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‘It must have been hard to let it go.’
And let it go she finally had, yet it hurt so much to have done so.
He heard her sniff and tears came again and he felt the drops of her tears on his skin. He let her cry awhile before speaking on.
‘So now you fly solo,’ Daniil said.
‘I don’t want to, though.’
‘No choice sometimes.’
She liked it that he didn’t fob her off, that he didn’t tell her, as others repeatedly had, that as one door closed...when the simple fact was that she’d loved being on that side of the door. Neither did he tell her how the greatest opportunities were often born from the darkest times... Being a part of a dance company had been a lifelong dream and it was an opportunity that was now gone.
She carried on with his back and then there was silence, a lovely silence that Daniil usually only achieved when he was here on his own. And it was better than being alone because he really wasn’t thinking about where he was. Instead, he was thinking of where he’d come from, which was a place in his mind he rarely visited from the vantage point of calm.
He’d never wanted to leave the orphanage. It had almost killed him to be prised from his friends and his twin and thrust into a world that he hadn’t wanted to inhabit, and then she spoke again.
‘I wanted to work with what I had,’ she said.
In that moment he understood her and she understood him; in that moment they were both pushed reluctantly through the same portal of change and he remembered his resistance. Daniil recalled with clarity how he had wanted to be back with his brother and friends and a world he had been told he should be happy to have left. He thought of Sergio and how they’d raced from school to the makeshift gym. Of Katya and strong, sweet tea and a kitchen that had been big and always warm. Of nights spent talking into the darkness and how the four of them would speak with certainty about the world they were going to change.
Instead, he’d had to learn to somehow coexist with a family he could never be a part of, a headmaster who had done all he could to quash rebellion and a cousin who had goaded and bullied him.
He, too, had had to make his way in a place he would have preferred not to be.
Libby knew there was nothing he could say that might make this better and was certain that he could never understand but then, as he spoke, she realised he did.
‘Being resourceful sucks.’ His response was sleepy but it hit the mark and Libby smiled unseen.
‘It truly does.’
She worked his neck till it was pliant and then ran her hands down a very loose spine and then, tired now, bent and gave his shoulder a kiss and moved off him to lie down, liking the feel of his arm over her chest as he pulled her a little bit closer.
Neither moved all night.
In fact, Libby woke up exactly as she’d fallen asleep, on her back with his arm across her chest, and she turned to steal a look at him.
He was starting to wake up and he needed a razor and she’d never woken to such male beauty before.
Regret?
God, no.
Her whole body felt...well, it felt as if she’d been in for a tune-up.
He woke to her stretch and smile.
‘Bad girl,’ he said.
‘I know.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever must you think of me?’
‘Only good things.’
He adored that she was unashamed of her body and the pleasure that they’d had last night.
And Libby adored it that he did not mention her big revelation about her career or her possibly rather red eyes.
He reached for his phone and raised an eyebrow in surprise when he saw that it was after eight. Usually he would be at work by now.
‘I’m late,’ he said.
‘Well, it’s very lucky that you’re the boss, then.’
‘True.’ He turned and looked at her. ‘Are you late?’
‘No. I’m meeting one agent at ten to be shown through.’
‘Near here?’
‘No, that’s not till one.’
‘You should have booked them the other way round.’
‘Ah, but I didn’t know I was going to be sleeping in your bed!’ She gave him a smile. ‘Goldilocks.’
‘I don’t know that one so well.’
‘Well, I guess you’d have grown up on Russian ones.’
Daniil nodded and he thought for a moment of Sev reading to them, or Katya, the cook, who, when they had been little, would sometimes tell them a tale.
Nice memories, Daniil thought.
‘I did,’ he said, ‘though where I come from the wolf is the good guy.’
