Page 61 of Sapphire Tears

“For fuck’s sake,” he growls, flinging the phone across the room. It hits the wall right over my bed and lands squarely on one of the cushions. Maybe it’s broken, maybe it’s not. I doubt it matters much anymore.

“You could be lying to me,” I whisper. “It’s a possibility. You’ve lied to me before.”

“Not telling you about The Accident was not a lie.”

“A lie by omission is as good as that,” I snap angrily. “You deliberately kept this huge, life-changing thing from me. So what else are you hiding?”

“I thought we agreed to trust each other.”

“No—youagreed. I said nothing.”

His eyes are doing that dark, splintering thing that makes it hard for me to look away, no matter how badly I want to. “Are you still in love with him?” he asks bluntly.

I stiffen. I don’t answer right away, maybe because I want to determine just how serious he is about that question. It doesn’t take me long to find an answer: really fucking serious.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” I say softly. “Especially after everything I know about him now. I don’t think I love him the way I once did. But I do still care about Adrian.”

He rolls his eyes. “Then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”

“Do you really think that love is a faucet you can just turn on and off?” I cry desperately, faltering toward him. “I fell for Adrian at one point in my life. I loved him. That doesn’t just go away because he changed.”

“He never changed,” Kolya seethes. “He just pretended to be someone he was not—especially with you.”

“Maybe,” I acknowledge. “But that’s the man I knew. That’s the man I cared for. I can’t stop caring about him now just because you think I should.”

He turns away from me, hands knotted at his sides like he wants to punch something. I wonder if he’s even aware of how he’s vibrating with rage.

“Were you running back to him when you left here?” Kolya asks as he gazes out the window, his voice dipping dangerously low.

“What?”

He glances at me. “Were you going back to him?”

“No!” I say, my tone rising defensively. “No, of course not.”

He scoffs, obviously not buying that for a second. “That slippery little fucker. I should have ended him a long time ago.”

I stop short. Kolya looks like he’s on the cusp of self-destruction right now.

Maybe we all are.

“You don’t mean that.”

He meets my gaze, and I flinch back at the intensity in those boiling blue eyes. “What if I do?”

“Is that really what you want?” I ask. “Taking Adrian out of the picture so that I have no choice but to stay with you? Do you really think you’d be content getting your way like that?” I inch closer and rest a hand on his forearm. I can feel his pulse pounding through his clenched muscles. “I wasn’t running to Adrian, Kolya. How can you even think that after what happened between us? It wasn’t about him at all. It wasn’t about you, either. It was about me.”

He looks at me curiously and waits for me to continue.

“This world scares me,” I murmur through unshed tears. “Hearing about your mother scared me. I didn’t want that for myself, and I don’t want that for my child. I guess I just wanted to leave before my courage left me. I wanted to leave before I decided losing myself was worth it as long as it meant I got to keep you. That’s what scares me most of all.”

His eyes soften as I speak. Maybe there’s a small kernel of understanding there. Maybe I’m just imagining it.

“It’s not so easy to determine what’s right and who to believe when…” I sigh. “When my feelings are involved. And they are involved, Kolya. I didn’t make any secret of the fact that I loved you.”

“Except that you love Adrian, too.”

I shake my head. “You’re not listening. I said I loved Adrian once. And I care about him still. That’s not the same thing.”

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