Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“Life isn’t fair, Solnyshko,” he answers. “You know this better than anyone.”
The room goes silent as we face off. My husband and I. This man that I’m only beginning to know. And yet, he reads me like no other. Perhaps it works both ways. Perhaps the damaged like us have a way of spotting that same wound in another.
And right now, I want to poke at his. To avoid the topic at hand.
“I don’t even know who my father was,” I volunteer. “None of us did. They were all different, but the same. Absent.”
“I’m not going to discuss this with you,” he answers tersely. “No matter what you volunteer. You forget these are things I already know about you.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I tell him. “But there’s a difference between me telling you, and you reading it from a file.”
“It makes no difference to me.”
His words burn me, but I don’t show it. I never show anyone they have the power to hurt me anymore.
“Why do you accept it so easily?” he asks, stalking closer to me. “Why do you not put up a fight when a man you don’t even know tells you that you will be married? And you will live here in this house, with a stranger. And yet, you cannot even bring yourself to speak with the one person who knows you best?”
“Because she doesn’t know me best,” I answer quietly. “She doesn’t know me at all.”
I try to turn away, but he grabs my wrist and halts me.
“Why?”
I blink up at him, and I have the sudden urge to hate him again. He is such a hypocrite. Demanding these things of me. These answers. When he will not give me the same in return.
“How could she?” I ask him. “How can anyone, if they have not walked the same path? How can someone understand what it is like for you not to hear when they themselves have only ever had perfectly functioning ears?”
He doesn’t answer. So I answer myself.
“They can’t. They can’t understand these things, and yet, they feel like they have the right to judge you for them. To ask you to change who you are. To fix what cannot be fixed.”
I’ve given too much away, I realize, when I meet his gaze again… and find complete understanding staring back at me.
Alexei takes my hands in his and brushes his fingers over my palms. He can see now why I’m here. Why I didn’t put up a fight. Because he accepted me as I am, from the moment he took me in. He never asked me to change. To pretend that I am normal. Or that I’m okay. Until now.
“You don’t need to be fixed, Solnyshko,” he tells me. “But you can’t avoid your feelings forever. You believe that you would rather face death than your fears. But this is not the way it works.”
“Why not?” I ask him. “You do.”
“I am not avoiding anything,” he lies boldly. “I have simply accepted what is.”
“And so have I.”
“No,” he argues. “You haven’t. You have simply numbed yourself.”
He taps me on the head and then grips my chin between his fingers, tilting my face up so that he has complete access to my every emotion.
“It is a defense mechanism. The brain, is a wonderful thing. Can survive any trauma by doing this. But your traumas are over. It is time now to process them. To feel.”
I swallow, and he takes me by the hand. Leading me down the hall to his office. I don’t fight him. Because we both know the entire conversation was just my attempt at delaying the inevitable.
He sits down in his chair and then pulls me into his lap and drags the phone closer. He doesn’t make me do anything. Anything at all.
He simply dials the number and hands me the phone.
“Simply tell her you are safe,” he says. “And anything else you wish to say.”
It rings for a long time. And every sound is like a jackhammer to my ears and my armor. I’m shaking in Alexei’s arms, and he is rubbing my back in a soothing gesture. There are tears in my eyes. And then the muffled sound of someone answering.
“Hello?”
My lips are sticking together, and it takes me three attempts to get her name out.
“Mack?”
There’s a long pause, and the guilt is stabbing at my heart. The one I swore I no longer had. She sounds so scared. So nervous that this is some sort of a sick joke. That it can’t be real. And I know now, she thought I was dead. She thought I was lost forever.
Because I was too much of a coward to tell her otherwise. She deserves so much better than this. Than me. She deserves everything I could never be to her.
“Talia?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “It’s me.”