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“That’s part of the rulebook, too, huh?” she asks softly. “I guess it’s convenient that I’m already pregnant then. There’s one expectation out of the way.”
“I would have managed without an heir,” I say. “I have my nephew to leave the Bratva to.”
“So you would have been fine never having children?” she asks.
“Children are one thing; mothers are another. That was a complication I wanted to avoid.”
“Until you got stuck with me.”
I’m not sure how she expects me to respond to that. Her eyes are searching, waiting for something that she’s not going to get. I can feel myself disappointing her as the silence closes over us. I warned her I couldn’t go down this road. I warned her not to try.
She bites her lip. “Did you ever think that if you threw out your rulebook, you might just be happier?”
“I don’t want to be happy,” I tell her bluntly. “I don’t trust happiness. What I want to be is on top.”
“It can be lonely at the top.”
I meet the sadness in her eyes with the steel in mine. “Perhaps. But at least it will be quiet.”
41
PAIGE
“No one wants to be alone,” I say firmly.
I know that better than anyone. Before Clara entered my life and the world bloomed into Technicolor, I felt lonely. But that loneliness of the before time was nothing compared to the bottomless well of isolation I experienced after she was gone.
“Wrong,” Misha says. “I do.”
I squint at him. “You know what I think?”
“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”
“I think it’s not that you want to be alone; you just don’t want to be hurt,” I say. “I think that it’s just a front you’re putting up to protect yourself. I’m no shrink, but—”
“You don’t say?” he drawls.
I ignore him. “ButI know a thing or two about lost and lonely people. I’ve been surrounded by enough of them. I’ve been one.”
Maybe I still am.
“And that’s what you think I am?” His voice is laconic, sarcastic, full of thorns designed to keep me away. But I won’t be dissuaded. “Lost and lonely?”
I look past him to the bed I’ve slept in every night alone. “That’s exactly what I think you are.”
“Then I’m sorry to tell you, but your hard-won wisdom is bullshit. I’m not lost or lonely.” He walks over to the bed and removes his shirt. “I’m just tired.”
“Are you sleeping here tonight?” I ask.
He looks down at the bed and back at me. It’s easy to see the mindlessness of what he’s doing. Just pacing the same steps he’s always walked—at least, until I came along.
But things have changed now.
For both of us.
“Oh, I get it,” I say before he can answer, nodding at him with over-the-top faux sympathy. “You’re nervous to spend a night with me. You’re worried I’ll cross all the boundaries you’ve created and make you want something beyond the clinical, business-only arrangement we’ve struck.”
His gaze turns cold. Flecks of ice sparkling in the lamp light. I’ve hit a nerve, it seems.
