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She looks down at me then, and there’s something almost weary in her eyes. Not irritated. Just the tiredness of a mother realizing she won’t get out of this conversation, no matter how gently she tries to postpone it.

“You insist too much,” she murmurs.

“I learned from the best.”

That earns the smallest curve at the corner of her mouth.

Then it fades.

She draws in a quiet breath. “I have known for a while that you had… a thing for Tristan.”

Heat pricks immediately at the back of my neck.

I stare at the ceiling. “A thing?”

She gives me a look. “Would you prefer obsession?”

I shrug. “I think so.”

She lets out a sigh.

“I wasn’t certain at first,” she continues. “Not truly. I only knew your attention to him was never casual.” Her gaze drifts for a moment, thoughtful. “But Tristan was always so attached to Jake. So consumed by that marriage and everything surrounding it. I told myself I might be imagining things. Perhaps you were simply admiring someone older. Someone difficult.”

I let out a faint breath through my nose. “That’s generous.”

“No,” she says. “It was hopeful.”

That lands harder than I expect.

I turn my face a little more towards her. “So when did you stop hoping you were wrong?”

Her expression softens.

“When I went into your studio.”

Every muscle in my body goes still.

I blink at her.

“You what?”

“Maksim—”

“No,” I push myself up a little more against the pillow. “Mom that is my private space. You know that. Nobody goes in there.”

She doesn’t flinch.

If anything, her face softens further, which only irritates me more because now I feel like the unreasonable one, and I hate that.

“I know,” she says gently. “And I am sorry.”

I look away from her, jaw tightening.

“No, you don’t get to just say sorry like that and move on. You know what that room means to me.”

“I do know.”

“Do you?” I glance back at her. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t have gone in.”