Page 66 of Charmingly Obsessed
“You didn’t turn it into a joke. Yeah, right.” He repeats my words, his voice flat and hollow. He nods slowly, gaze drifting around the room as if searching for an answer in the polished emptiness. “So what’s my crime, then, wife? I said what Ithought. What I felt. You think that’s shameful? To admit I care about my own wife?”
He takes a sharp breath, eyes locking onto mine with unnerving stillness.
“You know what I think, Diana? Huh? You wanna know what I really fucking think?” His voice drops, low and searing. “I think all those so-called husbands—the ones who pretend they don’t care, who treat commitment like a goddamn prison sentence—are nothing but pathetic, cowardly losers. That’s what I think.”
“That’s not what this is about!” My voice is raw, frayed with tears I refuse to shed. “Not that! I… Maybe I had dreams, Mykola! Maybe I imagined… that when I finally got married—if I ever got married—it would be to someone who actually needed me. Really, truly, desperately needed me. Someone really obsessed with me. Me, specifically. Diana Bilova. Not just… a convenient placeholder. Not just a means to an end. Not just—”
He laughs.
But it’s not just any laugh. It’s wild. Guttural. Devastating. A sound hollow and heartbroken and furious all at once. It drowns out my panic. It swallows my ragged breaths whole.
And that’s when I snap.
I lunge at him—because if I don’t, I’ll explode. Shatter into a million irreparable pieces from the sheer, unbearable injustice of it all.
I don’t care how childish it looks. How irrational.
Let me be immature. Let me be insane.
Kids have rights too, don’t they? Dreams. Hopes. Feelings.
Even when they’re wrong.
But he lunges at me too. At the exact same instant.
And of course, he’s faster. Stronger. Always.
He catches my flailing fists easily. His grip is like steel around my wrists, yanking me hard against his chest until the air rushes from my lungs.
“Shhh,” Frez hisses, his voice low and electric against my ear. “Shhh, my sunshine. My beautiful, crazy, infuriating sunshine.” His breath is hot and ragged. “You’re insane. Completely, gloriously, dangerously insane. And so fucking blind!”
I twist against him, desperate to escape, but his hold only tightens—unyielding.
“You want to be needed, Diana? Is that it?” His voice rasps raw against my hair. “Fine. I need you. Christ, I need you like my next fucking breath. Like a drowning man needs air. Is that desperate enough for you?” He shakes me—first gently, then not so gently. “And yes—I’m obsessed with my wife! Madly! So why the hell shouldn’t I say it? Why can’t I tell the whole goddamn world the truth? That I finally found her? That she’s mine?”
Somewhere around his fifth furious word, I coil like a spring. My whole body is buzzing, vibrating—seconds from bursting out of my own skin.
I’m shaking uncontrollably. And he… he’s cupping my face now. His thumbs stroke away the angry tears I didn’t even realize were falling. Then his hands slide to my shoulders, gripping me tight.
“Madly obsessed with my wife,” he murmurs again, his voice a mocking caress against my lips—before suddenly exploding, shouting raw from the depths of his soul: “And my wife is you, Diana! Got it? You! Only you!”
No consciousness — human or divine — could ever comprehend the look on his face in that moment.
Because once again, I am staring into the face of a man possessed. By what, I don’t know. Madness? Love? Despair? All of it?
“Kolya,” I whisper. Something deep inside me, something I thought was dead and buried, cracking open, splintering, letting in a terrifying, blinding sliver of… hope? My whole body shakes. “Is… is that… true?”
25
Chapter 25 Diana
“So do I have your permission to say the truth, Diana?” His voice is a low, crackling current of electricity that sizzles along my nerve endings. The fine hairs on my arms stand on end.
“Or is that too… spontaneous for your carefully curated sensibilities?” He leans closer, intensity blazing in his gaze. “Because I already told everyone. The entire goddamn world. I said it! Because it’s the truth. Yeah. The simple truth!”
His bristling, almost feral appearance—the untamed emotion blazing in his eyes—somehow pulls me out of the depths of my own shock.
Why is he talking like this? Like he’s defending himself. From me. He doesn’t need to defend himself from me. I… Who here holds all the cards? Who has all the power? Not me. That’s for damn sure.
