He didn’t correct her.
That was still a what if.
Vaslav’s silence said more than he could, anyway. His wife blinked, and wet tears spilled down her cheeks instantly. The droplets clung to her lashes just long enough for him to see them drop, and down with them went what remained of his sad, broken heart.
Fuck him for even having one.
“You’ll be better in New York,” he said. “Safer.”
He needed time to work. Igor required time to heal. It was obvious why Vera would be better off in a place farther away from him and danger while those things happened.
Everything took time; something already too precious, and lacking in Vaslav’s life. The irony of it wasn’t lost on him.
“I don’t want to send you away, either,” he told Vera, shrugging under the heavy weight of his parka that he hadn’t even taken off after entering the hospital. Just before visiting hours were officially over and security locked the private halls.
Kiril took the Hummer to Dubna.
It—and the teen—would be back in the parking lot by tomorrow morning.
Vera’s hands slapped her thighs overtop the blankets, but there wasn’t much more fight in her. She even winced.
Compliments of her three broken ribs.
And one punctured lung.
That was before the bump on the back of her head, all the other scrapes and bruises, and the heartbeat of a baby that couldn’t be found. Some of the surface things were easier to fix than what couldn’t be seen.
Strange how that worked.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” he said, then. “How I could fix that way you keep looking at me—always sad.”
He was a coward.
Vaslav wouldn’t deny it now.
He couldn’t ask her what he really wondered. Did she look at him that way because he’d not been happy about a baby that in the end, didn’t even get a chance to exist? Did she think she couldn’t be sad because she thought he wasn’t, either?
“Anything,” he told her. “Tell me anything to fix it, and I will.”
Vera’s shoulders lifted with an almost silent sob, but the noisy wet sound echoed in the quiet room nonetheless. “I don’t know, Vas. I just ... I just don’t know.”
The undertones of sadness clinging to her every word made him flinch, and he fought the urge to put distance between him and her emotions. Instead, he went to her. Arms opened wide if she would let him hold her, and she did.
“I’m still trying to figure out how I feel,” she mumbled against his chest while her hands fisted handfuls of his jacket to keep him close to her. “And now you’re just shipping me off. We’re barely newlyweds, that’s not fair. Who says you’re well enough to be—”
“Let’s not go there,” he interjected.
Vera didn’t push the line.
Ignoring the pressure that had been constant and worsening inside his skull—for most of the fucking week—Vaslav nuzzled the top of Vera’s head, and dotted kisses along her forehead. It was easier to pretend like his head wasn’t splitting open when all of his time and energy needed to be focused on her. Then he swept away the stray strands of dark, silky hair framing her face as she stared up at him.
“I wanted to be able to figure it out at home.” she said, lips quivering and tears still welling. “With you.”
He pressed a soft kiss to her frowning mouth.
“I’m sorry, Vera.”
Vaslav meant what he said, and sending her away wouldn’t help him, certainly, but knew his apology would mean very little. In the end, she was still going to New York. Nobody said she had to like it.
“It won’t be for long,” he added.
A lie he hoped she would willingly cling to. Vaslav had no idea how long cleaning this mess would take.
17.
Three months later ...
“Ma thinks you’re depressed.”
“Ma also thinks the neighbors try to spy on her, and that you use drugs,” Vera returned as an attempt to shut her younger brother up.
Shocker.
It didn’t work. Very little did when it came to Roman Avdonin.
“The neighbors do spy on them—they’re exhibitionists—and everybody knows I have a taste for coke, Vera. Get with the program. Nobody says it to my face.”
Vera’s brow shot high. The most expression her brother’s one-sided conversation had gained from her since he had joined her on the rear patio made of grey stones. Surrounding an in-ground pool that wouldn’t be opened and filled until the end of the month—May came faster than she expected it to—the patio extended ten feet around the coping edge on all sides. With tall, thick green hedges partitioning off a section of the backyard to make it feel cozier, she found it just allowed her some quiet time.
She tossed a glance her brother’s way, thinking only usually.
Bouncing his knees, and tapping his palms to his thighs with a fast beat, Roman couldn’t sit still on his chair. Not even when Vera kept staring at him.
“What?” Roman asked when he noticed his older sister’s look.
“Which ones are the exhibitionists—Ma and Papa, or the neighbors?”
He barked a laugh. “You’ll figure it out.”
Lord.
Vera had only been half joking.
Roman, who had come to sit with her outside in the backyard without any explanation, gave a good, hard sniff as he leaned the chair back dangerously on two legs.
“The coke will kill you,” Vera said.
He rocked with the chair like his whole body was nodding in agreement with Vera’s warning, but the way he smirked a little and his jaw worked like it was chewing on words said he probably didn’t care.
His next words confirmed it.
“Yeah, maybe that’s what I’m going for,” Roman said.
Vera just rolled her eyes.
Even when it came to his substance abuse, her brother didn’t have the patience or give-a-damn to listen if someone wasn’t saying what he wanted to hear. Every human had their flaws; Roman rarely tried to hide his.
“And Ma does, by the way,” he tacked on at the end with extra attitude. “Think you’re depressed, I mean.”
His defensiveness about their mother said he was telling the truth about her concerns, but it was the least of Vera’s, honestly. She didn’t know how to break that news to Roman.
“It’s all I hear her talk about every night when she calls,” her brother added the longer Vera remained silent across the pool. “Which means she’s talked herself out with Papa, and now she’s moved to me. And no matter how many times I tell her that you’re a grown ass woman who can be as sad as she wants about whatever she wants—”
“She’s not wrong,” Vera interrupted before Roman could rant on further.
His bright blue gaze—the same as hers—narrowed.
Vera shrugged. “I am depressed. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
That should be simple enough for anyone to understand, even Roman, who on his best days, didn’t often think of those around him. Selfish to an extreme, her wild younger brother lived life on the edge constantly. That left little time or space for the thoughts and feelings of others. Not that she blamed him for being that way, really.