Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
IGOR
PRESENT DAY
The party is in full swing and I’m doing a round in the gardens when Julian approaches me.
He opted for a casual outfit of large faded blue jeans and black cashmere sweater moulding his lean torso and arms in a way that makes my whole body stand at attention.
It’s a lie, though. His whole demeanour is anything but casual, his gait stiff.
It’s a shock to my system to realise I still know Julian as well as I do.
He wants to say something and isn’t sure how to bring it up.
He holds a glass of wine aloft on his hands, the multiple rings on his slender fingers reflecting the lights from the party behind him.
My heart clenches when my eyes land on his right finger, my ring back in place.
“Hey,” he says timidly.
“Hi.”
“Enjoying the party?”
“Mammona looks really happy.”
“She loves attention.”
His chuckle dies down quickly as he slides his empty hand into the pocket of his jeans. It’s dark, the night covering us from view, but I don’t miss how his fist clenches, hidden under the fabric. “You don’t have to be nervous around me, Jules.”
He scoffs. “Don’t I? I’m not sure how to make it easy for you.”
“Nothing will ever be easy for me.”
I don’t mean to make it sound so harsh. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You know, everyone keeps telling me I should stop chasing after you but I… I just can’t let you go. I love you just as much now as when the day I married you, Igor.”
“Jules…”
“No, please. Let me finish. I have to say the words that are stuck inside me, otherwise I feel like they might kill me. I love you. I know that you think you don’t deserve it.
I’ve known you for decades, Igor. Even back when we were teenagers, you always looked at me like you couldn’t believe I loved you.
And you have that same look when you watch me, now.
You think what happened in Russia will make me love you less but you were as much a victim as everyone else.
I’m willing to wait for you. Weeks, month, years.
I’ve had three years to miss you to the point of madness.
I just want to be your safe place. And if it’s not now, that’s fine. I just ask you one thing.”
He’s almost out of breath, and I’m hanging onto every single word. When he asks that I do something for him, my instincts take over. I could never refuse him, and I’m not about to start now.
“What?”
“Please let me tell you and show you every day that I love you. I’m not asking you to say it in return, or to do anything you’re not ready for. I’ll move out of the flat if you want to fully have your own space.”
The suggestion sends a shockwave of discomfort through me, from my head to my toes.
Julian might be insistent and a reminder that I will never be enough for him, but being physically separated is just not an option.
In just a few weeks, I’ve grown too accustomed to hearing him grumble when he wakes up, until he’s had his morning coffee.
I enjoy counting the minutes he stays in the shower.
Six and a few seconds. Every morning. He doesn’t like wasting water.
“You don’t have to do that. I just…” I’m scared, I leave unsaid.
When I was in my brother’s clutches, dying inside every day, I had nothing left to lose.
Now, as happiness peeks from between the clouds of my depression and unsafe mind, it would kill me if Julian and the rest of the Moretti finally decide that they’ve had enough of my shit.
They think I was a victim, but I was a bystander.
I let Misha kill and abuse people, all in the name of protecting them.
They think they know what that can do to a mind, but they don’t.
They believe they would forgive but they have no idea the level of depravity that went on at the compound.
Julian takes a sip of wine, his throat bobbing as he swallows, distracting me from my morose thoughts.
I don’t know how to get back to each other, but maybe I can try. “How’s this wine?”
“The best,” he whispers. “I called it Girasole.”
His baby blue eyes, midnight in the absence of the sun to illuminate them, ensnare me. Girasole. Sunflower.
“You named a wine after…”
“The best day of our lives? Yes.”
I take a step back. The shame I can’t contain anymore almost makes me ill, nausea rising at the back of my throat and taking me captive.
Julian wrongly interprets my move. His face falls.
“Okay, well. I’m gonna go back to the party. I’ll see you tonight?” He asks, hopeful.
I’m frozen, incapable of forming the words or nodding. I wouldn’t be able to lie to him. This is too much. All this love, all these words of kindness, I can’t accept them any longer.
Don’t they all see? Doesn’t he of all people see and feel that I’m too far gone? If he loves me and I let myself be loved by him, I’m bound to disappoint him further, to break him somehow.
When his silhouette has disappeared inside the mansion, I turn back on my heels. Music floats through the open windows, an upbeat rhythm accompanying me all the way through the back of the garden where I’ve hidden what I need. In case it came to this moment. And it did.
The ropes I used all these years ago to tie Julian up are rough against my fingers. This is the last bodily sensation I allow myself. Then, I retreat into the dark place into my mind where nothing exists. Its familiar weightlessness welcomes me.
I know the bounds well. I practiced them before.
Testing the rope from around the branch I tied it to, the wood of the tree creaks but doesn’t give. I lift a few stones to give me something to step on. I wrap the loop around my neck and look out to the sea, dark and almost indistinguishable from the night.
I should have known my life would end on a moonless night.