Page 85 of The Breath Before Forever

“I loved them.”

She wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Vaslav had never been the one between them that appreciated a lie. Her interruption seemed to silence any other complaints he might have about the hundreds of roses she’d arrived home to the day before.

“You could have chosen red, or pink—a rainbow of colors even,” Vera said, shrugging. “No, you picked white.”

The color one usually picked to express condolences for someone’s loss and sorrow. Vaslav didn’t acknowledge the suggestion Vera’s words pointed to but that wasn’t a surprise. With him, his actions always spoke louder than anything he ever said.

Or didn’t, for that matter.

“And I saw the bench,” Vera added. “It’s beautiful, too.”

“Do you have a spot in mind?” he asked

Not particularly. Other things weighed there. He was high on the list amongst everything else making a mess in her mind and heart.

Vera saw Vaslav’s hand reaching for her, but she didn’t move as his fingers skimmed over her wrist. It was only once he’d tugged her hands apart, and his fingers locked around hers that she turned slightly. Half facing him, but still prepared to leave. Not that she really wanted to go—the tender strokes of his thumb against the side of her hand drew a wet, shaky breath from Vera.

“Do you want to sleep upstairs?” she asked him. “It’s better than this couch.”

“I don’t like being up there without you.”

“You never told me that.”

Vaslav’s shoulders rolled with a lazy shrug while he watched her through one squinted eye. “It’s not the same without you.”

She wasn’t used to Vaslav being so frank when it came to his feelings, and in that moment, it hit Vera like a ton of bricks. She did her best to change the subject if only to keep her own swelling emotions at bay.

“The contractor did a gr—”

“And my mother is also up there now so I can’t even get beyond the first landing of steps,” Vaslav interrupted before Vera could start in on the studio and greenroom upstairs.

She blinked at what he implied. “Right now?”

His dry chuckle sounded hollow. “Ah, I said that wrong. Her ashes. They’re up there.”

“Your mother is dea—”

“On a dresser,” he continued like she hadn’t spoke as his gaze narrowed with whatever he envisioned right in front of his face. “In a bag. I stopped going up to get my clothes after Mira told me she’d put them up there after the crematorium sent it with a courier to the house. We’re back to Mira getting things together for me. I don’t know where to put the bitch, but she can’t stay up there.”

Jesus.

It took all but a few sentences for Vaslav to make it clear to Vera how his life could also fall apart around him without her near.

“You don’t have to do anything with the ashes, and I’m sure Mira and I could figure something out,” Vera said, her words seeming to ease the sudden rise and fall of Vaslav’s chest. “You could have told me your mother had passed away when I was in New York. Why didn’t you?”

He swiped a large palm down his dark beard. It, too, had thickened and lengthened with growth he would probably want to shave soon.

“They had to move her to a palliative unit a month ago—she lasted a week in there. You sat on the same couch I did when the shrink said her body couldn’t keep doing what she was doing to it. I hear the staff at Roseville kept her company. What did it matter if I told you? I never wanted you to know her to begin with.”

And now she never would.

Between them, the unspoken sadness hung like a heavy cloud. She suppressed the urge to apologize about his mother’s passing because he wouldn’t want her to waste the breath.

“Vera, come here.”

It wasn’t a question.

He punctuated the demand with a tug of her arm that jerked Vera closer to the sofa, and him. Her knees hit the floor as he rolled to his side, and reached for her again. This time, those roughened hands of his held her face.