Page 54 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

Vera softened a little, but that might have been from the tense stare she found looking back when her gaze met his. His pain almost always looked like anger in his face, usually because he was mad about it; why the fuck did this have to be his life more often than it wasn’t? Why did he wake up and go to sleep day after day feeling the exact same way? Death would be a better option, and that pissed him off, too. It shouldn’t have to be one hell or another.

Except it wasn’t like that with Vera. He still hadn’t quite figured out how to stare at her and feel anger. Too many other things wrestling inside of him got in the war, too, and muddled him up in the worst way. She was that little slice of heaven amongst the rest of his agonizingly endless state of pained numbness.

Even when he didn’t want her to talk.

“Well, you never promised to be a good conversationalist,” Vera told him, but he was already digging the pads of his forefinger and thumb into his eye sockets to relieve the sudden pressure forming there.

“No, that I did not,” he agreed in a croak.

There was no hiding the pain, then, or how swiftly it changed from one thing to another. The sharpness of the pressure was like a punch to the gut. With a wrecking ball. If a head could somehow explode from the inside out, then his was.

If it happened when he was on his feet or when he was asleep, it almost always chased him to the bathroom as his stomach revolted. Since he’d been feeling it coming on for a while, the lead up kept him from falling asleep in bed earlier because he knew what would follow if he did, Vaslav handled it better than he might have otherwise.

Another gusty breath rushed past his barely clenched teeth, and he still hadn’t taken his fingers out of his eyes though he knew it wasn’t a great option for pain relief. The pitter-patter of Vera’s fingers racing along the shell of his ear and around to the back of his neck had Vaslav leaning into the soft touch. She was a blanket of warmth around him with his head in her lap. It took seconds of her light scratching and rubbing to get him to pull his hand away from his face.

“I’m glad you stayed another night,” he murmured when he could breathe without feeling like he might puke. “That you stay at all.”

“Me, too.”

Her touch was like her voice when she whispered practically airless, barely there, but real all the same. It was just what he needed. Silent minutes ticked by, but he couldn’t say how many. Vaslav had become so accustomed to losing time to his agony that he just expected it now. Something else for him to get frustrated over.

Vera didn’t say a thing, continuing her soft exploration of his head and face with gentle, slow sweeps of her fingers. Vaslav broke the stillness first, muttering, “What was the oil for?”

Her quiet laugh rocked him a bit in her lap, and Vaslav opened his eyes, despite the blinding pain that accompanied the action, to find Vera smiling above him. She shrugged down as her fingers swept soft lines over his cheekbones.

It was easier to breathe when she did that.

“When you first started into your mood earlier—”

“Right, when the migraine started.”

Vera gave him a look. “But you don’t say that until everyone else figures it out.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

Her nose crinkled. “Stop deflecting ... earlier you mentioned your face was itching. That the scar tissue does that sometimes when the beard comes in, but Mira couldn’t find you more of the oil you liked. Coconut oil will do the same thing. You work it into an oil between your fingers, rub it on, and that’s that. Something to try until she finds the kind you like?”

He’d only been muttering to himself, and apparently, she even listened to him do that. What kind of soul fell into his lap when she walked through his front door?

“Does it smell?”

“Not a lot,” she returned. “But it definitely doesn’t smell entirely like what you might think, either.”

At this point, what did he have to lose?

“Try it. I’m not going anywhere, am I?”

Her chuff wasn’t at all quiet, but he watched her with one eye closed as she reached over to grab the jar sitting beside her plate of forgotten snacks. The constant pain in his head was easy to get lost in, but all it took was the warm, oily hands of Vera Avdonin to keep him from drowning entirely in the waves. Closing his eyes once more, Vaslav settled into her lap and touch. If she wanted to be there, who was he to tell her to go to bed?

“And I didn’t wake Mira up,” Vera told him quietly.

“I didn’t really mean anything—”

“She was checking on Kiril.”

“Mmm.”

Shocker.