Chapter 16 - Anton
There’s nothing about this woman that I don’t notice. If I let myself admit it, I suppose it’s always been there, this innate awareness of her, oftentimes to my own annoyance.
But what had once been unchosen curiosity has, in a remarkably short period of time, become knowledge and understanding about who she is, how she works, and what is unusual for her.
It seems, however, that I haven’t gotten to know her as much as I believed that I had, since I can’t for the life of me name exactly what it is about her that has felt off all week.
She’s still Darya. Dry and quick-witted Darya. Beautiful and mercurial Darya. Effortlessly put together and unfailingly adept Darya. On the surface, all is well. There’s no overt friction between us. We are maintaining the new status quo of balancing tongue-in-cheek quips and keeping the peace.
Yet, though it isn’t as if she’s suddenly recoiling from my touch, she’s been feeling distant even when she’s looking right at me. She hasn’t let me touch her all week, claiming her breasts feel sore. I have no reason not to believe her, except—
When our eyes meet, it’s like looking at her through a glass partition; I can see her, clear as day, but I’m aware of a solid, impenetrable blockage in the path.
It’s strange, isn’t it, how all I’d wanted when she first walked up to me all those months ago was for her to leave me the fuck alone.
I’d wanted for her to stop talking—to cease her random philosophizing.
To not look at me with familiarity and warmth, as if we were friends.
She feels like my friend now, albeit in an entirely different way than Anastasia does. Or she did right up until a week ago.
Now that I know how it feels to have her, no matter the past, I’m not willing to give her up. Not even to her own secrets.
It doesn’t matter how much I rack my brain. I can’t figure it out. What the fuck did I do? Was it something someone else did—one of her brothers? Would it piss her off further for me to ask one of them? Miron, maybe?
No. That would be fucking insane, probably.
Par for the course, I guess, since I feel like a madman.
A madman who can’t focus on anything, as can be seen from the fact that I come home early, then find myself irritated beyond belief when Darya is nowhere to be found.
I’m acting like a clingy little bitch.
This realization should probably stop me in my tracks.
But it doesn’t. Without preamble, I have my phone out of my pocket and in my hand.
Let’s call it a fucking win that I don’t call her and demand where she is like some alpha male motherfucker; she’d probably divorce me on the spot.
In comparison, surely it is leaps and bounds more tame to shoot her a quick, pithy text message.
Me: Let’s go out tonight
Me: Dress for me, and I’ll make it worth your while
Not needy. Sexy, right?
It slakes my thirst for her attention for a moment when it appears that she is typing a response within the next minute. The relief of it doesn’t last long, but it’s something.
My phone vibrates in my fist.
Darya: Define “out”
I consider Google searching for the word and shooting a screenshot of the definition her way, like a juvenile smartass. However, in case I did actually piss her off somehow, I don’t want to accidentally make it worse.
So, I reassess my approach. I pause, take a beat.
Then start typing.
Me: To dinner. Do not be difficult.
She isn’t much of a texter, my wife, or so I’ve found over the past two months of marriage. So, I’m unsurprised when she doesn’t reply, leaving me on Read instead. In fact, I pretty much resign myself to finding out when she comes home whether she’s down to play this game with me or not.
I’m taken aback when I get a response after all.
Darya: If you didn’t want a difficult woman on your hands, you probably should’ve coerced a different woman into marriage
Darya: Maybe my brother, Leonid
Despite myself, a grin sprawls across my face.
And I enjoy not having to wonder, for the first time in days, whether Darya is thinking what I am: about that day I gathered everyone—her people and mine, albeit her corner was a larger body count—in St. Trinity’s church.
About the chaos, and how it’s led us here.
Me: You aren’t funny
Those may be the words I text Darya, but I hope she’ll know what I truly mean. Her reply assures me she does.
Darya: Lie to me and tell me you aren’t laughing
She knows me, too, now.
What are the chances it’ll be enough this once?
***
She’s pleased by my approach. I can tell as soon as she gets to the manor, walking in through the door with a sparkle in her eyes that’s been dim for days. And if I wasn’t suspicious of her awareness of this distance grating on me before, I am now.
“Should I surprise you?” Darya asks in lieu of a greeting.
