Chapter 11 #2
The words come out before I can think them through, but the second they hang in the air, I know they're true. This is what I want to do. This is what's been forming inside me for days, but I couldn't admit it until now.
I miss teaching.
Maksim frowns, confused. The scar cutting through his left eyebrow shifts with the movement, but it doesn't make him look as frightening as I'd imagined. It just makes him more human. More reachable.
“You hated that place.”
He shouldn't know that. I never told him I taught in Vysotsk, or that I hated it. Of course he had my entire life researched. Actually, Vladimir did that. But I thought Maksim didn't care. That he hadn't even bothered to read it.
“There's no way you could know that,” I say quietly, piecing it together in my head. “Unless you read what Vladimir dug up on me.”
“I did. After.”
“After… Why after? When you came to get me in Vysotsk, you didn't seem the least bit interested in knowing who I was. I was just the woman you were buying.”
“You said I was outsourcing what I should know myself,” he says, keeping his eyes locked on mine. “I thought you were right.”
With one sentence, he completely disarms me. Men like Maksim are proud by nature. You don't rise that high without innate arrogance. But here he is, admitting I was right.
He read every page of my ugly life after I needled him for not knowing his own wife. And I have no idea what to do with that information.
Damn it, with every passing day, I realize I have no idea who the man I married really is.
“Then you should know,” I keep talking, because it's safer, “that I taught ballet to girls in Vysotsk in a school that was falling apart, without proper heating, with a cement floor that destroys ankles, and for a pittance that couldn't even cover an apartment away from my parents. You know I hated that.”
“I do. That's why I don't understand why you want to go back to it.”
“Because I hated the place, Maksim, like you said yourself. Not the work.” My voice changes, and I let it, because for the first time in this fight, I'm not fighting.
I'm telling the truth. “I can't dance anymore.
A damn black sedan took that from me. But my knowledge, my technique—those are the only things that accident didn't take.
If I can't be on stages anymore, I'll prepare other girls to be there.
It's the only thing I have left. The only thing that's just mine.
That wasn't bought, sold, or handed to me by you in some luxury closet.”
I finish speaking a little breathless and trembling. Not just from the torrent of words that escaped me, but from their weight. Maksim stares at me, his expression serious, the provocative air disappearing as he grasps the meaning of what I just said.
“It's dangerous,” is what he chooses to say. “You leaving here. Teaching every day, at the same times, in the same place. That kind of routine can be mapped. You're my wife. There are a lot of people out there who'd love to use you against me.”
“I know the risks, but you agreed you wouldn't keep me prisoner.”
“You'll leave with security. It'll be at a location I approve. You don't go anywhere alone, understood?”
His last order sends a shiver through me, and I feel the urge to agree instantly, but I refuse. Maksim can't think it's that easy to make me bow my head.
“I'll find the place. Set up the class and handle everything. When it's decided, I'll let you know when and where.”
I see his jaw tense as he grimaces briefly, swallowing my petulance.
“You won't use my last name for this.”
“I don't want your last name.” I scoff and take a step, closing the distance between us. “I don't want your name, your influence, any of it. I don't want you threatening people to get me discounts or whatever it is you do. I don't want to owe people like you.”
I have to lean in during the last sentence because he's too tall, and I refuse to break eye contact while I speak. Maksim stares down at me, his blue eyes burning with a mix of anger, irritation, and something else I can't name.
His voice changes too, coming out lower and rougher than it's been throughout this entire fight.
“I don't do favors for you, Svetlana.”
“Good.”
“You didn't understand.” He leans down, closing what little distance remains between us. “I don't do favors for you because you're my wife. Nothing I do for you is a favor. It's my obligation as your husband. I'll never hold it over you.”
I have no response.
This is the second time this man has disarmed me with a single sentence, and I hate that he can do that. I hate even more that I'd love to hear those words from anyone's lips but his.
“I'll find the place.”
I turn toward the door, ready to get out of there as fast as possible. I won the fight I came here for, and now I'm going to savor the victory—not this jumble of confused emotions inside me.
That's it. I just need to keep moving. One foot in front of the other.
But when I reach the door and grab the handle, I stop. There's still something simmering inside me that won't let me enjoy this victory.
“You stay away from me on purpose,” I say without turning around. “You leave early, come back late, sleep, and vanish. It's been a week, Maksim. If I'm really your wife, why do you run from me in your own house?”
The silence that stretches behind me is long. Too long. I'm about to give up on getting an answer when I finally hear his voice.
“Do you know why you don't dance at the edge of the woods?” he asks.
I turn to face him. The question makes no sense.
“Because it's dangerous. Olga warned me.”
“No. That's not why. You don't go near the woods because you know that if you do, you might not make it back. You toe the line by instinct. Self-preservation.” He pauses, and his voice drops lower.
“I stay away from you for the same reason, Svetlana. I know exactly how far I can go without losing myself.”
The breath leaves me for a second.
“Go find your place to teach.” He moves back behind the desk and returns to the documents from before. “Let me know when you decide.”
I leave after that, with no desire to fight over who gets the last word.
After closing the door, still standing in the hallway with my heart racing and my mind spinning, I realize three things. I won the fight. I'm going back to teaching. And my husband just compared me to dangerous woods.
The first makes me proud.
The last makes me hot in a way I'm going to pretend, for one more day, that I don't feel.