Page 31 of The Lies Between Lovers

So, when Feliks left a message on her cell Sunday night to say the studio still wouldn’t be ready to open on Monday like was planned, Vera was left with the prospect of yet another week stuck in her villa alone. That wasn’t exactly something she was ready to deal with. She didn’t think her mental health could handle it, honestly.

Despite spending a good portion of her life alone—at least from sixteen years old on when she left her parents and moved to Russia—she hadn’t realized how lonely it really could be until all she heard every day was the sound of her own footsteps on the floors of her villa.

Leaving was the easy part, really. She barely even thought the decision to scour flights to Italy through before she had done it, and a round-trip ticket was bought and ready to use Monday afternoon.

All it took after that was a quick chat with Mr. Anatoly to hand over her house keys so that her plants would be taken care of for the week, and a call to a company to get a drive to the airport. She didn’t even look back over her shoulder when the car pulled away from her villa.

It was only once she sat down at her window seat on the plane that Vera took the time to consider how spur of the moment her choice to surprise Hannah in Italy actually was, and whether or not she should be doing it at all. Oh, Hannah would be ecstatic no doubt. God knew Vera could use some more time with her friend, too. That didn’t change or help the unease settling deep in her gut as she stared out the porthole window.

Not that she could get up and leave now.

She wasn’t even sure why she was so restless.

Except for who you’re leaving behind, maybe.

Vera wasn’t a liar, so she wouldn’t say that Vaslav didn’t cross her mind as she planned a trip to Italy without any real consideration for him. The thing was, she didn’t owe him anything, and certainly not an explanation for her absence when he might not even notice it at all. Hell, he’d never even called her home phone before.

So, what’s really wrong?

Again, she ignored her inner thoughts.

It was easier than admitting the truth—it didn’t matter how little contact she had with Vas in between the times they were together because he didn’t seem like the kind of man who would care about those sorts of details. Not when he had made his intentions perfectly clear whether she wanted to hear them or not.

Maybe that’s what she was doing ...

Running.

In a way.

Maybe she just needed to get away from what was happening to see if she could make sense of it. She wasn’t sure that she could necessarily call it running, however, when she had no intention of staying away forever.

“Oof,” came the mutter.

Accompanied by a figure dropping into the seat beside hers without any grace. The young man, with hair as dark as coal and eyes the color of the sky, leaned out into the aisle to gawk at the flight attendant strolling to the front of the plane with a swish to her hips and the click of heels at every step. The hood of his black hoodie was half pulled up, resting on the rear crown of his head and framing the side of his face, and he didn’t seem concerned with the rucksack sitting on his booted feet that was partially open and threatening to spill its contents all over the plane’s floor.

She thought, for the briefest of seconds, that he looked familiar. Maybe it was something about his boyish features that triggered the recognition because there wasn’t anything particularly special about him that made her think she had seen him somewhere before.

“That’s gonna make this a real nice flight,” the guy said.

Could she call him a guy?

He barely looked like a kid.

In fact, he didn’t even have a five o’clock shadow to speak of growing facial hair when he turned to grin at her in the next seat. Vera offered the boy a smile back, but only because his was a little infectious. She didn’t think he meant any harm by staring at the pretty flight attendant.

She swore he couldn’t be more than sixteen, even if he appeared to be taller than her with his long legs clad in dark wash denim. Drumming his fingers to the arm rests, he seemingly bobbed his head and shoulders to some unknown music that she couldn’t hear.

“Are you even old enough to fly by yourself?” she asked him before she could stop herself.

He was stranger. It wasn’t like he owed her anything, but if he was going to be in the seat next to hers for the next four hours, well ... they might as well talk.

The kid showed all his straight, white teeth when he smiled wide. “I don’t know, but that’s what my passport says.”

I don’t know?

What kind of answer was that?

Vera figured ... the kind a kid might make.