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“So I was an outlier. An anomaly. You hadn’t cheated before—”
“Of course not!” Grisha sounds aghast, which makes me hate him more, if what Levin told me about all of the other girls is true. “Lidiya, I always meant to be a faithful husband to my wife. I have never been a man who cheats. But you—you made me feel alive again. Just a few moments of conversation with you, and I felt like I could breathe—”
“And you swept me off my feet.” I stare dully down at my salad. I’m supposed to be begging Grisha to takemeback, but it’s the other way around. And I know I’m supposed to make him feel as if I want it, too, but this is far harder than I’d expected it to be. I want to throw my wine in his face and tell him to go fuck himself.
“Lidiya, I’m just asking for another chance. We were so good together. Surely you saw that too. I hadn’t said that I loved you yet—we hadn’t said the words, I didn’t want to rush you, but it’s true. I did, I do—”
I hold up a hand again, reaching for my wine to buy time. I don’t want to hear him say that he loves me, not right now. I’m not sure if I can bear it. “So what?” I say sharply, when I’ve swallowed the sip of wine. “Do you get a divorce? Keep seeing me behind your wife’s back? What future do we have, Grisha?”
I know I’m protesting too much for what I’m supposed to be doing here. But surely it would seem suspicious, too, if I gave in too quickly.
“I—” Grisha hesitates. “I can’t divorce her yet, Lidiya. The children—and she’s angry. She could ruin me.”
Ruin me.Before Levin, before what I know, I would have thought he just meant taking half his money, forcing him to pay for an expensive lawyer, keeping him from his children. But now those two words mean something else. They mean she might know something about his other dealings. Something that could be useful to Levin, to me. Something that could hurt Grisha, if he hurt her.
I hate that I know this. I hate that these are things I now think. I hate that my brain, that has never had a machination like that in my life before, now has come to that kind of conclusion. It feels like a path towards being paranoid, towards never trusting anyone fully again, towards looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
“Grisha—”
“Please, Lidiya. She just needs time.”
“Time for what?”
His hand is on mine again, stroking, squeezing. Our appetizers are still sitting in front of us. His soup has stopped steaming. I haven’t touched my salad. I can feel his touch trying to pull me back in, to make me forget why I’m here, what I know.
“Time to understand that we’re not good together any longer. She’ll see it in time, I know it. She’ll understand that divorce is best for both of us, even now when the children are younger. And then I’ll be free.”
“And until then?”
He looks at me almost pleadingly. “I know what you’re thinking, Lidiya. You’re thinking we shouldn’t be together until then, that we should stay apart until I’m free, that you don’t want to be the woman on the side. And I understand that, but—”
No, I’m thinking that you’re a liar. That I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, that every word out of your mouth hurts me more, makes me hate you more. I’m thinking that I can’t believe I ever fell for any of this.
Forcing the next words out of my mouth is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
“This really hurt me, Grisha. I wish you’d been honest with me from the beginning. But these past days—I’ve missed you too. It’s been so lonely without you—”
Actually, it hasn’t, because of the Russian assassin I’m rooming with. The one who’s making me do this.
His face lights up with hope. “Lidiya, are you saying—”
“Do you promise me you’ll divorce her, if we’re together?” The words burn on my tongue. I hate pretending to be the kind of fool who would fall for lies like these, who would even consider going back to a man who’s married, who would believe he ever loved her.
“Of course,dorogoy.Lidiya, my love—”
“How can I be sure?” I pull my hand back, feeling a sudden cold sweep over me, as if every cell in my body is rejecting what I’m doing. “Grisha, what if things change? Or she can’t be convinced? I don’t want to wait years—”
“She will. I’ll make sure of it,” he insists. “She can’t want to be with a man who is unhappy, who doesn’t love her, once she sees that there is no change—”
“I can’t do this. I need air.” I feel as if I’m suffocating suddenly, as if the room that formerly felt so warm and pleasant is now far too hot. “I need to go outside—”
“Lidiya, it’s freezing.” Grisha protests, and in this of course he’s right, but I’m already getting up, pushing past the other tables towards the door. My heart is pounding in my chest, making me feel dizzy, and when I step outside the cold almost feels like a relief.
“Lidiya.”
I jump at Grisha’s voice behind me—he must have followed me out. I turn to see him, pink-cheeked in the cold, reaching for me. “Let’s go back to my apartment, Lidiya. We can have a drink, talk there. Just give me a chance to convince you that this can work, Lidiya, please—”
You have to do this.I want more than anything to run, to get as far away from him as I can, but I don’t have that choice. I have to go with him.
