AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was so proud when I handed her those keys. You’re doing a good thing, I told myself. Put a feather in your fucking cap, you Good Samaritan you.
Idiot. Goddamn idiot.
“I didn’t mean to offend you?—”
“Didn’t you, though?” she interrupts venomously. “No, of course not. You meant to offend me right before then, when you said I was no better than your mistress. That’s all I am to you, right? A cheap whore to be used and discarded at the pleasure of a powerful asshole with more money than decency!”
She makes a lot of good points. So I say two words I don’t know that I’ve ever said before.
“I’m sorry.”
Her jaw drops. “E-excuse me?”
I take a step towards her, but she just backs up against the elevator’s padded back wall. “I’m sorry about what I said to you earlier. I regret it.” I make sure to meet her eyes. “Deeply.”
Her eyes scrunch up. “What’s the catch?”
“There’s no catch. I’m apologizing for being an asshole. You told me things about your past in confidence and I weaponized them. It was wrong.” She holds my gaze tremulously like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Giving you your own apartment was meant to be a gesture of goodwill. You wanted some independence, space of your own—and I was trying to give you what you wanted.”
She blinks, her eyes sliding away from mine. “You think any of this is what I wanted?” Her voice is raspy, quiet, and shaky with emotion.
“I’m trying here, Wren.”
She snorts derisively. “Well, clearly, you’re not used to trying at all. With anyone! Do you even realize how hot and cold you blow? I can’t keep up! One day, you’re making me breakfast, watching me undress, and telling me how beautiful I am. The next day, you’re looking at me as though I’m some sort of calamity that happened to you. A bag of burning dog shit that got dropped on your doorstep. How am I supposed to keep up?”
“I know it’s not fair?—”
She holds up a hand to stop me. “Spare me the lecture. I’m intimately acquainted with how unfair life can be, Dmitri. I lost my father to a whole other family. Then Rose and I lost our mother’s mind to grief before we lost the rest of her to cancer. I used to think that every person had a quota of pain they had to endure. And after we buried Mom, I thought, Surely, surely now we’ve reached our quota—but no. Life wasn’t even close to being done with me. It gave me you instead.”
Ironically, as Wren speaks, it’s Bee’s words that start to sink in. Wren is not Elena. They’re not the same person.
I’ve made the mistake of treating Wren the way I would have dealt with Elena. The difference is, Elena didn’t have much of a life before she met me.
If I was ever cruel, I would apologize the next day by buying her something. She would accept my apology with a smile and a kiss. And that was it. There would be no conversation, no tears, no dramatics. I used to think it was one of the most wonderful things about our relationship.
But suddenly, I’m seeing it in a different light. Was it surgery or was it simply a Band-Aid over a bullet wound?
“You’re right.”
She exhales sharply. “Is this you humoring me again?”
“I get that I haven’t done much to earn your trust—but you’re going to have to believe that I’m sincere when I say that I’m willing to listen.”
She swallows, still wary, with good reason. “Listening is one part of it; sharing is another. I can’t trust a person I don’t know.”
I nod. “How about we work on that tomorrow?”
She glances towards the stagnant elevator. “Does that mean you’ll let me get out of this damn box?”
I clear my throat. More words I don’t often say pour from my lips. “I’m going to give you the choice. I would like you to come back home with me. But if you want to stay here with Bee, I won’t stop you.”
She chews on her bottom lip thoughtfully. It feels like there’s an eternity between my question and her answer. Then…
“I’m sure Bee will appreciate having the bed to herself. Or she’ll find someone cute to take my place, maybe.”
Suppressing a smile, I restart the elevator and change course. We start moving down instead of up. The whole time, she watches me carefully, her eyebrows pinched towards the center of her forehead.
When the elevator doors sweep open, she doesn’t get out immediately. Instead, she turns to me. “I’m gonna hold you to that conversation, Dmitri.”
