Page 206 of Cashmere Cruelty

Because I can’t give her up, that’s why.

I can never give up April Flowers.

I can never give up on us.

So why don’t you tell her?

I feel like my head is going to explode. I barely hear the words she says to me after, or the words I say to her. Everything’s wrapped up in a fog.

Anger. Fear. Jealousy. Need.

All I register is her face as she cries.

I shut the door behind my back and bite my knuckles bloody.“Tomorrow,”I rasp.

If she’s still like this tomorrow…

“I’ll tell her. Trust or no trust.”

Blood or no blood.

65

APRIL

“If I can’t have you, no one can.”

After the initial shock has passed, I can only feel one thing: rage.

How dare he? Who does he think he is? Discarding me like a broken toy, then claiming no one else can have me? Condemning me to a life of loneliness because?—

Because what?

Helovesme?

As if.

As. Fucking. If.

That night, I’m a statue of salt. I endure dinner like I’m enduring stitches. I set my jaw, bite down on my lip, and I don’t say a damn thing.

Silence—but on my terms.

“April…”

Of course—now, he speaks. The silence isn’t working now that he isn’t its master any longer. “About this wedding… there’s something you should?—”

“No.”

I watch him blink. “‘No’?”

It’s a sick parody of last night’s exchange. “No,” I repeat, putting down my napkin with enough force to make the plates tremble. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“You have to.”

“Oh, I ‘have to’?” I hear myself laugh, but there isn’t a single trace of joy in it. It’s a broken, howling sound. Like the wind through an abandoned house. “Yesterday, you made it abundantly clear it was none of my business. And now, I have to listento you?”

“Sit down,” Matvey growls.

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