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She swallows and nods, allowing whatever this is to continue. Both of us caught in the tangle of something we don’t fully understand.
I pull the shorts over her long legs, already itching to take them off again. But no. We shouldn’t.
And maybe that’s what this is. As I’m dressing her, I’m layering on my own armor. I’m taking back my self-control and giving this story a natural end.
As I settle Cora into the mattress and pull the blankets under her pointed chin, I tell myself this is over.
I can’t afford to lose control.
I can’t afford to be distracted.
I can’t afford to have anything that means too much to me. Anything someone else can take away.
She smiles up at me, those bruises glowing like jewelry around her wrists and throat. “I waited for you.”
“You were in the shower.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I mean earlier. After our—After dinner.”
Date. She was going to say “date.” Is that what it was?
I want to know how the night would have ended if the champagne hadn’t shown up. In some ways, it feels like all roads will always lead back to this. Like we can’t help ourselves.
“I was worried about you,” she adds.
I remember the way she grabbed my hand as I put her in the backseat of the car.Be careful.
No one aside from Anya and Yasha has ever said that to me. No one has ever cared. Then she sat up at home waiting for me…
She’s looking at me like she’s still waiting. For what, I don’t know. But I know it’s something I can’t give her.
I adjust the blankets, then rise and turn away, walking towards the shared door between our rooms.
If Cora is waiting for me, she better get used to it.
She’ll be waiting forever.
47
IVAN
“It’s good, right?” Anya is bouncing from foot to foot in front of my desk, eyebrows wagging in impatience. “Isn’t it good?”
I scowl up at her. “Shut up and let me read. Then I can tell you what I think.”
But she’s right. The interview Cora and I did two days ago is good. Great, actually.
Which begs the question:How the fuck did that disaster of an interview turn into this?
“You two sound so in love!” Anya snatches the paper away, her eyes seconds away from turning into cartoonish hearts. She points to a paragraph. “This part. I love this part. Listen.‘Ivan and Cora admit their relationship is a bit of a whirlwind, but it doesn’t feel that way from the inside. ‘My whole life has been a series of experiences and disappointments that have made me ready for someone like Ivan,’ Cora said. ‘Someone dependable and loyal. I know that he’ll always take care of me.’”
She sure as hell never said that. Not when I was around, anyway.
Anya tosses the newspaper at me and throws herself down into a leather chair, practically vibrating with glee. “Oh my God, Iknewsending the two of you out on that date would work.”
“So much for that being ‘strategy.’”
She snorts. “You know me too well to think I was serious about that. I wanted the two of you to get loosened up and then—” She winks suggestively.
