Page 17 of Savage Love

I miss touching him, in so many different ways. This doesn’t feel like enough, but it’s what I have.

He takes me all the way out into the riotous array of flowers, and then, on the small winding stone path that Isabella placed among them leading to the bench, to my utter shock, he goes down on one knee.

I stare down at him as he fumbles in his pocket, my lips parting, startled beyond being able to speak. When he opens the black velvet box in his hand, it makes it even more impossible for me to come up with a single thing to say.

The ring in the box is beautiful. A sparkling oval diamond on a rose gold band, with two deep red stones on either side—either garnets or rubies, I can’t be sure which. It glimmers in the evening light, and I feel tears well up in my eyes as I imagine Levin choosing this for me, hand-picking it, trying to decide what I might like.

It doesn’t make sense. With things as they are, why would he buy me a ring?

The question comes out before I can stop it.

“Why are you doing this?” I blurt out. “If you don’t love me—why? I don’t understand.”

I think I see a flicker of hurt on his face, but I can’t be sure. I know better than anyone how excellent of a poker face Levin has. He’s employed it often with me.

“I do care for you,” he says softly, and somehow that burns worse than ever.

“I know you think that helps,” I tell him, taking a step back, feeling my heart ache in my chest. “But every time you say it, all I hear is what comes after.I do care for you, but I don’t love you.I can hear the words you don’t say just as well as the ones you do.”

“I’m sorry.” He stands up then, still holding the open box in his hand. I see his other hand twitch, almost as if he’s going to reach out and touch me, and then he stops himself. “I want you to have everything you deserve, Elena. You’re losing out on so much of that, because of me. Because I didn’t protect you from my own lust. Your life will be entirely different now on account of this. All of it has changed, like that.” He snaps his fingers, and I flinch, my heart aching with every word. All I hear is obligation. “So I wanted you to have a real proposal, and a ring. You deserve to experience all of this, and I—”

“Did you propose to her?” Once again, the question comes out before I can stop it, and it’s Levin’s turn to look stunned. I’ve rarely asked him about his late wife, and never so bluntly. “Did you buy her a ring? You must have. It wasn’t like this, was it?”

Levin swallows hard, and his hand closes around the ring box. “Is this you telling me no, Elena? Are you not going to marry me?” I can’t tell if I hear relief or disappointment in his voice, or if there’s neither. I’m only making it up because I want him to feel something strongly, something besides acquiescing to my desires and what the right thing is.

Tears burn at the back of my eyes. “I’m going to marry you,” I tell him quietly. “But I’m marrying you for the sake of our baby. I’m not going to accept a proposal or wear a ring that you give me that isn’t because you love me.”

This time, I do see hurt on his face. I’m not happy about it; I don’t want to hurt him, but at the same time, I’m glad to see some emotion. I want him to understand that this isn’t what I want, either, not like this.

He takes a deep breath, pocketing the ring, and then he sinks down onto the bench, his elbows resting on his knees.

“Lidiya and I got married under strange circumstances,” he says finally. “It was to save her. The job we were on together—it went bad. There was an issue with one of the cartel bosses. The only way to keep her safe from him,reallysafe, was for us to get married.”

“Did you want to marry her?” I don’t know why I’m still asking the questions. Hearing the answers is only going to hurt. But if I’m going to be with Levin forever, I feel like I need to know.

He looks up at me, and I wonder if he’s deciding whether to tell the truth or not. If he’s weighing his options.

“Yes,” he says finally. “I wanted to marry her. She wasn’t so sure. I had no idea if it was going to be a real marriage, or if she was going to have it annulled when we got back to Moscow. But we had to lay low for a little while and go to Tokyo first. And by the time we got back—”

He breaks off, whether because he doesn’t want to say more or he’s sure I don’t want to hear it, I don’t know.

“That doesn’t answer your question, though,” he says finally, after a long moment of silence. “I didn’t propose to her before we were married. I didn’t buy her a ring. But I did, in Tokyo. I didn’t ask her to marry me, exactly—but I asked her to stay my wife. To try to make some kind of life with me—to trust me with our future.”

Levin’s head bows forward, his shoulders slumping, and in that moment, I can see the weight of everything that’s happened, and how heavily it rests on him. It makes me feel guilty for having brought it up, knowing how much it must hurt.

But I need to understand.

“She trusted me with her future,” he repeats. “And I failed. I am doing my best, Elena, since a certain future has been decided for us. But I have been trying to warn you, again and again, not to do the same. This isn’t going to be a marriage of love. This is me trying to do right by you–and trying not to fail, again.”

“There issomefuture, though. There has to be.” I press my hand against my stomach without thinking, feeling the ache spread through me. “We have to figure it out together, Levin. It’s not enough for you to justbehere. I need you to be a part of this.”

“I’m going to do my best.” He looks at me, his lips pressed tightly together. “I was supposed to have a child before, Elena. You heard what Vasquez said. And you know what happened.”

“Were you happy about it, then?” Another question that I don’t know if I really want the answer to, but it’s there anyway, out in the open. “Did you want—”

Levin lets out a heavy sigh. “I was afraid,” he says flatly. “Fucking terrified. And then, once I came around to the idea–I found that I didn’t mind it. But it doesn’t matter,” he adds, pushing himself up from the bench. “This is the past, Elena, and—”

“A past that clearly still affects you now.” My arms are wrapped around my middle despite the warmth of the evening, and I feel a chill settling through me. “It’s coming between us, whether you want for it to or not–”

---