Chapter 15 Vera #3
The question makes my throat tight. I would have said yes without hesitation a few weeks ago and would have been insulted by the question, hurt that anyone would doubt it.
But now, sitting here in the firelight, trying to summon those feelings and finding them increasingly distant—I don’t know how to answer.
“I thought I did,” I whisper finally, my stomach feeling sour. “I had never been with someone like Alexei before. He made me feel special. Like I was the only important person in the world.”
“But?” Dimitri prompts when I fall silent.
I bite my lip so hard I’m afraid I’ll draw blood. How do I tell Alexei’s brother the next part? “But I don’t know if he felt the same,” I say in a small voice. “Sometimes I think—I think maybe I loved the idea of him. The forbidden romance.”
I’m thinking about all those red flags again. The canceled plans. The disappearing acts. The way he never wanted to be seen in public. The conversations that were always about him.
“He would cancel on me,” I hear myself saying.
“A lot. Last minute with vague, bullshit excuses. And I’d forgive him because when we were together, he was so—” I search for the word but fall back on words I’ve said before.
“Attentive. Charming. He’d apologize and promise to make it up to me, and I’d melt. ”
Dimitri’s watching me intently now, his tea forgotten.
“And he’d disappear for days,” I continue, the words tumbling out now that I’ve started. “No contact, no explanation. Then he’d show up and act like it was completely normal like I shouldn’t be worried or hurt or confused.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
Did I ever. We had several fights over it, some so explosive they scared me.
Alexei had been one of the sweetest men I ever met but his temper was the stuff of legends.
“Yes. He always said it was family business. That Volkov business was complicated and he was protecting me by keeping me separate from it.” I laugh bitterly.
“I thought that was noble at the time. Protective. Now I wonder if maybe he just didn’t want anyone to know about me. ”
Dimitri looks aghast at my comment. “What makes you think that?”
"Because every time I asked about going public with our relationship—telling our families, or at least his friends—he’d deflect.
” I hug my knees tighter, remembering how frustrated and worried I had been whenever he said it wasn’t time yet.
“It was always an excuse—the timing isn’t right, things need to calm down first. But the timing was never right.
Things never calmed down. And I started to feel like—like maybe I was a secret he wanted to keep. ”
Dimitri is very still now. “Did he make you happy?” His voice is low.
Did he? I thought so at the time. But was I really happy, or was I just caught up in the excitement of it all?
“I-I don’t know,” I admit. “In the moment, yes. When we were together, yes. But looking back—” I stop, uncertain how much to reveal. “Looking back, I don’t know if what we had was real or if it was just—”
“A fantasy,” Dimitri finishes quietly.
“Yes.” The word feels like a betrayal, but it’s also the truth.
I look at Dimitri. “But I don’t know if he felt the same,” I say, twisting my fingers together.
“Sometimes I think—I think I fell so easily because he said all the right things. But real love isn’t about grand promises and secret meetings and forbidden romance. Real love is—”
I stop myself before I can finish that thought. Before I can say what real love looks like to me now. What it feels like. Who it feels like.
The silence that follows is heavy.
“He was always good at making people feel special,” Dimitri finally says as he stares at the fire, and there’s a bitterness in his tone I wasn’t expecting. “He had a way of knowing just how to make you think you meant something to him. But he never let anyone really know him.”
He looks at me then, and the pain in his eyes is overwhelming. “Even me. Especially me, apparently. I thought I knew him. I thought he told me everything, but he was living this whole secret life, and I had no idea.”
The hurt in his voice makes my chest ache. I want to comfort him and reach across the space between us and take his hand. But that would be crossing a line, because sitting here in the firelight, talking about Alexei, all I can think about is Dimitri.
How different this feels from those secret afternoons with Alexei.
Alexei felt like a fairy tale—beautiful but ultimately fragile, existing in spaces between reality where consequences couldn’t touch us.
Dimitri feels like truth. Hard and unforgiving and impossible to ignore.
