Page 55 of Unrequited

The doorknob turns, andmy god,there she is. I gasp, expecting shock on her face, expecting her to draw a gun and shoot him between the eyes. But she doesn’t even blink. Not even a hint of surprise.

I swallow hard and risk a glance over my shoulder.

The window’s wide open. Curtains billow in the breeze like ghosts.

He’s gone.

Seamus is gone.

MySeamus. The man I hate.

The man I still long for.

He came back into my life at the worst possible time, rightwhen I needed him theleast. And now, he’s disappeared again.

“Are you all right?” Yana asks, her face drawn and pale. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Have I?

A ghost would’ve been easier to handle.

I sigh and offer her a watery smile.

“I’m fine.”

It’s the biggest, boldest lie I’ve ever told. Bigger than the night I sent my brothers to that warehouse. Bigger than the wild goose chase I sent them on. This lie is darker. Deeper.

“I’m fine,” I whisper again, hoping that maybe if I say it enough, it’ll start to feel true. Hoping it’ll stitch the bleeding pieces of my heart back together.

I crymyself to sleep the night before my wedding.

I try not to because who wants photos with swollen eyes and blotchy cheeks?

But I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know what else to do.

I don’t know what else to think, or how to stop the aching inside me. It feels a lot like the hollow grief I felt when my parents died.

Raw. Scraped out. Gutting.

Only then, I was just a kid. Too young to fully understand.

Now, the pain cuts from a different place. Because now, I know too much.

And that knowing is a different kind of wound.

I wake early and stare out the open window. I half wish, half beg for him to be there. To see him again, just once more, even though I know it will kill me, and it won’t soothe the aching in my heart. If anything, it’ll make it worse.

I can imagine him there.

Perched on the windowsill, blue eyes steady on me, cheeks flushed with emotion, that maddening dimple in the corner of his mouth.

I saw how it hit him like a two-by-four when I said the wordUndertaker.

He doesn’t know that I know who it really is. But now I’ve said it out loud. Now I’ve exposed him for what he is.

And because of that… he’ll never come back again.

He can’t. After today, there will be a ring on my finger, and I will be Zoya Morozova.