She doesn’t mention my idling in the foyer as soon as I hear her car pull up. With how expressive her face is, though, she doesn’t need to. She looks too entertained for someone who’s been putting me through hell.
I have half a mind to throw her over my shoulder and carry her to the bedroom until that impish little smirk twisting her pretty mouth turns swollen beneath the scrape of her own teeth.
My expression must relay as much, given how she takes a pointed step back from me in the foyer.
“That face doesn’t look like it wants to make anything worth my while,” she says, more conversational than accusatory. Her gigantic purse slips down her shoulder, hanging off the crook of her arm.
I stare at her. “What does it look like?”
“Like you want to sl—”
My body turns with the fury of a tornado when footsteps approach, ready to chew out whoever thinks it is fit to interrupt the head of the fucking house and his wife. As swiftly as that fury builds, it gutters out. It’s hard to stay hard up about anything or anyone when stared down by one’s uncle.
“Why are you idling in the foyer?” he asks, eyeing me like I’ve got two heads. I don’t voice aloud how I do, and the one preparing to lead the charge in this moment is the one located within my trousers.
With a terse smile, I say, “Just greeting my wife. Home from a hard day of work.”
Boris chortles like I’ve told a good joke.
On the contrary, I was being sincere. Despite my irascibility at the present moment, I’m lingering here because I did want to see her the first chance I could, even if that meant not delaying the sight of her for the time it took her to walk from the driveway to the other side of the manor, where our bedroom resides. My mouth purses into a thin, hard line.
“Right. When you’re done herding your woman—” I shoot Darya an apologetic glance at the archaic phrasing that’ll be right to chap her ass. “—let’s sit down to dinner.”
I’m not one to succumb to an explosive temper.
In my opinion, anyone who typically loses their shit like that makes a fool of themselves, often publicly.
But I still feel it slither through my belly like a snake, baring its fangs at being ordered about.
Throwing a tantrum about it still feels extremely childish.
I have to keep in mind that Uncle Boris has been evading sitting down for meals since the wedding, something Darya hasn’t missed. He hasn’t stopped being present as my advisor for a minute, but he’s made his displeasure with this union known without any words at all.
I’ve already explained to her, during one of our evenings in the library, that my uncle had never been on board with the alliance to begin with.
Maybe it wasn’t smart to have divulged that Uncle Boris was a proponent of making an example of Viktor as well, because it has tainted her opinion of him to an irredeemable extent.
I’d known the damage was done the moment horror had contorted her features alongside the realization of what “making an example” implied.
My mouth opens to navigate the situation with a calm mindset.
Darya gets there first. “Actually, Anton and I were about to go out. I’m going to get dressed.” She doesn’t pretend she didn’t hear him, nor does she attempt to reason with him. Her every word is a statement, up front and unadorned.
Boris’ voice lashes. “Don’t be ridiculous. You eat at home with the family. All of us.”
I almost forget, at times—mostly because the fact gets blown to smithereens when it comes to her and me—that Darya’s an exceptionally refined and courteous person. It shouldn’t be a surprise to me that she holds her tongue in front of an elder.
Impulsively, my arm wraps around her waist. I squeeze her hip in wordless thanks.
She sighs against me.
“We’ll be at the table,” I say.
“An hour,” Boris grunts, turning back towards the stairs. His stick finds the step. “Tell Galina to have two more places set. I should like to get to know your wife.”
Darya sheds her coat and drapes it over her arm. She looks stoic now, and the glass wall between us has returned. She steps out of my hold with a pat on my wrist, which feels distinctly placating.
With extraordinary composure, she says to me, “I’ll go. Might as well get it over with.”
And then she’s gone, too.
***
My mother’s eyes meet mine as I stride into the dining room.
Entering through the other set of doors on the opposite side of the room, she takes one look at the seating arrangement, particularly where Uncle Boris sits at the other end of the table, just a little farther away from everyone else, and says nothing of it.
Her silence has always been louder. As are her actions.
I bite my smile when she chooses a spot equidistant from Boris and me, dropping into the seat beside Darya, who sits at my right.
To my right, Anastasia and her brother, Maxim, are bickering about something or other.
I can’t tune in enough to keep up. I’m too caught up in the fact that I can’t remember the last time the table was this full, all of us here at the same time—with the obvious exception of Viktor, and an addition of Darya, which evened the table out, regardless.