Page 20 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

A second time.

Despite his calm tone.

“No, he came here,” Vaslav corrected, “knowing you were involved in some way with me and expecting at the same time that I wouldn’t intend to have words with him in the meantime. Foolishness. A stupid thought for a man like him. Or maybe he loves you too much to think about the nuances of a man in my position.”

“Maybe that’s what it is,” she said.

His confusion tightened his shoulders. “I don’t—”

“Your position. The real, and proverbial. I don’t have a clue about any of it.” She waved two dainty hands his way and added, “What I see is what I get with you. You keep expecting me to put the rest of the puzzle together but apparently, I also have to make the pieces.”

“You’ll run,” he said.

Vera’s head shook gently. “What does that even mean?”

“Everything you think you want to know ... once you do, you’re gone. And then I’ll have to chase you, kisska. You won’t give me a choice, and as you like to point out, I’ve already taken quite a few of those away from you. What’s really left? How rose-tinted would you like your life to be from here on out, or should I just drop the pretense altogether?”

“Go to hell,” she muttered weakly.

Vaslav laughed, cold and uncaring when he focused his attention back on the wheel of the side-by-side. “You think I’m not a monster beneath the smile you’re so fond of; you think I won’t hurt you because you crave my touch. You have no idea how wrong you are. Vera, I won’t even say sorry.”

“You don’t know that,” she called over the metal clang of him roughly shifting the side-by-side into gear. “You don’t know what I’ll do; you don’t even know if I love you, and I bet that’s what scares you, too. I thought you didn’t like to be called a coward? So why are you being one?”

His foot slammed hard into the brake before the bike could roll more than a few inches forward, and his head snapped to the side. “Kisska—”

The front door slammed shut.

He didn’t even see her go inside.

You silly woman, he thought.

She didn’t fully comprehend what she had just asked for; her unintended challenge met its mark like an arrow straight through the heart. A love like his would absolutely ruin her.

Vaslav shot one last glance at the front door before he hit the gas. Well, then—game on, Vera.

*

The following chilly, damp night found Vaslav reclining in one of the wicker chairs as the sun started to set beyond the trees. Not with the rest of the set in front of the outdoor fire pit, but rather, further down on the hill where the taller grass swayed at his knees when he stood.

Halfway between the house and the tree line.

Almost nowhere.

It felt like it when he was drunk, anyway.

The tip of his finger toyed with the rim of the mostly empty bottle of vodka where it rested between the legs of the chair. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t stand to sit outside in nothing more than a thick sweater and denim. He might as well take advantage of the good weather. Or rather, what remained of it.

With eighty proof swimming thick in his veins, he could almost be lulled into a comfortable nap with his neck resting on the curved back of the chair, and each of his legs stretched out in cool, tall grass. If it weren’t for the familiar growl of an engine ...

Sighing when he heard tires rolled to a stop on nearby gravel, Vaslav instantly regretted not downing what remained of the almost two liters of vodka when he still had the chance. That time ran out the second his newly appointed nurse, Igor did not think that joke was funny, knew Vaslav had access to the liquor.

“Where did you get the vodka? Did you hide that from me?” Igor demanded, his every word punctuated by a stomped foot through the grass.

Vaslav didn’t dignify Igor’s question with a response, but he did straighten up a little more in the chair. Just in enough time to watch the man yank the bottle up from the ground. Then, he promptly tipped it over and dumped the two or three mouthfuls that remained onto the ground at his feet.

“Waste of good vodka,” Vaslav cursed at his friend. “I should kill you—”

Igor let out a hard exhale, and his stare nailed into a suddenly still Vaslav in the chair. “Do you want the fucking seizures to stop, or not?”