And I’m seriously a fucking piece of shit for thinking that.
“I think—” I start, then stop, not sure what I was going to say.
That I think about Dimitri constantly? That I’m terrified by how right it feels when I’m with him? That somewhere between hating him and being trapped by him, I’ve started to have feelings I have no right to feel?
But before I can figure out how to finish that sentence, Dimitri slams the walls back up. I can see it happen in the way his expression shutters and how every line of his body goes rigid.
“It’s late,” he says, his voice suddenly cold and distant. “You should get some rest. For the baby.”
The dismissal stings more than it should. “Dimitri—” I protest.
“Goodnight, Vera.” He stands, already turning toward the door.
And I’m left sitting there, feeling relieved and devastated in equal measure.
Relieved because I almost said something I can’t take back. I stupidly almost revealed feelings that would complicate everything beyond repair. But I’m devastated because he’s walking away. He felt the shift too (I know he did) and he chose distance over—over whatever this could be.
I make my way back to my room alone. The house feels emptier without his presence, colder without the possibility that he might appear at my door.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling like a cheater.
Alexei was murdered by my own family not that long ago and I just sat in that library and picked apart our relationship. I found every flaw and questioned whether I even really loved him. I spoke about him critically to his brother.
What kind of idiot does that?
Don’t answer that. I already know the answer.
Alexei was nothing but kind to me. Loving. He made me feel special, made me laugh, and made me believe in the possibility of something more. He didn’t deserve to die and he certainly doesn’t deserve me questioning his feelings, dismissing what we had as if it meant nothing.
So why can’t I stop? Why do I keep looking for the negative traits, the red flags, and the reasons it wasn’t real? Why am I so desperate to convince myself that what we had wasn’t love?
Because if it wasn’t love, then what I’m feeling for Dimitri isn’t a betrayal, right?
That’s what this is about. I’m trying to absolve myself of guilt by rewriting history, convincing myself that Alexei and I weren’t really in love, so it’s okay that I’m developing feelings for his brother.
But that’s not fair to Alexei. And it’s not fair to what we had, whatever that was.
I press my hands over my face, fighting back tears.
I don’t know what the truth is anymore. I don’t know if I loved Alexei or if I loved the idea of him. I don’t know if what I’m feeling for Dimitri is real or just proximity and trauma and desperation for human connection.
All I know is that I can’t stop thinking about Dimitri’s hands. His voice. The way he looked at me in the library tonight, like he was seeing all the way through me, like he understood everything I was trying not to say.
Like I mattered.
The same way Alexei used to make me feel. But different.
And I hate myself for comparing them, for replacing one brother with another in my heart like they’re interchangeable.
They’re not. Alexei was sunshine and laughter and easy charm. Dimitri is storms and intensity and brutal honesty. They couldn’t be more different.
So why does being with Dimitri feel more right than being with Alexei ever did?
The question plagues me as I fall into an uneasy sleep.
Around two a.m., I hear footsteps in the hallway outside my door. I hold my breath, my whole body going tense. The footsteps pause right outside my room and I can picture him standing there, hand raised to knock, deciding.
Choosing.
The silence stretches for what feels like an eternity. My heart pounds so hard I’m sure he can hear it through the door. Every part of me is screaming for him to open it, to come in, to—
To what? I don’t even know. I just know I don’t want to be alone.
But the footsteps slowly retreat until they fade into silence, and I’m left staring at the door, not knowing if I feel relieved or heartbroken.
Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe I’m so tangled up in guilt and grief and want that I can’t tell the difference anymore.
I finally fall asleep around three, confused and so guilty I can barely stand it.
And I dream of gray eyes instead of blue ones.
Of a man who sees me, really sees me, in a way I’m not sure Alexei ever did.
And when I wake up in the morning, the guilt is worse because somewhere in the night, a truth settled into my bones that I can’t ignore anymore.
I’m falling for Dimitri Volkov.
And nothing about that is right.