Vaslav, and his mother.
She looked barely older than mid-teens—maybe—and the newborn, swaddled in white in the grayscale image, didn’t look to be happy with the way his teenage mother held him as he openly squalled. Of course, Natalia smiled for the photo.
Not nicely.
Forced, mostly.
And the way her arm clung to the swaddled infant, almost like she’d rather not be doing it at all, cut at Vera’s heart in a way she couldn’t explain. Which was why Vera had the strangest urge to rip the image out of the album and destroy it.
No wonder Vaslav hated his mother—from the start, it looked like she hadn’t even wanted him, as if even holding him was more than she could stand to do. Who needed a physical reminder of that kind of pain?
“What is this?” Vaslav demanded from behind Vera.
She closed the photo album with a snap, although he simply opted to ignore it for the most part, and turned on the cushion where she sat next to the fireplace to face Vaslav in the entry to their suites. Only giving him part of her attention as she reached over to put the photo album on the coffee table, she couldn’t see what he held in his hand as he approached the back of the chesterfield.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
The tone did it for her.
Nasty and mean.
He had all of her attention now. Whether he wanted it or not.
“What is your problem?” Vera asked, simply turning around on the cushion instead of standing like he might want her to. “Hannah’s gone, Mira’s making something to eat, and even the dog is outside now.”
Each of those things were something he had either taken offense to over the past couple of days, or found a reason to bitch about when he was in a mood, and not coping well. She didn’t see where his issue remained when he currently had every reason to be pleased.
All things considered.
Vera sniffed the air, and smirked at the familiar smell she found lingering there. Skunky and unmistakable, with or without the bloodshot eyes of her husband trying to stare her down, she knew damn well what that smell meant by now. No doubt, the weed was also the reason for his quick disappearance while she said her goodbyes to Hannah downstairs. “You smell like you had a good time down the hall—”
Vaslav wasn’t impressed. He didn’t even blink an eye at her comment. “Vera, what in the hell is this?”
The second time he asked that question, it came out a lot more forceful—but also panicked—than the first. He also lifted his arm high enough for her to see what the chesterfield had been keeping hidden, and the sight of the white plastic thrusting toward her in mid-air sucked the breath from her lungs.
All at once, everything made sense. From his reaction to the overreaction. Maybe she hadn’t explained Hannah’s reason for showing up out of the blue, but to be fair, her friend practically begged Vera to keep it a secret for the time being.
For a few reasons.
Not all were good.
Nonetheless, she intended to keep that promise to Hannah. Unless it caused a bigger issue, and clearly it had.
“Vas,” she tried to say.
He wouldn’t give her a chance to, though. He gave her no time to speak.
“Net—what the fuck is this?” His gaze narrowed on her with every word he spat, but she refused to shrink under the weight of it. “Get to the bathroom. Now.”
Vera blinked, but didn’t move. “Excuse me?”
“Did I stutter?” Vaslav rounded the arm of the chesterfield before Vera had a chance to reply, let alone think of one, and in the next second, he yanked her up from the floor with a rough grip that had her stumbling over the cushion left behind. He shoved her ahead of him, toward the doorway of their bedroom and the master’s en suite bathroom with a muttered, “Get going, right now.”
“Stop it, Vaslav—let me talk!”
Vera swung around on him fast—her hands up and ready to shove him back if need be—but his body acted like a brick wall. No one, and certainly not her, would be getting though him anytime soon. Right there in the threshold of their bedroom, he blocked her in and made it clear by the way his hands flattened to either side of the doorjamb that he would not be moving. All the while, he said nothing, but he didn’t have to when his actions spoke loud enough for the both of them. Like an animal backed into a corner with no escape, all she could do was stare up at him, horrified that he would treat her in such a way.
Her desire to talk was practically nil.
“Move,” she told him.
Vaslav teeth grinded, his jaw sliding back and forth each time, but his gaze didn’t break away from hers. What she found there stung. The way he could make a person feel so insignificant under his pensive stare couldn’t be matched.
The man was a pro.
“I will move,” he told her, that tense jaw of his still working over that anger like gnawing down the enamel on his teeth would make it all go away, “when you piss on one of those fuckin’ sticks.”
At that, Vera took a step back.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said honestly.
Vaslav jerked his chin upward at her, muttering right back, “Yeah, and I’ll know it when I see it. Go take a test.”
Her genuineness meant nothing. It sure didn’t help their current situation, or the bull of a man blocking her exit from the bedroom. She was slightly less concerned about that part of what was happening at the moment, but only because something wasn’t right.
Vaslav could be a prick.
An asshole on his good days.
Blunt honesty was his best friend, and even better when it hurt. The truth usually did, anyways, according to him.
What he never did was manhandle Vera. Not outside of their intimacy; he rarely did more than raise his voice. Oh, they had snippy moments. When she could rile him up enough for a proper argument, those were some of the best conversations the two had ever had together. She loved him best when he was grumpy and willing to hold a conversation that included more than grunts for replies.
She loved him all the time in between, too.
He didn’t shove her, though—never just made her do things, whether that meant bringing him tea or moving her across the fucking room. This wasn’t like Vaslav.
Not with her.
Something was wrong. It had to be more than just him discovering pregnancy tests if this was how he treated her because of it.
Vaslav pointed at the light streaming into the dimly lit bedroom—as usual, he’d pulled all the curtains to keep the space cloaked in chilly darkness—from the connecting bathroom. “I’m not going to tell you to do it again.”
Vera could have said a lot of things in response to that thinly veiled threat. She should have, definitely. Instead, she decided to draw an invisible line in between herself and her husband, and then she gave him the option to cross it with her next question
“Or what?” she asked. “Are you going to make me take a pregnancy test for you? Will you stand there and hold it for me, too, Vas?”
His sneer came off cold when he replied, “Is that what’d you like to do? We can—da? You’re barely a hundred and thirty-five pounds when you’re soaking wet.”
The last words hissed out of his mouth.
Vera stood a little straighter.
“Get real. You’re being ridiculous.”