Aidan
Standing in the living room of the stables I converted into a home while trying to banish her from my mind, she just told me the most honest thing she's probably said to anyone in years.
I don't know how to do that.
Five words from a woman stripped down to something raw and uncertain, looking at me like she's waiting for me to use it against her.
I won't. I'd cut off my own hand before I used her honesty as a weapon.
"That's okay," I say. "I'm not asking you to figure it out tonight."
She watches me. Searching for the catch. For the angle. I imagine every man in her life has had one, and she's been trained to find it before it finds her.
"Can I tell you something?" I ask.
Her chin lifts a fraction. That automatic defense mechanism, the slight elevation that makes her look like she's staring down at you even when she's not. "Can I stop you?"
"You can always stop me. That's the point."
Something flickers across her face. She doesn't respond, but she doesn't look away either, so I take that as permission to go ahead.
"The morning after," I say. "I woke up and you were gone. The sheets were cold. Your clothes were gone. There was nothing left in that room to prove you'd been there at all, except I could still smell your perfume on the sheets."
Her expression doesn't change, but I see her hands tighten against the fabric of her skirt. A tiny movement. The kind only someone who's spent years watching her would catch.
"I lay there for a long time," I continue. "Staring at the ceiling. And I thought about going after you. Getting dressed, going downstairs, finding you at breakfast or in the lobby or wherever you were, and telling you that what happened between us wasn't nothing."
"Why didn't you?" Her voice is barely audible.
"Because you weren't ready to hear it. And because chasing you when you'd clearly decided to run would have proved every assumption you had about men in this world.
" I pause. "So I made a different promise.
Not to you. To myself. That I'd find a way back to you.
That I'd be patient enough and smart enough to make sure that when it happened, it happened right. "
She stares at me. Her lips part, just slightly, and I watch her process what I've said. She's fast. Brilliant, really. I can practically see her turning the words over, testing them for weaknesses, looking for the manipulation.
She won't find any.
"You planned this," she says. "All of it."
"Not all of it. I didn't plan the council's mandate. But when it came, I made sure they would match me to you."
"Why?" The word sounds almost accusatory, but the way her features seem to collapse behind it tells me I’m reaching the part of her that matters.
"Because you need to hear what would have happened if I hadn't."
Her brow creases. "What do you mean?"
I take a careful breath. This is the part that requires precision. Because the truth of it is sharp enough to cut, and I need her to understand it without feeling like I'm holding a blade to her throat.
"If I hadn't requested you, your father or the council would have matched you with someone else.
Someone who would be on their second or third wife.
Someone who would have wanted a virgin bride and feel slighted that they got the ruined Ice Queen.
" I hold her gaze. "And they would have punished you for it. "
The color drains from her face.
"I know they would," I say quietly. "Because your father was already working on a match to Tomaas Linchenko." I don’t need to elaborate on who that is if the way her breath leaves her body is any indication.
Silence. The kind that has a heartbeat.
"I requested you because I wanted you," I say. "But I also requested you because I couldn't stand the thought of someone else having you and treating you like anything less than what you are. I wanted to protect you."
Tanya doesn't move. She just stands there, this extraordinary woman in her white gown with her armor cracking in real time, and I give her the silence she needs because sometimes the most important thing a man can do is shut up and let a person feel .
Minutes pass. The house is quiet around us. I can hear the faint sound of wind against the windows, the low hum of the refrigerator, the distant rustle of the hedgerows outside.
"You should have told me," she says finally. Her voice is different now. Something bruised and new. "At one of those functions. At any of them. You should have said something."
"Would you have listened?"
She closes her eyes. A breath moves through her, slow and shaky, and when she opens them again, the woman looking at me isn't the one who got out of the car forty minutes ago.
"Probably not," she admits.
"So I waited until you would."
She lets out a sound that's almost a laugh. "You're infuriating."
"I've been told." I desperately want to close the distance between us. It’s only a few feet and yet it somehow still feels like a chasm.
"I mean it. You're calm and patient and you say exactly the right thing and I can't find a single angle in any of it, and it's making me insane."
"Good."
She lets out an exasperated huff. "It's not good. I don't know what to do with someone who isn't trying to play me."
"You could try trusting me."
The one thing no one in her world has ever earned from her. The one thing she's never had reason to give.
She looks at me for a long time. Long enough that I feel it in my chest. That slow, tight ache that I've carried for two years, the one that started the morning I woke up in Prague and found her gone and promised myself I'd find my way back.
"I don't trust anyone," she says, smoothing her hands over the front of her dress in a way I’d bet diamonds is a tell. "It's not personal."
"I know."
"So why are you looking at me like you think I'm going to change my mind?" Her voice has an edge to it again, but this sounds more like exhaustion. Like she has found herself playing a game she didn’t know she was a part of and doesn’t know all the rules.
"Because you came to Prague on your own.
You chose me on your own. And you're standing in my living room right now telling me you don't know how to be honest, which is the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me.
" I take a step closer. "You're already changing your mind, Tanya. You just haven't caught up yet."
Her breath catches. I hear it. A small, sharp inhale that she doesn't manage to hide, and the sound of it goes through me like electricity.
I'm close enough now that I can see the faint dusting of freckles along her collarbone that her makeup didn't quite cover. Close enough that I can smell her perfume, the same one from Prague, something warm and subtle that I've never been able to identify but would recognize anywhere.
"Tell me to stop and I'll stop," I say. "Tell me to sleep on the couch and I'll sleep on the couch. Tell me this is too fast and I'll wait another two years if that's what you need. But don't tell me you don't feel this, because I was there and I know what it sounds like when you stop pretending."
Her eyes search mine. Gray and bright and impossibly close. I can see every fracture in the ice, every crack I've opened tonight, and beneath all of it, something warm and alive that she's been trying to kill for two years and can't.
"I hate that you see me," she whispers.
I lift my hand. My fingers brush the line of her jaw, feather-light, and she doesn't flinch. She doesn't move at all. She just closes her eyes and exhales, and the breath that comes out of her sounds like something she's been holding for two years.
"Tanya," I say her name the way I said it in Prague. Low. Against her skin. Like it's the only word I know.
Her hand comes up and closes around my wrist. Holding me there.
"Don't be gentle with me because you think I'll break," she says. Her voice is rough. Raw. The ice is gone and what's underneath it is heat. "I won't break."
"I know you won't."
"And don't you dare look at me tomorrow like you've won something."
"This isn't a game to me, Tanya."
"No," she says, and opens her eyes. "It isn't."
She kisses me.
Not the way she kissed me in Prague. That kiss was calculated.
Controlled. The opening move in a strategy she thought she was running.
This kiss is nothing like that. Her mouth is warm and demanding and slightly desperate, and when her fingers tighten on my wrist and she pulls me closer, I stop being patient.
I've been patient for two years. I've been steady and measured and controlled, and all of that was necessary, and none of it is what she needs from me right now.
What she needs is to know that the want is mutual. That I'm not just patient. I'm starving.
I slide my hand from her jaw to the back of her neck and pull her into me, and when she makes a sound against my mouth, low and broken and real, the last two years collapse into nothing.
I pull back just far enough to see her face. Her eyes are dark. Her lips are parted. Her composure is in ruins and she's looking at me like she can't decide whether to be furious or grateful that I did this to her.
But all I can think is; she's here. She's mine. And this time, she's not leaving before morning.