by Olivia Gates
Gathering all her strength of will, trembling inside in apprehension at the possible outcome, she said, “I’ve tried to bring it up before, but you clearly weren’t ready to discuss it. I let it go as long as I could, Ivan, I really did. But I can’t do it anymore. Even after what happened, the condition I was in when I first came with you, being with you here has been the most magical time of my life. But...”
His hands caught her arms again. “There shouldn’t be any buts. It is magic, being together. And I never want anything to break the spell.”
“I’ve thought about it long and hard from every angle, and now that I’m healed, inside and out as much as I ever will be, I’ve changed my mind. I won’t sit back and let you pull strings to honor Alex’s memory. I will do that. I owe it to him, to our parents and to Cathy and the kids. I owe it to myself. Only then can I get closure and change my path.”
His jaw muscles bunched, but he finally nodded. “Very well. If you will let me orchestrate this to the best outcome, you can be the one to make the final steps and announcements.”
Grabbing his hand, she planted a fervent kiss in his palm. “Thank you...” He started to protest and a finger on his lips silenced him. “Just let me thank you, Ivan, please. I need to give you my thanks far more than you hate receiving it.”
He gave another reluctant nod, before his eyes lightened, as if with relief. “If this is why you want to go back...”
She had to stop him. “No, it isn’t. I do have a life back in the States, Ivan, a life I want to go back to. But I need you to tell me what going back would mean for us. I know you thrive on solitude, but I don’t. I needed it for a while, to regain myself and my stability. But I can’t continue being with you in such isolation from the rest of the world.”
“Why not? It has been perfect that way.”
“It has been more than perfect, but it has also been like a pocket universe, an alternate reality. We can’t exist in this bubble forever. You have friends who’re as close as family to you, and I do have a family. Two families.”
At her last words, something dark and terrible filled his gaze. Something elemental. Bleakness? Revulsion? Even despair?
When families had been mentioned at the beginning of their relationship in the past, he’d only said he was orphan, adopted and abandoned again at an early age. It had been her cue never to mention family to him again, avoiding mention of her own in deference to his sensitivities.
But did it go beyond sensitivity? Did the scars of his childhood go way deeper than what she’d ever estimated? Did he abhor the idea of family, especially one that would invade his life, as hers would, through her?
If this was true, where would this leave them?
Heart pounding with trepidation, she ventured a direct gaze into those grim eyes and broached the subject that had been an unspoken taboo between them. “I realize family isn’t something you consider kindly, and rightfully so, but my experience with family is nothing like yours. I—I love my family. I need them.”
The sheer pain that came into his eyes made her hate herself for causing it. His next words, forlorn and agonized, hit her even harder.
“I thought you needed me.”
“I do. Oh, God, I do. But needing them, too, wouldn’t make me need you any less, wouldn’t interfere in our relationship.”
His whole face twisted as if unbearable bitterness had just flooded his mouth. “It will. And I can’t abide something coming between us.”
Dreading his answer, she knew she could no longer dance around the subject, had to ask him pointblank.
“What will you do if—when—I go back to my life, the life that includes my family? Will you disappear again?”
This time he said nothing, his silent rejection far harsher than if he’d spoken it. A dozen emotions seethed in his eyes as they fixed on hers. It felt as if he was trying to bend her to his will, to make her relinquish this intention. And she had to face what she’d long avoided facing.
Ivan was incapable of leading a life among others. He was the wolf she’d once jokingly accused him of being. A lone wolf. If she wanted to be his mate, it would be either him or the rest of the world.
But though it would have been a terrible choice, knowing the nature of his scars, she would have chosen him over anything. If she didn’t fear his inexplicable moods, what stemmed from his unknown and not-to-be-known past. If she didn’t dread his future abandonment.
But there was so much she didn’t know about him, and about the reasons he’d left her in the past. With so many things she couldn’t understand about him, so much he hid from her, she couldn’t bet her heart, her life and future on him.
It felt as if her heart broke for real, and, her chest was tightening over its jagged pieces, until she couldn’t stop herself from crying out with the pain.
Her desperation released some shackle that had been holding him back and he caught her in a fierce embrace.
“Don’t leave, moya dusha. Don’t leave me.”
She sobbed her desolation. “I never want to leave you. But I can’t remain here where I have no life outside of you.”
“Then I’ll make you a life. Anything you want.”
“I only ever wanted you. Going back doesn’t make this any less true. It’s you who’s putting an impossible condition on being with you. You don’t have to be involved with my family in any way if you don’t want, but you can’t expect me to just cut them off, too. You don’t have to come back with me. Just say you will be back for me.”
Again, his oppressive, horrible silence in the face of her entreaty, where all doubts mushroomed, shrieked for her to cut her losses. To go now, before leaving him became impossible, or even worse, before nothing much of her survived leaving him.
