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“Elia.”
Aleksey’s voice was muffled, but I could still hear the weariness in his voice. He’d accused me of awful things, of hiding things from him. As if I was cooperating with my father and doing his bidding. Did he think that Iwantedthis marriage?
I had been honest with Aleksey about how I was nothing more than an unwilling participant forced into this, the same as him. How could he really think that I was hidinganythingfrom him?
“Elia, I’m sorry.”
I paused. Did I hear that correctly? Did Aleksey just apologize to me? I didn’t think he was capable of that at all. I doubted that he’d ever apologized to anyone before. My heart softened, not enough to open the door, but just enough for me to be more willing to listen. There was hurt in his eyes when I threw the pin and my accusations at him. Maybe…just maybe…he hated this fighting as much as I did.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” he continued, sounding as if he was right against the door. “I jumped to conclusions. Please, just open the door and let’s talk about this.”
I stood, wrapping my arms around my waist, and eyed the door. Could I? Could I trust that we would be able to talk—and just talk? Not scream and accuse each other of awful things?
Aleksey wasn’t stupid, nor was he someone who was careless. If he hadn’t given back the pin, the last place he would have kept it would be in a random desk drawer.
Either I had to accept that he might be telling the truth, or I could continue to believe that he was lying to me.
But no matter the end result, none of it would change the fact that I was still married to him or that I was carrying his child.
Blowing out a breath, I crossed the room and opened the door, finding Aleksey on the other side, his arm braced against the doorway.
“You don’t have a weapon in your hand,” he said. “I take it that you don’t want to kill me?”
“Not yet,” I muttered, and sat down on the far corner of the bed.
Aleksey entered the room cautiously, as if I was about to spring a trap on him. “Thank you for opening the door.”
“You said you wanted to talk.” I grabbed a pillow so I had something to hold onto. “Fine. Let’s talk.”
He crossed the room and sat on the opposite corner of the bed, his hands dangling between his legs. “I lost my temper earlier, and it was uncalled for. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted. But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“The pin,” I told him gently. “I found it here. My father said that he never received it.”
Aleksey closed his eyes and a soft scoff escaped his lips. “Of course he would say that. I may have no proof of the day, but I swear to you that I placed it in his hands personally. He threatened to kill me when I left and warned me to never set foot on his property again. But in that moment, he looked defeated, slumped in that chair. It was the first time that I saw him for what he was: a father who had lost his son.”
The way he described my father matched up with how I had seen him before I left. Tired, old, and defeated. And the threat that Aleksey had heard…
Itdidsound like something my father would say.
Ignoring the tug on my gut, I rubbed my hands together. I was tired. “I don’t know what to do here, Aleksey.”
“Neither do I,” he said after a moment. “I don’t like this between us. I don’t like the secrets.”
Secrets? What secrets could I hide from him? He knew everything about me. He saw everything I had to offer. We had so much more going on right now, and the last thing we needed to do was fight.
“I have no more secrets from you, Aleksey; you know that.”
He looked at me, and something shimmered in his eyes. Suspicion? Contrition? Whatever it was, it disappeared so quickly that it might never have existed at all.
“Are you the Bogatyr?”
I scrunched my face in confusion.Boga-what?“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Aleksey didn’t answer me and looked away, staring at the wall as if it held the answers to the universe. After a while, he turned his gaze back.
