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I snort. “You love that his absolute witch of a fiancée almost just walked in on me half-naked with my tongue down his throat?”
“Well, I don’t love adultery, specifically. But the motivations behind the accidental adultery? Yes, I love those,” she says.
It feels like Harmony just pinned a scarlet letter to my chest.Adultery. Cheating. Whore.I cringe harder.
“I cheated with a man in a relationship,” I whisper. Saying it out loud gives the statement nauseating weight. It makes it real. “I’m the mistress and Viktoria is the scorned woman. God. Maybe I’m more like my mom than I thought.”
Being compared to my mom has always been a good thing. She was fun and vibrant and independent. In recent years, I’ve also learned she torpedoed her family by having an extramarital affair.
I never thought I’d do something like that.
“He didn’t tell you he was engaged. You didn’tdoanything. The guilt and shame is firmly on him.”
“I’m not sure he’s capable of either of those emotions,” I snort. “I should have known that. I should have asked him immediately. I just…”
“You thought maybe he was waiting for you, too,” she says softly.
I sniffle miserably. “I sound pathetic. Why did I expect that from him? He never made any promises to me. He left without a goodbye. The last five years have been radio silence. Why did I think he might still care about me?”
“Because you’re a good person and you see the best in people, Ray. That’s not a crime.”
“Maybe not, but it is naive.” I blow out a breath, trying to lighten the weight on my shoulders. It just leaves me feeling hollow. “I can’t afford to be that blind anymore. I have Yuliana to think about.”
“What does that mean?”
I consider the question. For the last five years, I haven’t thought more than a couple months ahead at the most. Life has been about getting through one week, one day, one minute at a time. I can think about the present without dropping into a heart-stopping panic.
But the future? I’ve avoided that like the plague.
I can’t avoid it anymore. There is no white knight on a noble steed to come save me. My future doesn’t involve stumbling into a sudden fortune and watching all of my problems disappear.
Even Natalia has been preparing me for a day where she might not be as available to help me out quite so much. The time has come for me to think seriously about how to take care of Yuliana and myself… on my own.
“It means I need to start facing my problems head on and finding solutions. No more ducking my head and muddying through. It’s time to face reality.”
“What is reality?” Harmony asks.
“The reality is… I’m the only person who is going to save me.”
Kirill Zaitsev is no longer an option.
24
RAYNE
“We’re struggling right now.”
Mrs. Wilkens, the gray-haired, full-figured principal at Yuliana’s school, keeps saying things like “weare struggling” and “ourissues are becoming a distraction.” What she means is Yuliana.
Yulianais struggling.
Yulianais becoming a distraction.
No one called me today, but the moment I walked through the door, Ms. Holliday was waiting behind the desk with Yuliana. There were tear tracks on my daughter’s face. Clearly, things didn’t go any better than they did the first day with the substitute teacher.
“When will Ms. Albrecht be back?” I ask, glancing through the window to where Yuliana is sitting in the hallway. She’s holding my phone, tapping away on a game. Ms. Holliday casts nervous glances over at her like she might explode at any second.
Mrs. Wilkens sighs. “It was supposed to be two weeks, but she filed for temporary disability. It could be ninety days.”