Feeling like she was reaching inside her chest and ripping her shattered heart out, her shaking hands undid his grip on her arms. “I want to go back to the States now, please, Ivan. You are free, as always, to do what’s best for yourself.”
* * *
Ivan had done what Anastasia had asked him.
He’d taken her back to the States. He’d insisted he’d be the one to drive her to her parents’ doorstep, even when she’d tried to convince him Fyodor had better do it.
She hadn’t wanted him to come with her in the first place. Extending the goodbye for all these hours, and up until these last moments, had been brutal, for both of them.
But he couldn’t let her out of his sight before he saw her safe inside her family home. Only his overpowering reluctance now let her walk to their door on her own, rolling the single suitcase she’d packed from the innumerable things he’d bought her.
He sat in the car watching her go, paralyzed, unable to move a muscle or make a sound to stop her.
Knowing he shouldn’t stop her.
All he could do was cling to her every nuance as she rummaged shakily for her house keys. She hadn’t told her parents she was coming home, didn’t even ring the bell. She probably didn’t want to hurt him with the sight of her family receiving her in tearful welcome, when she thought his hang-ups stemmed from having no family of his own.
Her consideration tore at him all over again, her every move as she fumbled to open the door more slashes to his bleeding psyche. Then without a last look, she stumbled in and closed the door.
The moment she did, Ivan felt his heart being crushed. Literally. What else explained that stab that sank into his heart, making him lurch forward, his head shaking on the steering wheel and his lungs tightening on what felt like broken glass?
Giving in to the agony, he almost wished that it was a real heart attack, and that it wouldn’t spare him. Almost. He couldn’t wish for his life to end as long as Anastasia existed. As long as she needed him. As he knew she did.
But she needed more than him to complete her healing. She
needed to resume her life. He’d tried to put that moment off for as long as he could, plying all his diversion tactics to postpone it. But even before she’d confronted him yesterday he’d already known. If he loved her, he should let her go.
And how he loved her.
He’d long admitted to himself that the all-consuming feeling that had blossomed into life from their first meeting and had only intensified as he’d gotten to know her, was love.
No. Far more than love. He now fully knew what his brothers, Antonio, Rafael, Raiden and Numair, even Richard, felt for their soul mates. This absolute admiration and allegiance, this endless desire and devotion. And he wanted with her what they had with them.
Union, children, permanence. Everything.
But that also meant being in extreme proximity with his own family, since they were a close and constant part of her life.
In her efforts to convince him that going back home, reentering her family’s life wouldn’t impact him or their relationship, she’d as good as pledged he didn’t have to see any of them. But he knew this was impossible. How could he make her live in this abnormal state, torn between him and those who’d raised her? How could he force her to split herself in two, part for him and part for them, keeping the two halves separate, with her contentment lost in the middle?
He couldn’t. He’d taken her away knowing it was best for her. He shouldn’t have pressured her to remain in isolation with him the moment he’d realized it was no longer the case.
And now she was here. Back among the only people in the world he couldn’t bear being around. The ones he had to abide if he wanted to be with her again.
Suddenly, the talons that had sunk in his heart retracted, letting him breathe. Because something was becoming clear.
Right now his agony was only over the idea of separation from her. None of his misery in these past hours had been about the aversion that had ruled his life since he was twelve. None of it had anything at all to do with his family.
Even if the dread of being around them wasn’t gone, it was nothing compared to the unimaginable desolation of being without Anastasia. The idea of putting up with their presence in his life for as long as they lived, of even developing a relationship with them for her sake, wasn’t abhorrent anymore. It even bordered on being welcome. As long as it made her whole and serene, as long as it afforded him the miracle of her presence in his life.
He had no idea if she even loved him a fraction of how he loved her. But that, too, didn’t matter. Whatever she felt for him now was more than enough.
For a second chance with her, this time for life, he was willing, eager, happy, to put up with anything.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured this out before.
Starting the car, he put it in reverse and backed up into her parents’ driveway, in the exact same place he’d parked that first day he’d asked her to go with him.
This time, he would ask her to be with him. Forever.
* * *
Within ten minutes of being with her parents, Anastasia had expended all the hugs and kisses and the delight of seeing them again. Now an awkward silence descended on them. She really had nothing to say to them.
It wasn’t only Alex’s loss that gaped between them like a black hole that would forever suck any real brightness out of their relationship. They truly had nothing new to say to each other. They’d been talking regularly while she’d been in Russia, with her keeping them updated about her health while they’d kept her up-to-date with the incidents of their own uneventful lives, and the more bumpy adjustments of Cathy’s and the kids’. She knew her mother and father had always itched to learn the details of her situation with Ivan—what she’d adamantly refused to discuss.
Now there was nothing to discuss anymore.
Ivan had succumbed to her desire to return home, had been immovable about delivering her here himself. As he had that time when he’d gotten her and Alex home. It had been almost as horrible as those dark days, sitting onboard his jet with him, knowing that the hours had been counting down to separation from him once again. This time for what looked like a final time.
