Page 84 of The Breath Before Forever

The teen’s nose crinkled at the idea. “Can’t say I know much about that—love, I mean.”

She thought he probably did, but his love was still a shallow thing. Fickle and easily ruined, but also overflowing and fast to grow.

He was still young.

There were also those who had never been loved in the way they should be—instead, their love was toxic and poison. Love was something they had to relearn.

“You’ve got time,” Vera muttered heavily, finally unbuckling her seatbelt and straightening up in the seat. Her gaze traveled over the front of the house until it eventually came to land on the steps, and then up to the door. It remained shut tight. “But they will. The people you love will make you angry, and maybe they won’t feel bad about it, but it helps to remember that even the anger you feel comes from your own place of love. Be gracious, give grace, and be forgiving, okay? Especially to the people you love. Even when they make it hard. You never know when you’re going to wake up and they’re not beside you anymore.”

Kiril cleared his throat, and scooped up his handful of personal items—a wallet, lighter, and pack of cigarettes—from the middle console. “I guess I’ll keep it in mind?”

Vera glanced back at the house, but her thoughts remained focused on the man somewhere inside waiting for her. At least, she hoped he was. “Yeah, we all need to.”

That’s why she’d said it out loud.

She also needed the reminder.

*

“Are you sleeping?” Vera asked.

“Trying.”

The grunted reply—made more muffled by the quilt wrapped around Vaslav as his back faced his den, and he remained turned into the couch—still had Vera smiling. Mira, who had been removing any wilted roses and feeding the ones in larger vases by the stairs, was the one to direct Vera to the back of the house when she asked about Vaslav earlier.

Who knew where Kiril was?

The kid made himself scarce.

Vaslav, on the other hand, wasn’t hard to find at all. Vera only needed to notice the dark den, pulled shades, and lack of coals in the fireplace to know why she found her husband curled on the sofa, hiding from the rest of the house.

Chronic pain meant just that—constant.

All the time.

Without fail.

The question should never be if Vaslav was in pain, but rather, how much. She’d once thought his migraines came and went like waves, but she’d only recently factored in how she never considered that they didn’t leave. He hid it well, or perhaps his pain management skills had sharpened over the years so that he seemed unfettered by the minor troubles. Or her lack of understanding might have come from the fact that Vaslav would rather be in pain and staring at her, than hiding his face in a pillow.

Except he was doing that now.

She didn’t need to make Vaslav’s suffering worse by engaging in frivolous conversation or questions about how he was feeling—or had been since she was gone—when the answer was obvious. Nothing really changed.

Even if their world was a little different.

“I’m ...” Vera struggled to find the right words—the reunion she’d desperately wanted with her husband had been saturated by her bitterness and anger until faced with the reality.

Lamely, because she couldn’t form a sentence that didn’t begin with something hurtful or equally vicious, Vera slapped a hand to the side of her thigh and said, “I’m really tired. I guess I’ll go up to bed.”

If he wanted to find her, then he could.

Vera turned away from the sofa at the same time she heard the cushions squeak with Vaslav’s slow roll.

“Where are you going?” he asked, confused.

Vera didn’t face him as she fiddled with her fingernails, ignoring the urge to pick at them some more. “The roses are beautiful.”

Vaslav cleared his throat. “I overdid it. The smell was—”