreamed of more for himself. Who refused to die on the streets. Who vowed for another, better life. How could I stop you from having that? From ever letting you be in a position of weakness again?”
“We get each other,” she rasps, then, simultaneously, we invoke:
“Ne lezhit dusha.?*”
We stand there, reveling in this connection. A connection that few outside of the Russian diaspora can begin to comprehend. The soul transcends all and lies down only tooneperson.
“As much as I used to long for a time when we would be equals, a part of me dreaded it. I wanted you to be my wife more than I wanted to beshukhersome days.
“I fought my conscience when I received reports of you dating, or of how many friends you had that were boys…
“You deserved the chance to grow up. To be free. And I didn’t want to take that from you, but I still dreaded it. I knew that if you asked me to cut contact, that if you told me you loved someone else and that you wanted to marry them, I’d let you go.” At her gasp, I snag her hand, turn it, and press a kiss to her palm. “I loved you enough to let you go, Victoria.”
“I didn’t want you to let me go, Maxim. I never want that. Please, don’t let go of me. Ever.” Her eyes remain glued to mine. “Please.”
“You’re my business, Victoria.”
The hope in her expression shatters, replaced with a coyness that has me hiding a smirk. “About time you realized it.”
She takes a step back, dislodging herself from my hold.With those all-knowing eyes of hers still fixed on mine, she reaches for the hem of my sweater and, in a flurry of movement, throws it overhead.
I get a look at her bare tits and my boxer briefs on her before she cackles and takes off running up the stairs.
Hiding a grin, I shuck off the irritations of the day, rumble her name, and make chase…
I have a wife to claim.
* Footnote: My soul doesn’t lie down
FORTY-EIGHT
