Page 164 of Cashmere Ruin

My heart skips a beat. My stupid, stupid heart, still holding onto every crumb it can find: affection, love, hope. A future in paling grays. “I’m tired. Can we do this another time?”

“No.”

I sigh. “Matvey?—”

“You don’t have to let me in,” he adds. “I’ll talk from here. You just have to listen.”

Listen.It’s what I begged of him all those months ago. How can I deny him now? How can I deny him anything?

“Fine. But I don’t want to fight.”

“Neither do I.”

With a slow exhale, I turn my back to the door and let myself lean against it. My palm finds a spot to rest on, fingers slightly curled, as if looking for a hand on the other side.

I wonder if there is one. If, right now, Matvey’s doing the same thing I am: putting all the weight of the past few days on this impersonal slab of wood, the only physical thing separating us. The door he used to come through every night for dinner. The door I used to open for him, after a knock just like tonight’s.

The door I might never open again.

I’ve already made up my mind. He doesn’t know, but I have. This is the last chance I’m going to give him. If he keeps missing the point—if he keeps trying to shove me in a penthouse-shaped box for him to come and go as he likes, in the dark, while he steps out into the light with Petra on his arm—then I’ll pack my things and leave. I’ll go back to my old apartment with June. I’ll go back to my old life, the life I would have led if that fateful kidnapping had never happened. If I’d never had to seek out the stranger I met that day at the tailor shop.

If I never got to know him in the first place.

And if he wants to see May, of course I’ll let him. Of course I’ll open another door for him, treat him like the father of my daughter, treat him as a friend. Maybe we could get there, in time.

And maybe, in time, I could forget him.

It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. Even thinking about it is enough to bring tears to my eyes, tightness to my throat, and how lucky is it that I don’t have to talk tonight? That I can hide behind this wall we’ve built?

All I have to do is listen. For two words that will never, ever come.

Because this is Matvey Groza we’re talking about. He’s already apologized for a lifetime; he’s not going to do it again.

He’s justnot.

He’s—

“I’m sorry.”

I blink through the tears. “Huh?”

He doesn’t hear me. It was such a small sound, so of course he doesn’t hear me. But he does one thing: he keeps talking. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, like a mantra he hasn’t quite mastered yet. “For everything.”

I find my voice again. Weak, and small, but there. “What’s ‘everything’?”

“My choices,” he replies. “From the start, I’ve been making the wrong ones. When you came to me at the wedding, I should’ve called it off. I didn’t know what you’d become to me, but I shouldhave. I should have known. Maybe part of me always knew, deep down.”

“Matvey…?”

“And everything after that, too,” he continues, oblivious to the way I’m shaking. The wayhe’smaking me shake, one word at a time. “The coldness. The silence. I was so cruel to you. I literally pushed you to the edge.”

“That wasn’t you.” I shake my head in the dark. “That was a lot of things. That wasme.”

“But it was me, too. And I should’ve seen it coming.” He takes a deep, ragged breath, like he’s in pain. Like the words are splinters and he’s prying them out one by one. “I promised I’d listen after that, but I didn’t. Not really.”

“You did,” I protest.

“No, I didn’t. I missed the most important part. The part you weren’t saying out loud.”

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