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“I called you when I thought—That was before I realized I will never be good enough for you.”
“Says who?” I practically shout.
Yuliana is still asleep in the backseat, but at this rate, she won’t be for much longer.
“Says you!” Rayne shrieks. “You’ve made it clear that I’m the mother of your child and nothing more.”
Is that what last night was? Me worshiping Rayne’s body as the mother of my child? Christ, she’s so fucking stubborn that she can’t see the forest for the trees.
“The only reason you have stuck around at all is for Yuliana,” she continues. “That’s fine. Great, even. I’m glad you want to know her—she’s amazing and not at all demon-like. But don’t act like you get a say in my life because of her. And don’t act like you get to show up and make us feel less than. We’ve been just fine without you.”
“No one is saying anyone else is ‘less than.’”
She huffs out a humorless laugh. “Are you kidding? You just sat here and told me my house isn’t good enough and Yuliana’s school isn’t good enough.”
“Because she deserves more.”
Rayne deserves more, too. Even if she is the most frustrating human I’ve ever met.
Her face is screwed up in a dozen different emotions. “You want to change us. You’re hoping to swoop in like Richard Gere and fancy us up, make us presentable to your friends and the people in your life. This is real life, not a movie.”
“I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. About me or you.”
“You will.” Rayne nods, certain her insanity makes perfect sense. “This lust haze will fade and I’ll end up your dirty little secret. But I won’t do it. I refuse.”
“What do you want to be, then?”
She frowns. “What?”
“You just said you don’t want to be a mistress. So what do you want to be to me?”
I see the truth at the deep blue bottom of her eyes. The secret hope she clung to every time she passed by my empty house. I can see the wish buried so deep she doesn’t think it’s possible, the future she is certain can never be hers.
In so many ways, I can push Rayne towards the right decisions. I can make sure she’s in a safe house and that she doesn’t go home with some stranger from a bar.
But I can’t force her to realize her own potential.
She has to find that on her own.
She blinks and the window to her soul shutters closed. Her mouth bends down at the corners, firmly set. “I want to be your maid.”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” I remind her. “Yuliana is proof that that arrangement doesn’t work.”
She shakes her head. “That was the past. Things are different now. They have to be. This isn’t just about me and you. It’s about her.”
Yuliana is a major part of all of this. I know that. I can understand that.
However, I also know that in so many ways, this has nothing to do with Yuliana at all. Yuliana’s existence doesn’t change the way I feel about Rayne. It doesn’t change the physical shift in the air when Rayne and I are together.
That has always existed.
“Butthis,” I say, gesturing from her to me and back again, “isn’t about Yuliana at all.Thiswas happening way before she came along.”
“This,” Rayne says, mimicking my gesture, “existed alongside your engagement to Viktoria. Five years ago and currently.”
“I’m not engaged to Viktoria.”
“But you were!” Rayne drags a hand down her jaw. Normally, I want to be the one to touch her face like that. Currently, I want to grab her face and shake some goddamn sense into her. “You left me behind, Kirill. You left this city and moved across the county. Even though you knew I was still here, I’m not the person you went back to. You went back to Viktoria.”
