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But my voice trails off. I don’t know what I want to say.
“You’ve been a pawn for long enough, June,” he continues quietly. “Telling you about my past has forced me to realize something: I refuse to turn into my father. And I don’t want to be like my brother, either. I’ve kept you in this house because I thought I could protect you. I thought I knew better. But that was my mistake—believing I had the right to make the choice for you.”
My eyes go wide.
“So if it’s really what you want, I will cancel the wedding,” he finishes. “I will let you go. Say the word, and you’ll never see me again.”
47
KOLYA
I’m not in my body. I’m floating out of it, above it, watching this scene play out from afar.
Did I really just release her? Did I really give her permission to walk away from me?
It goes against every instinct I have to let her go. Not just because she’s in danger if she does, but because—
Because…
Fuck.
“Kolya.”
I pull my eyes up to meet hers. Those perfect, deep hazel eyes that seem to contain the world’s warmth in their center. She takes a tentative step towards me. “Y-you’re really going to let me leave?”
There’s no going back now. “If that’s what you choose.”
She stares at me as though she’s searching for something. Then she takes another uncertain step forward.
“Why?”
“Why?”
She nods. “Tell me why.”
“I just did,” I snap impatiently.
She doesn’t so much as flinch. In fact, she looks as though she’s lost the ability to feel fear in my presence. “I will leave,” she says, and something inside me cracks open. It can’t be my heart, because I’m pretty sure I lost that a long fucking time ago. “But first, I need to know. I need to know if the real reason you’re letting me go now is because… you do have feelings for me. Feelings like mine.”
Silence. My heartbeat is so loud I’m sure she can hear it.Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
“You should be halfway out the door by now,” I growl at her.
She refuses to take her eyes off mine or let me take the easy way out. “Not until you give me an honest answer.”
“June—”
“Kolya,” she fires back, taking the final step that puts her right in front of me. Her chest is practically shoved up against mine. She looks up at me like a little lioness, ready to go in for the kill.
All fierce determination. All unfettered pride.
“There were two boys in that story you told me. The boy who was forced to do horrific things and the boy who was forced to watch helplessly. I don’t doubt that you have your own traumas, your own pain. It must be easier to shut your heart away so that you can’t feel any of it anymore.”
She raises her hand and places it on my chest, right over my beating heart. It’s as if she’s trying to remind me that I have one.
“Denying your feelings doesn’t mean you don’t have any,” she says. “So for once, stop denying—and give me an honest answer.”
Her voice hitches up. Tears pool in the corners of her eyes. They turn her hazel irises into a bed of embers.
