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I nodded, breathing hard. I was worked up and running on adrenaline. "I want you to feel what you do to me. I want you to know what it feels like when I see you with Katja, when you called her and me both malysh, when you wear that fucking ring on your finger. Every time you've lied to me. I hate that you know my truth. I want you to feel it all and more."
"Just tell me why."
"Because I wanted to. Because I felt like it. Because I didn’t want you to be the last thing my body felt. I wanted—no, I needed—Hayden to make me forget, and guess what, Kova? For a time, it fucking worked.”
"But I have never intentionally hurt you, Adrianna. You did that to purposely hurt me. How can I hurt you like that when I love you so much?"
"Love?" I repeated, my jaw bobbing in horror.
Anger spewed through my veins. My eyes flicked back and forth between his. We both were breathing so hard the tension was stifling between us.
"You don't love me. You don't know what love is. You're incapable of love. What is wrong with you to say that to me? Why are you playing with my emotions like this?"
"Do not tell me I do not love you. I did not know love until I fucking met you! I love you! Everything I do is out of love for you."
My eyes bubbled with tears again. "Shut up! I'm so sick of all the lies. You don't marry one women, vow your love to her, then tell me you love me too!"
"Not once have I ever told Katja that I love her."
He was trying to give me a heart attack. "You're lying again!
"I told her before we were married, but never since."
"You always lie! You married her because you love her."
"She knows about us, Adrianna! I had to fucking marry her," he gritted out angrily. "I had no fucking choice in the matter. She was going to the police, and your father. She knows everything. She has our notebook, and even hired an investigator that your bitch of a mother suggested," he said, and I gasped in shock. "Backed up against a wall with no option, I did what I had to. I was not going to let her ruin you. She had been pushing for marriage because her visa was up. She knew I did not want to marry her, and that she would be going back to Russia. We just happened to be the fuel she needed to light her flame. I have been trying to figure out a way to divorce her, but I have nothing to hold over her head yet, so I was counting my days and giving you the space you needed."
He was trembling, breathing so heavily.
"But now I am done giving you space."
Twenty-Five
"What?" I asked breathlessly.
My mind raced through all the different scenarios. This was too much for me to process and just unreal.
"How? What?" I didn't even recognize my own voice. "So you were never going to marry her? And my… Joy…? Our notebook?"
"Do it," he demanded, pushing me. Kova's hand slid over the serrated edge of the knife and my heart rate kicked up to an abnormally excited level. "Cut me. If you want me to feel what you have been feeling, then cut me, but I promise you, malysh, a cut would never compare to the wound you just caused inside of me. You think you are the only one who is fucked up inside? Who is empty inside? You are wrong. Now you know what I have been going through. So put that knife to me and release me from the agony I deal with on a daily basis. Release both of us."
And I did. I didn't hesitate. Grinding my back teeth, I pressed the knife against his skin and sank it into his palm. I drew in a lungful of air. Kova's eyes widened for a moment in shock—he probably didn't expect me to actually do it, but I was so distraught over everything. The marriage. Joy. Sophia. Avery. The lupus and kidney disease. The lies and secrets. I didn't hold back.
Little by little all these life moments were annihilating who I was as a person that I couldn't take it anymore. It was too much, too intense for anyone. The worst was this feeling, this warped sense of love I had for Kova that made no sense. He was no good for me, we weren’t any good for each other, but it didn’t stop me from wanting him. I wanted to burn him to the ground, but I wanted him to take me with him. I wanted to hurt him with a passion I'd never felt before, but I wanted to hurt with him. He would let me, because maybe in the back of his convoluted mind, he really did love me, and I knew that. We both were guilty of having an unhealthy obsession of love for one another, but love was love, right?
Slowly, I pushed harder, drawing the knife down into his skin. Our eyes locked onto each other's, my tears finally drying.
Kova didn't flinch. He took the pain I gave him. To my shock, he wrapped his fingers around the steel and fisted it. He helped me cut him, pushing the blade into his palm. Warmth trickled over my hand, but I didn't stop. His lips parted and his eyes widened, and a euphoric rush of endorphins I wasn't expecting hit me. A little sigh rolled off my lips as a trail of dark red blood slid down his wrist and arm…when a thought hit me.
"Take your shirt off."
It wasn't a request, and he knew that. Reaching behind his head, Kova bunched the shirt and pulled it off with one hand, then dropped it to the floor. Warm blood seeped down the knife into my hand, into my palm, wetting the hold I had on the handle. A few drops hit my thigh.
A strange sensation took over that evoked feelings I'd never felt. Kova stepped between my legs again, igniting a darker edge of me. I welcomed it. My eyes lingered on the left side of his chest. I tried to block out the thoughts I had. Licking my lips, I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip and bit down. His tawny skin, too beautiful to mark yet I wanted to. Chest rising in falling, I didn't know where this urge came from to scar him, but it was compelling me to over his heart. To scar him the way he did me.
Tipping my head back with the tip of his finger, he looked deep into my eyes. "Every day when I look at myself in the mirror, this will be a reminder of the pain I caused you."
Chills danced down my arms. Kova was giving me the green light.
