Page 18 of The Breath Before Forever

“Are you ... are you ignoring me?” Vera asked quietly.

Had Vaslav not been listening for the pitter-patter of Vera’s footsteps following him into the walk-in closet attached to their bedroom, then she might have been able to sneak up on him. In any case, he had heard her, and she wasn’t entirely wrong in her accusation.

“Only partly,” Vaslav replied as he pulled open the middle doors of the wall-length wardrobe. “I’m also very fucking tired.”

And ready to go to bed after a hot shower.

Honesty was the best policy. Even if his honesty caused a sheet of sad confusion to fall over Vera’s pretty features when he glanced back at her. Oh, well for her. It wouldn’t change. He’d started this thing out between them the same way. Constantly spilling his raw, unfiltered thoughts between them for her to absorb whether she liked it or not.

Awkward, painful, or otherwise.

He laid it bare.

He’d truly believed that he expected the same from her. That was the only problem with love. It assumed too much.

“How many hours did that take you to figure out?” Vaslav asked while he yanked out a pair of cotton sleep pants and slammed the drawer shut after. “Four?”

Vera’s gaze narrowed into slits from the closet’s doorway. “You can’t help it, can you?”

“What?”

“Being a prick. You can’t help it.”

Vaslav pulled in a hiss of air through his teeth, making it sound like he was considering her statement but really, it was all for show. “I can’t even blame it on the pain right now, either.”

He was just mad.

Yes, at her.

But not yet ready to tell her why.

All at once, the promise she’d shown to push back drifted away, and the sadness came back while Vera glanced down and picked at her fingernails. “If you didn’t want me to go to the city for a couple of days, then why didn’t you just say?”

“You’re foolish if you think a trip away for a night and day is enough to make me not even want to look at you.”

It made those handful of hours since she’d arrived home particularly difficult for them both, too. Where he would usually want her within his constant arm’s reach as dinner was served and the evening’s darkness turned into a cold, bottomless black, instead he kept an obvious distance. He outright refused to speak when she made any attempt at conversation when they were in the same room together. Silence could be his only companion when he, for the first time, was truly angry at Vera for something she alone did.

That sting?

It reminded him a hell of a lot of betrayal. Vaslav couldn’t play that treacherous game. Not with his wife. He’d done that once and paid a terrible price.

Finally, Vera’s backbone decided to make an appearance when she tipped her chin up and fire stared back in her eyes. He might have respected that on another day; a different time and dispute between them. Just not for this.

“Well, when you work up the balls to tell me what’s got you in a mood,” Vera told him, every challenging word she spoke pissing him off more and more, “then let me know. I’ll be around.” She turned away from the doorway, adding, “Maybe Mira needs help with something downstairs. Even washing floors at night would be better than standing here doing this with you.”

That’s how he knew—her secret was just that, a secret. She really didn’t know what had him so angry with her. She’d done something out of his view and believed he wouldn’t find out. Not surprisingly, it also made him think she didn’t intend to tell him what she had tried to do, either.

Vaslav took his time following the path Vera had taken, and when he exited the walk-in closet, she was already all the way across the bedroom. Nearly to the opened doors leading to the master’s sitting room.

He could have let her go. His anger would only stretch on longer, making his bitterness worse, and the sting sharpen into something neither of them wanted.

Maybe he should have.

Instead, Vaslav asked, “Did you think the Roseville facility wouldn’t inform me when my wife spent the morning making calls on my mother’s behalf?”

Vera froze in the doorway, the skirt of the black dress she wore wishing around her calves until the silky fabric came to a stop. With a scoop neck in the back and front, he could see the way her shoulders and neck tensed as she toyed with her hands out of his view.

“First of all,” she started.