Page 24 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

God.

Vera stopped avoiding her father’s gaze, and settled on telling him the truth. “It never really felt like home, Papa. I was so focused on being something that I didn’t really learn to enjoy where I was and what I had.”

“You’re saying you didn’t have anything to miss? You don’t miss us ... do you not want us?”

She flinched. “It’s not like that.”

“It sounds like that.”

Her heavy sigh quieted Demyan from saying anything more.

She was also busy.

Not that Vera wanted to repeat that excuse to her father, but it was still true. From the time she was sixteen until the day she was forced to retire from being a professional ballerina, she didn’t stop. Ballet had taken nearly every second of her life, and what time she did have to grow and be a person of her own making, she hadn’t wasted it flying between countries because there were people she left behind who missed her.

Was it selfish?

Fine.

She didn’t regret it.

“I grew up and learned a lot about who I was and wanted to be because I wasn’t at home,” Vera said. “I had a different kind of influence shaping my perspective. And that’s not a bad thing, but it didn’t have anything to do with you, or Claire ... anybody, really.”

“Before or after your injury?” Demyan shot back.

“That’s not fair,” Vera whispered, blinking back the sudden sting of tears welling in her eyes, “you don’t know what that was like for me. Especially after it happened. To be—”

“You didn’t let us, either.”

“Wasn’t it bad enough for me to be a failure to myself? Why did I have to go home to be one, too?” she asked, every word getting progressively higher and shriller.

She didn’t want to yell, or argue, or do any of this at all.

“You know what, I already told you what matters here, I’m where I want to be,” Vera said, and the declaration loosened her father’s tight shoulders. “Do we really have to do this?”

“Just because you can make choices doesn’t mean I have to like them.”

“But you don’t get a say in them, either, Papa.”

Demyan nodded once, and then waved a hand at the quiet scenery around them. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Can’t say I had any choice once I got here, can we?” he asked.

“To be fair, neither did I.”

“The bigger issue with that is how you don’t seem to have a problem with it,” Demyan pointed out.

Vera lifted an eyebrow high. “Maybe that’s because a part of me likes it.”

“Vera.”

“And him,” she added, ignoring her father’s warning. “I also like him.” A lot, she thought. “So maybe if you have something to say about that, now’s the time to do it and move on with it.”

“Would you even hear me say it? Would you let me, as your father, say it?”

Did he want honesty?