Page 153
One by one, the room emptied. Voices drifted. The sliding door opened. Closed. Footsteps disappeared inside. Until there was only us.
I became painfully aware that I was standing there shirtless, my knuckles split open, my ribs screaming from Sebastian’s fists. None of it compared to the ache sitting five feet in front of me. For the first time in two months, I really looked at her.
The breath caught in my throat. My beautiful, fiery artist was gone. In her place stood someone I barely recognized. Her clothes hung loosely from shoulders that had once been so full of quiet confidence. Her cheeks had hollowed.
Dark circles dusted the skin beneath her eyes. But it was the emptiness in them that undid me. I could have managed angry or sad. But this? It crushed me. It was as though someone had scooped out every beautiful piece of the woman I loved and left only the shell behind.
My chest tightened until it hurt to breathe. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to close the distance between us. To pull her into my arms. She had asked for space. And I had promised to respect that. I loved her enough to wait for permission.
Even now. So if after I told her I was leaving—if that was what she still wanted—I’d give it to her. But I needed to hear it straight from her lips this time. No middle man. I flexed my fingers at my sides, forcing myself to stay exactly where I was.
“Princess, you look…”
“Terrible?” she finished for me, a bitter smile tugging at her lips.
“No, not terrible. Just…”
“Please, you don’t need to say it. I know.”
“I just meant you don’t look like yourself.”
She sighed. “I don’t feel like myself.”
She wrapped her arms around chest as if to shield herself from me. I took a tentative step closer. She shook her head, stopping me in my tracks. My stomach churned at the gesture.
“Fuck, I don’t know what to say any more,” I offered, feeling out of place.
Maybe too much had happened to ever bridge the divide.
“Why did you come here? Aren’t you supposed to be in America?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to be. It was a last resort. And to answer your first question, I came because…because I had to see you.”
I looked down at my feet before meeting her gaze again. “Your dad found me at your parents’ house.”
“My dad?”
“I’d wanted to drop off some parting gifts. He talked me into coming. I know you asked me to stay away. And I tried. I told myself I was respecting your wishes. I didn’t come here because I thought you’d forgive me.”
I breathed through the ache. Her expression shifted. It went from fear to grief. Then grief turned to anger. The anger to longing. All of it flickered across her face so quickly that I couldn’t catch hold of any one emotion before another replaced it.
“I know I failed you. I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t protect our girls. But I couldn’t leave without seeing you one last time.”
His words had my heart lurching so violently that it almost hurt. In the months since I’d last seen him, he had changed. Pasha had always carried himself with an effortless confidence. Broad shoulders. Lean muscle earned from years of dancing. Quiet strength wrapped in warmth.
And now his split lip was already beginning to swell. Bruises bloomed beneath one eye, darkening. Angry red marks spread across his ribs where Sebastian’s fists had landed.
He’d lost weight, too. Enough that the hard lines of his collarbones and shoulders stood out more sharply than I remembered. His body looked leaner. Hollower somehow. He looked worn and broken. Like me.
I wanted to tell him that I was sorry. That none of this should have happened. That I hated seeing him like this. Instead, words failed me. I couldn’t seem to find a single damn word to say to make it better. Because I still hadn’t figured out how to do that for myself.
The silence stretched until it was wildly uncomfortable. I hated that more, so I dug into my arsenal and defaulted to a variation of something Marcel had been saying to me since day one.
“You didn’t fail. We both lost here.”
“Isabella, I—”
“I heard you’re leaving. Cirque du Soleil or some bullshit.”
