“I do. I’m trying.”
“That’s all that matters.”
Viktoria glanced up at him then, and when her sky-blue eyes met his, he swore the rest of the world drifted away again. All the noise of the airport stopped. The polluted air cleared. His world shifted back on a proper axis.
All because she looked at me.
When had this happened?
“Pav?”
“Da?”
“I don’t know what I feel about you, either,” she whispered.
“No?”
He didn’t even think about it. He just leaned down and caught her soft lips with his own. There was something honest in her kiss. He could always feel that trepidation racing through her body when he kissed her, or the excitement. She never shied away from his kiss now, and if anything, she was the first to demand more. A hot strike of her tongue against the seam of his mouth or her fingers digging into his chest.
Her lips worked against his and every kiss took him higher. That taste of her wasn’t nearly enough, but he wasn’t going to complain about it, either. She was becoming a drug to him. A shot of heroin into his heart, making it blacken and beat for only her. She didn’t know it, though. That was okay, too.
Now wasn’t the right time to explain it.
She wouldn’t mind waiting.
All too soon, she pulled away, but he let her. He could have pulled her in for another kiss, but there were too many people watching, and he never liked being the center of attention. Neither did she, really.
Viktoria swallowed hard. “There’s a part of me that wants to keep you.”
“I like that part.”
Her laughter was sweet.
Her smile, beautiful.
She winked. “Yeah, me too.”
13.
THE CAR pulled alongside the driveway to Viktoria’s Melrose home, but she didn’t immediately reach for the door handle to get out of the vehicle. She took a moment first to look over her house, the front walkway, and the windows with all the drapes pulled closed to keep anyone from looking inside.
Nothing had changed.
It all looked the same.
It was strange to her, though, how it all felt a little different. Like she was seeing the place with new eyes and different feelings. In a way, this house had felt like her prison for a long time. The home her father bought her after the attack—she would deal with that another time—and the place that kept her hidden away from the world. Here, she had felt safe, like nothing could hurt her and no one would ever know how broken she truly was when she closed the front door.
Like keeping the world out.
The thing was, she knew that in fact, all she had been doing was protecting herself in the only way she’d known how. She was building those walls up higher and higher because she couldn’t afford for someone else to climb over them and hurt her again.
It was like a part of her knew …
Some part of her just knew what her father had done even though she’d never asked, and he’d never told her until now. She’d been naive enough to believe for a long time that despite the fact her father was a horrible human being, he wouldn’t be that person to her. In all truth, she hadn’t wanted him to be that person to her, so she’d chosen to overlook a lot.
The way he treated others.
Things he did to his sons.
Everything.
Literally everything about her father was a constant reality check about who he actually was beneath his tailored suits and welcoming smiles. Sure, he reminded her of years gone past, and a childhood that was filled with a girl being spoiled and adored by her daddy … but she was just another pawn for Vadim at the end of the day. He’d let her think that his affection and adoration was because he truly felt those things, when, in fact, they were just another form of his manipulation.
She was not a special case.
She was not the most loved.
He didn’t give a damn about her.
So yeah, despite the fact she knew for sure now, it was only because she couldn’t pretend anymore. She was mad at the part of her that had to know but still went ahead and ignored it, anyway. Everything made so much more sense now, in a way.
Because wasn’t she nastiest to those she loved? Wasn’t she coldest to those who were supposed to care and protect her because the one she cared for and loved the most had been the same person who’d hurt her?
“Could you give us a moment?”
Pav’s voice drew Viktoria from her thoughts, and she realized then that her hand was still on the door handle, but she hadn’t actually made the attempt to open it. She was still sitting there in the back seat of a vehicle while she stared at her house, going over every moment of her life that passed her by in the last two years.
All her fears.
The mistakes she’d made.
Her pain.
The pain she’d caused.
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind,” Pav snapped at the driver when the man lingered in the front a little too long for his liking. “Move.”
The driver finally got out of the car.
Viktoria still didn’t move.
“I stopped looking into mirrors after it all happened,” she said when it was just them alone in the back of the vehicle. “I told myself it was because I didn’t recognize the person who was staring back at me.”
Pav cleared his throat. “It’s just a house, babe.”
Viktoria made a noise in the back of her throat. “It’s not … it’s a prison. One I made for myself after someone else handed me the keys. I didn’t stop looking into mirrors because of that,
