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“Not all women are as ferocious as you.”
“I’m not ferocious. You make me sound like a wild animal.” She tugged at her gloves, then unbuttoned her coat.
“Fierce, then?”
“If by that you mean I’m not some sniveling, weak little girl, then yes.” She shrugged out of her coat and held it close to her chest, causing the silk of her yellow gown to bunch at the collar.
“I didn’t think you were weak even when you were a little girl,” I said, laughing.
“You don’t think? You were there. Remember all the times I almost beat you on the ice?” She glared at me.
“I didn’t know we were racing.” That was a fib. I’d known she’d thought we were racing. I’d been merely basking in the glow of the girl I would have swum across the ocean for. Her insistence that we tear across the ice in a mad dash had been one of the ways I could be around her. What I hadn’t known was that she thought of me as her nemesis.
I’d been hurt and a little insulted to learn that she’d seen me that way. Until Flynn explained to me that his sister had chosen me as her object of competition for a reason. “There’s only one reason a girl is that keen on winning a race against you,” he’d said when I was about fifteen. I’d stared at him, not at all sure what he meant. “She has feelings for you. Ones that she doesn’t understand, and being Cymbeline, she has to turn them into a race as a way to distract herself from them.”
“You knew we were racing,” Cymbeline said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have beaten me every time.”
“I was trying to impress you.” That was the absolute truth. Instead, I’d only made her angry.
“It didn’t work.”
“I know.” I chuckled, shaking my head. “But letting you win wouldn’t have, either. What would, really?”
She scowled. “What does it matter now? Aren’t you practically engaged to Emma?”
“Is that what you really want to know?” I asked.
She closed her eyes as if her head hurt. “Yes, I suppose I do. Are you serious about her?”
There it was. At last. I chose my words carefully. “I don’t think it’s serious, no. She’s a friend.”
All the bluster seemed to leave her body. “I see.”
“Why is it that you care?” I asked.
“Who says I do?” She jutted out her chin just as she’d done when I’d beaten her on the ice.
“I say it. I do. And I can’t figure out why you can’t simply give in and let yourself like me just a little.”
“I like you.”
“But?”
She shook her coat at me, as if it were a body. “I don’t know, all right? I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Her voice quivered. “But there’s something more for me, Viktor. I want more.”
“Something that belongs only to you? An accomplishment of some kind. One that gets recognition.”
“Yes.” She brought her coat back to her chest. “I hate myself for it, but that’s the truth. I like you, and I don’t know how that fits in with the rest of me.”
She needed something of her own. This was as plain as the freckles on the end of her upturned nose. Beyond what most women seemed to want. A quest. A calling. I’d hoped to be her quest and calling, but I had a distinct feeling that until she had quieted her agitation by conquering whatever it was, she would not be able to give in and love me.
“If you found what you were looking for, would it change anything?” I asked. “In regard to me and you, that is.”
“I don’t know, but I think so.”
“Until then, I shall continue to hope that whatever it is you want, you shall find it. And when you’re done, I hope to still be here.”
“But you may not be. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? You might be with Emma, fat and happily married.”
I laughed. “I hope I won’t be fat.”
“You might be. Driving around in your fancy car with your pretty wife. Meanwhile, I’ll still be waiting for an adventure that’ll never come simply because I’m a girl, and I’ll have to see you drive by in that car with her yellow hair glinting in the sunshine and two beautiful babies in the back seat.”
The forlornness in her voice caused a shiver to creep up my spine. And just then I understood for the first time how tortured she must feel. To want two lives and unable to choose either one for fear of missing the right one.
Could I help her find what she was looking for? Was it possible there was something out there that would soothe her tortured soul? I felt fairly certain it wasn’t me and only me. This was a woman who wanted to live life as big and bold as she was herself.
“If I could give it to you, I would,” I said. “I want you to know that.”
“Oh, Viktor. Why do you have to be so wonderful?”
I stepped backward, surprised. She thought I was wonderful? A lot of good it did me, I thought. “Let’s go inside before you really do catch your death.”
This time, she gave me a weary nod and allowed me to open the door. I couldn’t help but notice the defeat in the slump of her shoulders. No, no. She mustn’t give up.
I shut the door behind me. “Cym?”
She turned toward me.
“Don’t let this world—the way it is—stop you. Keep searching until you find it, and then do whatever you need to.”
“I’ll do my best.”
But I knew that every day, she died a little more inside. Someday she would be nothing but dust for all that wanting. If only I could do something about it.
