Page 140 of Ruthless Rustanovs

Iain’t afraid of you. I ain’t afraid of nothing!

She’d once told him that. Bold as brass.

But a tentative aria sung by an untrained newbie chewed on her chest as she approached him on the little stone bridge that ran over the small pond that separated the main house from the second guesthouse.

The guesthouse Ivan had been escorted back to by Nikolai.

He put her in mind of a statue as she walked up to him.

Standing perfectly still, his bare hands flat on the bridge’s stone ledge, eyes trained on the fish below.

How long has he been out here? she wondered, rubbing her gloved hands together as she approached him.

He’d looked completely lost in thought, yet as soon as she got within six feet of him, his head whipped to the side.

“Why are you out here in cold?” he demanded. “It is not good for you or…”

He didn’t finish. Just glanced down at her belly.

“We’ll be fine,” Thel answered. “My mom already said so. But how are you?” she asked, crooking her head at him.

He turned back to the koi hanging out under the bridge. “I am fine.”

“Are you? Because you don’t look it.”

No answer.

She jutted her chin toward the window. “You planning on going in there after Ivan? Because you know, I already kicked his ass pretty good.”

“You did not kick his ass,” Bair sneered back. “Ivan is stupid. And drunk. And bitter, ugly man now, but before his accident he was top fighter. I helped trained him. He could have killed you, but he knows better than to hit woman. Even when she hits him. Even when he is drunk.”

“Wait a minute, you helped train his ass even after how his father treated your mother? And he still had the nerve to come at you like that? What the hell!?”

She couldn’t believe that cousin of his. It made her want to go to the other guest house and kick the shit out of him all over again.

But Bair simply threw her an irritated look. “This should not be the part that upsets you, Sirena. The part about him possibly killing you with his bare hands—that is part that should upset you. Do you know what he could have done to you?”

“I don’t know…throw me over a table and fuck me in front of strangers to prove he owns me?” she asked, looking at him sideways.

Bair went very still beside her, but to his credit he didn’t deny it. “I was wrong to do that, Sirena. Wrong to try to control you in that way.”

“Yeah, you were,” she agreed. “A total asshole. And I was wrong to let you do it, to let you kill pieces of my soul because I didn’t feel like I deserved any better.”

Quiet. Then: “You deserved better. Than that. Than me. I knew it back then. And I knew it when I finally found you again.”

“Really?” she asked. “Then what was with all those weekends of you punishing me for leaving you? How does making me feel like I give terrible head and making me sit around naked and bored all dang day translate into you knowing I deserve better?”

He shook his head. Then shook it again with an expulsion of air that sent a small cloud of smoke out of his mouth.

“What?” she asked, not understanding his reaction.

“I wasn’t trying to punish you, Sirena. I had read your diary many times.

I knew how you really felt about me during our time together.

How…” He inhaled sharply, “How I made you feel about me. At first I am angry. For a very long time I am angry, feeling like you played me for fool. But then I find you. And I see your house. And I see you were not just living like dog when I found you, you always live like this. In this small house with possibly crazy woman.”

A fresh wave of shame washed over her as she asked, “So you felt sorry for me? That’s why you decided to act like you didn’t want me anymore?”

“No, you twist my words.” He sighed, then started again.

“Your home. It is like my home in Siberia. Filled with wood and Buddha statues and my grandmother, who people say is crazy because of her stories about our tiger ancestor. When I see you live like this, too, I understand. You are siren and I am tiger, but we are same.”

He looked over at her then. “I did not bring you to me all those weekends to punish you. I did it because I was trying to let you go. Trying to kill my addiction to you, so I can let you have the life you deserved without me.”

“The life I deserve without you…” Thel let out a bitter laugh and came to stand right beside him on the bridge. “Do you know what most women do when they get a new pair of breasts like these and an all clear to finally put the pieces of their life together again?”

She answered her own question before he could. “They have sex!” she answered, voice frank with self-recrimination. “But not me. I got my new breasts and even after the swelling went down, I didn’t do anything with them. Didn’t let anyone else touch me, because I only get wet for you.”

