Chapter Thirty
KATERINA
The moment I step backstage, the applause is still ringing in my bones. My muscles are shaking, but it feels good too to end on such a high note, even if it means it’s my last performance here.
In my dressing room, the table is exactly the way I left it before I went onstage: makeup scattered, rosin dust still floating in a faint shimmer, my half-finished seltzer water and chamomile tea sweating at the edge.
His automatic order.
I trace my finger down the condensation on the glass.
I didn’t forget. His text read.
Of course he didn’t. He never forgets anything I tell him.
My throat aches.
I’m doing the right thing, I tell myself. I’m doing this for him.
But it feels less like a noble sacrifice and more like carving out a vital organ with a dull blade.
A knock rattles the door.
“Katerina?” It’s the intern again, the same one who knocked before my first show. She sounds breathless. “There’s someone here to see you.”
My stomach drops.
Maxim.
He probably came to gloat, or retrieve me like I’m his property, or deliver some final message from my father.
“This one's good looking too,” she adds.
This one?... good looking too?
“I don’t want to see—”
“He has… tulips?” She says, uncertain. “I think? I don’t know flowers. But they’re big. Maybe too big?”
My pulse practically jolts awake.
“Tulips? Are you sure?” I ask.
The intern leans back from the door, stretching her neck to peer down the hallway. “Yeah. I’m like… ninety percent sure they are tulips.”Tulips.Scottie.
I shut my eyes, hating the instant relief knowing that he came to see me even when I pushed him away, and the equal part of dread to somehow keep to what I told him… that this is over between us.
“Send him in,” I say, my voice barely holding together.
The intern brightens and steps aside. “He’s coming down the hall now.”
My nerves are a live wire.
Seeing him again is what I’ve wanted and dreaded in equal measure.
Another goodbye will hurt worse than the first. I’m not sure I’ll survive a second one, but I’ll regret not seeing him before I leave the States, probably for good. My father certainly won’t let me leave Moscow again, and considering Maxim knows my history, he won’t likely let me either.
I smooth my palms down my robe, then freeze as footsteps approach.
And then he appears in the doorway.
My breath catches somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
He’s wearing a suit. It’s dark and tailored and perfect. He’s holding the enormous bouquet of tulips against one arm. His hair is messy, like he ran his hands through it a thousand times. His tie is askew.
But what stops me cold isn’t the flowers or the suit.
It’s the look on his face.
Not broken like my heart and devastated as I feel. Instead, he’s smirking.
“Hi,” he says softly.
“Hi.” My voice cracks on the single syllable.
There’s a moment—one raw, suspended second where we just stare at each other—before he crosses the room in a few long strides and sets the tulips gently on the counter.
“I heard you’re leaving,” he says.
My chest constricts. “Tonight is my last show.” I force a swallow. “Then I’m leaving.”
He nods, slowly. Too slow, like he’s humoring me.
There's a shift in his expression. It’s calm, but sharp underneath.
“To New York?” he asks.
I nod, because it’s not completely a lie. I do have to fly through New York on my way to Moscow.
“I went to the lawyer’s office,” he says.
The air leaves my lungs.
My eyes drop to the floor instinctively, to the toes of my ballet flats beside his polished dress shoes. I can’t bear to look at him when he tells me that he signed the papers.
“Oh,” I manage. “I—I’m sorry I didn’t get to sign yet. I will, though, tomorrow. I just got busy.”
“Busy,” he echoes, not fooled. Not even close. “Not too busy enough to clean out the penthouse before I could come home so we could talk, but now you’re too busy to sign the papers to end it?”
He waits until my eyes lift to his.
Then he says, very quietly:
“I know.”
My pulse freezes.
“Know… what?”
“About the trial,” he says. “And Moscow. And Maxim.” He pauses. “And why you left.”
My knees nearly buckle under me.
“Who—who told you?” I breathe.
“Your grandmother,” he says. “Just now in her box.”
I sway a little, grabbing the back of a chair to help with the instant flash of vertigo.
“She told me everything,” he continues, stepping closer. “The bribe she offered me. The test. The fake divorce papers. How she used my dad’s trial spot against you. How she never intended for you to go to Moscow.”
Tears sting my eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What do you mean she never intended for me to go to Moscow?”
“She said she wanted to see how much we loved each other.” His voice drops lower. Warmer. “And we passed. Both of us.”
I let out a sound I didn’t mean to make… a broken, strangled thing.
“She’s not sending me back to Moscow?” I ask, hope blooming, but still fearful, this isn’t real. Could this all be a dream that I’m about to wake up from and find that I’m still alone in my grandmother’s penthouse. None of this feels possible
He shakes his head.
“I get to stay?”
“Yep. You proved that you love me enough to give up your freedom for my family.”I can’t believe my grandmother would do this… but then again, I can. She said she came to test our marriage. TO see how real it was.
“Do you still even want me?” I whisper. “After everything I said in that hallway?”
He reaches up and cups the side of my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone with unbearable tenderness.
“Yes,” he says simply. “I always did. I always will.”
And then, he lowers to one knee.
Right there on the dressing room floor, in his perfect suit, looking up at me like I’m the only thing he’s ever wanted.
“I didn’t get to propose the right way,” he says, pulling something out of his jacket pocket.
My ring.
The one I left behind.
I gasp and slap a hand over my mouth as he holds it up to me.
“But this feels like as good a chance as I’m ever going to get,” he murmurs. “And you can fix everything between us with a three-letter word.”
My heart is beating so hard I can hear it echoing.
His eyes stay locked on mine.
“Katerina Easton… the only woman I have ever loved in my entire life, and the woman I don’t want to live without,” he says, voice steady and full of something that steals my breath.
“Will you stay married to me? And build a life with me? Whether it’s here in Seattle, or New York… or where life takes us next?”
I nod so hard I think I might give myself whiplash. “Yes, of course, I will stay married to you.”
He slides his ring back on my finger and stands, wrapping me up in his arms, and for once in the last week, I exhale, my heart feeling as though it refills in an instant.
“I thought I lost you,” I say, my voice cracking.
He pulls me tighter against his chest. “You never would have lost me. I would have figured it out. I would have come for you. To New York or Moscow. I would have brought you back home where you belong.”
Hearing him say that, I know that he’s telling me the truth. He would have come for me.
“I should have known you weren’t going to give up on us. I’m sorry I did,” I tell him, pulling back enough to look into his eyes.
“You didn’t give up on us. You saved us. You just didn’t know it.”
And then he kisses me.