Page 63 of The Breath Before Forever

It—and the teen—would be back in the parking lot by tomorrow morning.

Vera’s hands slapped her thighs overtop the blankets, but there wasn’t much more fight in her. She even winced.

Compliments of her three broken ribs.

And one punctured lung.

That was before the bump on the back of her head, all the other scrapes and bruises, and the heartbeat of a baby that couldn’t be found. Some of the surface things were easier to fix than what couldn’t be seen.

Strange how that worked.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” he said, then. “How I could fix that way you keep looking at me—always sad.”

He was a coward.

Vaslav wouldn’t deny it now.

He couldn’t ask her what he really wondered. Did she look at him that way because he’d not been happy about a baby that in the end, didn’t even get a chance to exist? Did she think she couldn’t be sad because she thought he wasn’t, either?

“Anything,” he told her. “Tell me anything to fix it, and I will.”

Vera’s shoulders lifted with an almost silent sob, but the noisy wet sound echoed in the quiet room nonetheless. “I don’t know, Vas. I just ... I just don’t know.”

The undertones of sadness clinging to her every word made him flinch, and he fought the urge to put distance between him and her emotions. Instead, he went to her. Arms opened wide if she would let him hold her, and she did.

“I’m still trying to figure out how I feel,” she mumbled against his chest while her hands fisted handfuls of his jacket to keep him close to her. “And now you’re just shipping me off. We’re barely newlyweds, that’s not fair. Who says you’re well enough to be—”

“Let’s not go there,” he interjected.

Vera didn’t push the line.

Ignoring the pressure that had been constant and worsening inside his skull—for most of the fucking week—Vaslav nuzzled the top of Vera’s head, and dotted kisses along her forehead. It was easier to pretend like his head wasn’t splitting open when all of his time and energy needed to be focused on her. Then he swept away the stray strands of dark, silky hair framing her face as she stared up at him.

“I wanted to be able to figure it out at home.” she said, lips quivering and tears still welling. “With you.”

He pressed a soft kiss to her frowning mouth.

“I’m sorry, Vera.”

Vaslav meant what he said, and sending her away wouldn’t help him, certainly, but knew his apology would mean very little. In the end, she was still going to New York. Nobody said she had to like it.

“It won’t be for long,” he added.

A lie he hoped she would willingly cling to. Vaslav had no idea how long cleaning this mess would take.

17.

Three months later ...

“Ma thinks you’re depressed.”

“Ma also thinks the neighbors try to spy on her, and that you use drugs,” Vera returned as an attempt to shut her younger brother up.

Shocker.

It didn’t work. Very little did when it came to Roman Avdonin.

“The neighbors do spy on them—they’re exhibitionists—and everybody knows I have a taste for coke, Vera. Get with the program. Nobody says it to my face.”