“You never believed me when I told you that, but I haven’t had sex with anyone else in six years. Six years! Even though I knew you were probably getting with a whole lot of women after me, switching out pets every few months like Alexei before he got back together with Eva—”

“No, no!” he said with a hard swipe of his head. “I am Rustanov, but not like that. I did not—I could not—disrespect my vows. Even when I wanted to forget you and be with another woman, I couldn’t bring myself to…”

He broke off, hands fisting on top of the bridge’s stone ledge. “For six years there was no one else, Sirena, and it was making me crazy to think of you with another man after you left.”

Thel sucked in a breath. What fools they’d been back then. Too crazy to handle what they had. Too addicted to move on.

Staring down at the koi, she said, “Alexei just told me you wanted to marry me from the start, but he wouldn’t let you. Is that true?”

Beside her, Bair went very tense, his body once again becoming a statue.

“Bair?” she asked after long minutes of watching his statue stare at the fish. “You going to answer or what?”

Bair’s eyes stayed on the fish, but his mouth finally started moving again. “He shouldn’t have told you.”

Thel tilted her head at him. “He shouldn’t have told me? That’s your answer?”

More fish staring. Like they, not her, had his complete attention. “I told you earlier, I am trying now. Trying for you. Trying for…”

He still couldn’t say it. Could barely talk about the baby headed for their lives like an oncoming train.

She looked away from him. At least she tried to, but her eyes immediately came back to him. She couldn’t keep herself from staring at him back then, and she still couldn’t now.

But Alexei was right. She couldn’t let him get away with not talking to her anymore. They had to talk. About the past. And more importantly, about the thing they never talked about, even in their happiest moments.

“What are you taking for it?”

The simple six-word question exploded the night into silence.

He hesitated, his body stiffening beside her. And the quiet aftermath of her question vibrated for a long, long time.

But in the end, he answered her truthfully. “A mix of things.”

“A mix of things,” she repeated, silently giving him points for not lying or pretending not to know what she was talking about. “Prescribed by a doctor?”

He looked over at her, then away again, face harsh with emotion. Shame that could easily be mistaken for anger. Shame that had probably been mistaken for anger by so many others in his life, she realized.

But not by her. Not then. Not now. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I already understand. I just need to hear it from you.”

“Da,” he finally said, his voice clipped. “Prescribed by doctor. For the Darkness.”

“Have you ever taken anything for it before?”

“In Russia. After you left. Alexei made me see doctor. He talked to me and gave me these pills. He told me I was…”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to.

“Yeah,” she said, thinking of the first time she’d encountered someone like him in the hospital where she used to work.

A man who they’d thought was drunk, but as it turned out was having something that the psychiatrist who later came by to okay his release had termed an “episode.”

“Do the pills help?”

“Da,” he sounded beyond weary now, like this conversation was draining everything out of him.

“The first time, I didn’t think so. They don’t give me light, they only keep me out of dark.

That is all they can do. I took them, but I wanted you back.

Always I wanted you back. But I couldn’t find you.

After a year, after I gave up looking for you, I stopped taking them.

I came up with my own therapy. I exercise.

I eat best foods. I don’t drink, except for one day a year.

This regimen kept the Darkness away for many years, but then… ”

“Then you found me,” she answered, her heart clenching. “Finding me triggered you again.”

He nodded. “I hated you. I wanted to punish you for showing me your light and then leaving me alone in my hell. But then I saw your house, and I…I could not. I knew then I had to let you go. But I did not know how. I tried. Every way I could think of I tried to kill my addiction to you. To not want or need your light, because I knew I didn’t deserve it.

Every time you came to me, I would think, ‘Maybe this will be last time. Maybe I will be able to not send for her next weekend.’ But that time never came. And then…”

“Chicago happened,” she finished for him. She could barely breath as piece after piece of Bair’s puzzle finally clicked into place. “When you said ‘I have decided to try with you’ that first time in San Francisco, you meant you were going back on your meds, didn’t you?”

He nodded, then he glanced over at her. “I was better in New Mexico, da? I was better man for you?”

The question nearly broke her heart. “Yeah, Beast. New Mexico was the best we’ve ever been.”

“That was because I had the pills and your light. It made the pills not so bad. I really tried in New Mexico.”