Page 274

“I fucked up,” he said bleakly, raising his eyes to her. “I know I fucked up, Erie—-”
“Sergei—-”
“Please.”
“I don’t want to hear another word,” she said shakily. “Okay?”
The billionaire whitened.
“I came here to get my stuff. That’s all. So there’s no need to say any of those things –okay?” And as if she could no longer bear hearing his voice again, she pushed past him and entered the house.
“Fredericka?” Sergei heard his father call out in obvious shock, and it was only then he realized that he wasn’t the only one awake in the house. Fredericka’s reply was muffled, and when the billionaire finally found the strength to turnaround, he saw that his whole damn family was on the stairs, all of them immobile as Fredericka marched past them.
When Fredericka disappeared from view, Misha came to him, clapping a hand over his shoulders.“Prosti.”
The billionaire nodded jerkily. “It’s no one’s fault but mine.” He lowered his head, thinking that he had become exactly what Fredericka had feared. Someone who acted exactly like his goddamn age, someone immature enough to have been swayed by past trauma. Someone who didn’t deserve her trust—-
He heard Seri gasp, and for some reason, he also heard Vassi whistle.
The billionaire’s head jerked up, and the first thing he saw was Fredericka, dressed in the wedding gown he had purchased for her.
“I told you,” she said shakily, eyes bright with unshed tears. “You didn’t have to say any of those words. I really just came here to getthis.” Fredericka watched Sergei take several steps up, her heart aching painfully at the rather clumsy way he moved. He had always been impossibly elegant, and now—-
“I listened to your every message, you know,” she whispered. “And I read all your emails.”
The billionaire stilled.
“It tended to get kinda repetitive in the end,” she teased with a tremulous smile, “but those were my favorite parts.”
“Was it?” It had taken a long time for the billionaire to answer, but when he did, the sound of his silky tone was so wonderfully familiar that this time she just couldn’t stop the tears from rushing down.
Nodding vehemently at him, she said, “They were my favorite because they reminded me of what was important.”
The billionaire reached her then, and she smiled up at him, cupping his face, saying, “You did fuck up—-”
A hoarse laugh escaped him. “And that’s the important part?”
“No. The important part was that you only fucked uponce.But before it – before this, I was the one who fucked up,again and again,and you always forgave me. You always came after me, and so—-” Her voice caught. “How can I not forgive you, too?”
He had already hauled her to him before she even finished speaking, and she was already sobbing against his chest by the time he whispered fiercely, “I love you.” He kissed her hard, saying hoarsely against her lips, “Thank you for still letting me be your trophy husband.”
Epilogue
THE WAITING ROOM WASonce again fully packed when I arrived for my three-fifteen appointment, and just my luck, the first thing I saw playing on the wall-mounted monitor was a live interview of Elsa Nilsson.
“That woman is older, uglier, and boring as hell,” the Swedish beauty derided.
Heads turned, gazes swinging from the TV monitor to said older, uglier, and boring-as-hell woman – a.k.a.me.
“I am terribly sure,” the woman continued in her thickly accented English, “it was a shotgun marriage. We had such a lovely thing, Sergei and I, and I am confident he is only a beast with me—-”
There was a sudden change in channels, and then the receptionist was rushing to me, red-faced in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Grachyov!”
The noise inside the waiting room dramatically increased, all eyes averted from my direction.
“It’s okay, Carla,” I reassured her with a forced smile. Claiming the last vacant seat in the room, I quickly took a magazine and pretended to be engrossed in it even as I cursed the model in my mind.Damn her for being so beautiful and thin just when I was feeling as big as a house.
I was now in my last trimester, and before I knew it, my tummy had ballooned into this huge, hard ball that seemed to weigh a ton. Almost every part of my body hurt, and the only time I felt good was when I was sleeping, in the bath, or when I was having sex—-