“Mine reclined.”
“It’s not any better.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
“Maybe my back hurts a little,” she admitted.
Not that Vera wanted to complain. She didn’t have any standing to do so compared to her comatose, pregnant friend she’d left behind—alone—in the city.
Eyeing her companion in the unmoving vehicle, who didn’t make a move to open his own door, Vera wasn’t quite ready to exit just yet. A part of her was waiting for the stiffness in her back and legs to ease up as the rest of her body woke up, but the other side of her had already noticed the black Hummer parked next to theirs in the circular section of drive in front of the house.
Vas was home.
All the days that had passed since she last spoke to her husband now felt like a wall she had to climb over for some unknown reason. It wasn’t even that many days, just four since he called to say he’d chartered her a jet, but it seemed like more.
Vaslav had a way of stopping her entire world right in its tracks, and she didn’t get any say in the matter. Sending her away wasn’t all that different from bringing her home when it meant it would be done on his timeline, and how he demanded while Vera was left to deal with the emotional whiplash and unanswered questions that wouldn’t leave her alone because of his choices.
Constantly.
“You look like a deer in the headlamps,” Kiril noted.
Were her thoughts written on her face?
Vera sighed, not able to take her gaze from the vehicle beside theirs. “Sometimes, the people you love will make you angry, Kiril.”
The teen’s nose crinkled at the idea. “Can’t say I know much about that—love, I mean.”
She thought he probably did, but his love was still a shallow thing. Fickle and easily ruined, but also overflowing and fast to grow.
He was still young.
There were also those who had never been loved in the way they should be—instead, their love was toxic and poison. Love was something they had to relearn.
“You’ve got time,” Vera muttered heavily, finally unbuckling her seatbelt and straightening up in the seat. Her gaze traveled over the front of the house until it eventually came to land on the steps, and then up to the door. It remained shut tight. “But they will. The people you love will make you angry, and maybe they won’t feel bad about it, but it helps to remember that even the anger you feel comes from your own place of love. Be gracious, give grace, and be forgiving, okay? Especially to the people you love. Even when they make it hard. You never know when you’re going to wake up and they’re not beside you anymore.”
Kiril cleared his throat, and scooped up his handful of personal items—a wallet, lighter, and pack of cigarettes—from the middle console. “I guess I’ll keep it in mind?”
Vera glanced back at the house, but her thoughts remained focused on the man somewhere inside waiting for her. At least, she hoped he was. “Yeah, we all need to.”
That’s why she’d said it out loud.
She also needed the reminder.
*
“Are you sleeping?” Vera asked.
“Trying.”
The grunted reply—made more muffled by the quilt wrapped around Vaslav as his back faced his den, and he remained turned into the couch—still had Vera smiling. Mira, who had been removing any wilted roses and feeding the ones in larger vases by the stairs, was the one to direct Vera to the back of the house when she asked about Vaslav earlier.
Who knew where Kiril was?
The kid made himself scarce.
Vaslav, on the other hand, wasn’t hard to find at all. Vera only needed to notice the dark den, pulled shades, and lack of coals in the fireplace to know why she found her husband curled on the sofa, hiding from the rest of the house.
Chronic pain meant just that—constant.
All the time.
Without fail.
The question should never be if Vaslav was in pain, but rather, how much. She’d once thought his migraines came and went like waves, but she’d only recently factored in how she never considered that they didn’t leave. He hid it well, or perhaps his pain management skills had sharpened over the years so that he seemed unfettered by the minor troubles. Or her lack of understanding might have come from the fact that Vaslav would rather be in pain and staring at her, than hiding his face in a pillow.
Except he was doing that now.
She didn’t need to make Vaslav’s suffering worse by engaging in frivolous conversation or questions about how he was feeling—or had been since she was gone—when the answer was obvious. Nothing really changed.
Even if their world was a little different.
“I’m ...” Vera struggled to find the right words—the reunion she’d desperately wanted with her husband had been saturated by her bitterness and anger until faced with the reality.
Lamely, because she couldn’t form a sentence that didn’t begin with something hurtful or equally vicious, Vera slapped a hand to the side of her thigh and said, “I’m really tired. I guess I’ll go up to bed.”
If he wanted to find her, then he could.
Vera turned away from the sofa at the same time she heard the cushions squeak with Vaslav’s slow roll.
“Where are you going?” he asked, confused.
Vera didn’t face him as she fiddled with her fingernails, ignoring the urge to pick at them some more. “The roses are beautiful.”
Vaslav cleared his throat. “I overdid it. The smell was—”
“I loved them.”
She wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Vaslav had never been the one between them that appreciated a lie. Her interruption seemed to silence any other complaints he might have about the hundreds of roses she’d arrived home to the day before.
“You could have chosen red, or pink—a rainbow of colors even,” Vera said, shrugging. “No, you picked white.”
The color one usually picked to express condolences for someone’s loss and sorrow. Vaslav didn’t acknowledge the suggestion Vera’s words pointed to but that wasn’t a surprise. With him, his actions always spoke louder than anything he ever said.
Or didn’t, for that matter.
“And I saw the bench,” Vera added. “It’s beautiful, too.”
“Do you have a spot in mind?” he asked
Not particularly. Other things weighed there. He was high on the list amongst everything else making a mess in her mind and heart.
Vera saw Vaslav’s hand reaching for her, but she didn’t move as his fingers skimmed over her wrist. It was only once he’d tugged her hands apart, and his fingers locked around hers that she turned slightly. Half facing him, but still prepared to leave. Not that she really wanted to go—the tender strokes of his thumb against the side of her hand drew a wet, shaky breath from Vera.
“Do you want to sleep upstairs?” she asked him. “It’s better than this couch.”
“I don’t like being up there without you.”
“You never told me that.”
Vaslav’s shoulders rolled with a lazy shrug while he watched her through one squinted eye. “It’s not the same without you.”
She wasn’t used to Vaslav being so frank when it came to his feelings, and in that moment, it hit Vera like a ton of bricks. She did her best to change the subject if only to keep her own swelling emotions at bay.