Chapter 13 #2
Petra’s curled up on one end of the couch with her laptop on her knees, so I take the chair closest to her. I try to ignore the long expanse of smooth skin on her legs. Those sleep shorts she’s got on are incredibly short and leave nothing to the imagination.
She turns to face me. “Did you say ‘no’? Or did you continuously brush Sofia off when she asked?”
“Either way, I didn’t say ‘yes.’”
“You do know that Stella and Harper used to have sleepovers regularly, right?”
“Define regularly.”
“Like usually once a month they’d stay with Sofia and her husband, giving Niko and Colette a night off, and once a month they’d stay with your brother, giving Sofia and her husband some alone time.
It was a normal part of Stella’s life, and it sure seems like you’ve—” She pauses like she’s considering her words.
“—unintentionally taken that away from Stella.”
It pisses me off that she’s right, but also she doesn’t know how much I hate letting Stella out of my sight. She’s the only family I have left. “You don’t know the whole story,” I say.
One of her eyebrows rises higher than the other. “You’re going to have to give me more than that if you want me to understand your reasoning.”
“You don’t have to understand,” I say, the frustration evident in my voice. “I just need you to do what I say when it comes to Stella.”
She sets her laptop on the couch and stands, which has me standing too. It’s a face-off without the puck. Arguing with Petra has always been a favorite pastime.
“I’m not here to do your bidding. I’m not your fucking employee,” she says, her words slow and deliberate, and so low they sound like sexual seduction instead of the frustration they actually are. “I’m here to do what’s best for Stella.”
“What I decide is best for Stella, is best for her. I need you to trust me on that.”
She inches forward so we’re nearly toe-to-toe. “How can I possibly trust you when you’re not being honest with me?”
“Because it’s me,” I say, and I know my words sound desperate.
I need her to go back to trusting me and all I can do is appeal to the reminder of the friendship we once had.
“Because we were best friends once, and because even though you’re obviously still mad at me, I think deep down you know that I have your best interests at heart too. Always have.”
She barks out a scornful laugh. “Right.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. You want me to trust you, because you’re you?
You are the one person in this world who has disappointed me beyond everyone else.
My life has been a series of men disappointing me, so for you to have first place in that category speaks volumes.
” There’s color creeping into her cheeks.
Petra doesn’t blush. I know because I spent my entire childhood trying to get a rise out of her that way before realizing it was impossible.
So this blush can only be her anger creeping into her skin.
I know she intended for those words to slice into me, and they do.
I don’t know what’s stopping me from telling her why I left her like I did.
I could tell her I did it for her, to protect her from an unwanted marriage.
I suppose I hold back because in telling her the truth, I might have to admit the depth of my feelings, or the fact that it was me—not my father—who paid for her boarding school.
But mostly, I think, because I’d have to explain why my father’s ultimatum was to either marry her or never see her again, which means I’d also have to tell her the truth about him and her mother.
And I don’t think I can do that without permanently ruining things between us.
Now that she’s back in my life, I’d rather have this fractured relationship with her than have her never speak to me again. But even more importantly, and the only thing that should matter to me right now—I need her to agree to help me adopt Stella. And if she knew the truth, she might not.
“You’ve got nothing to say about that?” she asks when I’ve been lost in my own thoughts for too long.
“I know I hurt you, Petra, and I’m sorry,” I tell her as I put my hands on her shoulders. “But I need you to know that I’ve only ever acted to protect you, just like I’m doing now for Stella.”
“To protect me? By leaving me? What am I missing?” Her eyebrows dip and I want to cup her face in my hands, smooth out her furrowed brows with my thumbs.
I can’t say what I really need to say, so instead I tell her, “You were so young. I wasn’t what you really wanted.”
“What you know about me, and what I wanted back then, could fill a thimble. You don’t get to make decisions for me, Aleksandr. Not then, not now.
But you do get to make decisions for Stella, and I fail to see how keeping her from returning to normal things, like sleepovers at her best friend’s place, is what’s in her best interest.”
She’s on her toes, leaning up toward me as she drills her finger into my chest. She’s so fucking close it’s hard to breathe.
“I just want to keep her as safe as possible. I know she’s safe here.”
Petra’s voice softens when she says, “Part of why you want to adopt Stella is to make sure that Sofia becomes her guardian if anything were to happen to you, right? So there’s no one she could possibly be safer with.”
She does have a point and if I have to bend somewhere, this is probably the right place.
“Besides”—she shrugs, which has my hands falling from her shoulders—“you trusted her with me after I’d known her for a week. Sofia and Harper are practically family to her.”
“Of course I trust you, I’ve known you my whole life.” I soften my stance, no longer feeling like we’re ready to go to battle.
“You have a funny way of remembering things.” Her lip curves up and her laugh is sardonic.
“Until I was thirteen, you wouldn’t give me the time of day.
When I was sixteen, you disappeared from my life.
Don’t give me this ‘I’ve known you my whole life’ shit when we really only knew each other for three years. ”
I can feel the muscles in my back tense up. It makes sense that this is how she remembers things.
“You think I didn’t know you before then, and haven’t followed what you’ve been up to since?” I’m dangerously close to saying too much, and willing myself to shut the hell up.
She folds her arms across her chest. I wish she wouldn’t do that.
All it does is push up her cleavage into the scooped neck of her T-shirt so I have a hard time focusing on anything but her chest. I drag my eyes away, looking up at her face, but it’s impossible not to focus in on those lips.
Wide and full, they mock me because all I want to do is taste them.
Fuck, I didn’t think through this whole having her move in plan before jumping into it.
Finally she says, “Careful, you’re sounding a lot like a stalker.” Her voice is teasing, and she steps away from me, the moment of tension broken.
When she sinks back into her seat, I do the same, crossing my ankle over my knee. I’m half relieved that she deescalated this before it turned into something more, and half disappointed to not find out what that “something more” would have been. Fighting with her has always felt like foreplay.
“I have to be honest, I didn’t even once envision a scenario where my wife called me a stalker.”
“That is so weird,” she says, shaking her head.
I know very well what she means, but I can’t help teasing her more. “You think I should have envisioned a wife who thought I was a stalker?”
She laughs when I wink at her, then shakes her head again. “Can you not call me your wife? It’s just . . .”