Suddenly, it all hit her.
This could actually be the end.
And there was absolutely no way she could let it be that.
She heaved up to her feet so suddenly she made her parents exclaim in alarm. Excusing herself, she told them she had to do something urgently and would be in touch as soon as she could. Then she ran out of the room with them gaping after her.
She couldn’t let Ivan go. She wouldn’t. Not this time.
In the past, in Russia, she hadn’t fought for him, for them. This time she would. Until her last breath, if need be.
Getting her phone out, she dialed his number as she ran to the door. And the phone rang. Not her phone. A phone on the other side of the door. For a second it didn’t make sense.
Then she snatched the door open.
He was there, one hand poised on the doorbell, the other reaching for the phone still ringing in his pocket.
Their gazes collided, a thousand volts of longing and relief arcing across the distance between them.
Then there was none, both hurtling to obliterate it.
She flew into his arms. The home that was hers alone, the man who was her haven, her succor.
Her everything.
Ivan kissed her, devoured her, gulping air through her lips as if he’d been suffocating without her, as she had without him in that short time they’d been apart. As if he, too, had felt his world coming to an end at the thought of losing her.
With tears flowing down her cheeks, she tore from his crushing embrace, needing to tell him everything she would do for him, for them. She grabbed his hand, dragged him behind her toward his car. Midway, she rethought her plan and doubled back toward the house, and up to her quarters, with Ivan rushing after her with his face an adorable mix of perplexity and compliance.
Closing the door of her bedroom, she tackled him down on her bed and stormed him with kisses, tears and smiles.
Then she realized something. Though he was surrendering to her, kissing her back with the same fervor, with the same shaky need for reconnection, that stiffness had reentered his body. Though he’d been unable to stay away, he was still loath to be there.
Putting this matter to rest once and for all was the one thing that could make her stop kissing him now. Pulling back, she was struck by the magnificent sight he made sprawled there, dwarfing the bed, the whole room, his raven hair strewn around his majestic head.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he spoke first, his voice hushed like a fervent prayer. But it was what he said that made her jackknife up, gape down on him.
“Anastasia, moye serdtse, ya nye magu zhit’ byes tyeba. I can’t live without you, my heart. I won’t. Marry me.”
His words and their meaning registered at once this time. And so did their total shock. He...he...
Ivan was proposing.
And she only knew one thing. She had to find her voice, to blurt out an acceptance.
But something held her back. His agitation. It went beyond worrying about her response. It hit pause on her surging jubilation.
She pulled him up. “There’s something wrong here, Ivan. You don’t seem happy about asking me this.”
“I am, or I will be when you say yes.”
Knowing there was more to this than he was letting on, she persisted, eyes roaming his face, feverishly attempting to see inside him. “If there’s any element of honor or duty or anything else involved here—”
“All my honor and duty and everything else I am are all about you.” She started to protest and his lips silenced hers, before he pulled back to pledge, “You’re everything to me, Anastasia, everything. I love you. I have always and will always love yo
u. Only ever you.”
“Oh, God, Ivan, I love you, too. You’re everything to me, too. You have always been and will always be. But—”
“No buts, moya lyubov, my love.”
“Yes, Ivan, but. These things you never told me are still like a rock on your chest, a constant crushing pain. I feel them and they hurt me, too. They’re not in your past, but very much in your present and I love you too much to let you carry them into your future. I want you with every fiber of my being and I was coming to tell you I’d do anything to be with you. But I won’t let you spare me, I won’t let you hide your pain and suffering from me anymore.”
* * *
Ivan knew this was it. She wouldn’t be satisfied with any more evasions. She couldn’t bear any more uncertainty, wouldn’t let him carry the burden alone any longer.
Feeling he’d be tearing out thorns that had been long embedded deep in his flesh, where scar tissue had formed layers that now had to be ripped open to extract them, he stalled.
“Say yes first, Anastasia. Say you’ll marry me.”
“This isn’t about me now, Ivan. This is about you. Let me in all the way, my love, let me heal you like you healed me.”
At his butchered groan, she contained him in such tenderness, such magnanimity that he’d never known existed, or that he’d ever be blessed enough to experience.
Kissing his brow, the voice he now lived to hear shook with all of her love and allegiance. “Be with me completely, Ivan. Be mine like I’m yours, past, present and future.”
Capitulating once and for all, he surrendered all that he was.
His secrets, his sins, his suffering.
Down to the last mutilating detail.
Nine
Anastasia thought she’d known the worst kind of devastation when Alex had been murdered.
But there seemed to be more kinds that were just as horrifying. And even more shocking.
Ivan. His past. What had been done to him. What he’d had to endure. What he’d been made to do. What he’d had to do to escape, to rebuild himself, to build his life and power.