Chapter 34 — Alexander

I stared at my phone, astonished. She'd hung up on me.

Katerina Devereaux, or what little glimpses I'd caught of her, was reserved, rational, patient. Able to endure almost all and any storms, to weather them as easily as a child skipped in rain puddles. But I supposed, just then, that everyone had a breaking point. She had simply taken longer to reach it than I had than I would. She was simply stronger than I was.

But even the strongest person needed help sometimes. I grabbed my phone and slapped a twenty onto the diner's greasy table, mumbled a quick apology to Tony Spencer, and ran out the door. My feet hit the pavement at a frustratingly slow pace before I finally got into the vehicle, and every second that I waited for the driver to come to his senses, switch on the ignition, and start the car, was another second that I cursed myself for not having driven here independently. At the very least, I wasn't taking the subway.

Ensconced in the backseat of the sedan, I hit the CALL BACK button on my phone, praying that Katerina would pick up. Odd how I had gone from rarely praying to doing it several times in one day—though I supposed, then, that today hardly counted as a typical day. No, today was a day of extremes—ricocheting between joy and sorrow, shock and anger, peace and turmoil. But when I prayed, I did sense tranquillity washing over me, unlike any I had experienced before. The phone rang until I heard her voicemail, and with a groan, I almost wanted to throw the thing across the car. Only some small rationality kept me from doing so.

"We've arrived, Mr. Steele," the driver announced, rolling down the partition.

I had scarcely possessed the patience to buckle my seatbelt in the first place and nearly tore it off as I got out of the car, my only thought that of Katerina—of getting to her, of explaining. The elevator ride up to the penthouse was achingly slow. All I could think of was a different elevator ride, a different mad dash through a lobby—when I had been a colder person, a harsher man, a completely different individual. When I had been pushing Katerina away, dreading her presence instead of chasing after it. When I had been utterly sceptical of God and any notion of an afterlife, instead of cautiously seeking it out.

God, I prayed. God, I'm a different person now. Please…please don't let the sins of my past have pushed her away.

I stormed into the penthouse and stumbled immediately into my sister. "Abigail, where is my fiancée?"

"Listen, I tried to stop her. I think she took the subway…Maybe she's still in the city!" Abigail rambled on, but all she gave me was more anxiety instead of more information. "I sent Georgia after her, but then Kati's brother insisted on going after her as well. I'm sure they'll find her!"

She put a hand on my arm that I was sure was meant to be comforting—but it felt like a leaden weight, heavy as my heart. I wanted to shake it off—but I could already see in her clear blue eyes that she was blaming herself for Katerina's decision to leave.

"Alex…I don't understand. Why would she leave? What's happened? Is it the shooter? Didn't you and Dad find him?" Her frantic questions sent me into more of a frenzy.

"I don't..." I swallowed the words forming on my lips with some difficulty and thought of different ones—words that were less anguished, more divorced from the pain and panic coursing through my body. "Our marriage was an arrangement. Surely, you know that by now."

She nodded earnestly, red curls bobbing up and down on her shoulders. "I thought things had changed, though."

Not enough was the phrase I bit back. "Katerina found out that dad had, with good intentions, decided to contest the will that he and Mr. Devereaux had put together to make us get married. She took it the wrong way, I guess."

Such blunt, simple words. The emotions, the reality, however—all of that was far from simple.

I wished I hadn't been so foolish. I wished I had been able to spend more time with her, to get to know her better, to know her well enough that I would know where she would run in times of crisis. That I would know her well enough to keep from scaring her off with pronouncements such as this one—that we were close enough so that she wouldn't have assumed in the first place that I had already known about my father's plans. That we were close enough so she wouldn't have assumed the worst about me because all I had shown her was the worst of me.

I wanted to show her the best of me from now on.

If only she would keep her promise to me—her promise to never leave me.

+

Some hours later, George found his sister.

I could see Katerina through a window, could see that she was sitting at a table alone, a half-drunken cup of tea still steaming in front of her. George, to my surprise, nudged me to go in first, and I noticed my cousin's hand in his though I didn't comment on it. I took the hint and pushed the door open. A jingle of the bell registered dimly in my ears, along with the chatter of a hostess who asked if she could seat me.

"I'm meeting my fiancée," I said and pushed past her to sit across from Katerina, sliding into the armchair across from hers with an assured movement that was a far cry from the roaring storm inside of my heart.

She looked up at my approach, and her knuckles whitened on the teaspoon she was gripping.

"Hello, Kati." I could see her eyes were swollen, as though she'd been crying, and her lips were pale pink—they had been red before, with lipstick. Had she taken that off, or had it been only hours ago that we had kissed? So much had happened in one day that it felt closer to a week.

"Alexander," she replied coldly, pulling her shoulders back and dropping the spoon with a clatter. "What did you come here for—your ring back?"

The gold and diamond circlet shone on her finger, something I'd given her a few weeks ago. Something she had been indifferent to accepting because it hadn't been what I'd picked out, but what the wedding planner had chosen. Now I thought I might have given her silver, something untraditional. A peridot, an emerald, beryl—something in the realm of green to match her lovely eyes, which she kept fixed on the wall behind my head.

She twisted the ring off of her hand and threw it at me like so much trash. I caught it before it could hit my face, the cold stone digging into my palm. "Katerina, I know who I am."

"This is hardly the time for philosophical revelations, Alexander. I know who you are, too. You've been telling me this whole time. I suppose it took a while for your actions to catch up." Her words were daggers of ice, sinking into my heart—but her voice trembled like every syllable took a tremendous amount of effort to produce. I deserved that pain, anyways.

"Please," I said, and my voice shook as badly as hers did. As badly as the tears in my eyes did. "I know who I am. I know who I have proven myself to be—an utterly awful fiancé, and an even worse husband, who would only hurt you and deceive you and betray you in every way. That is how I have shown myself to you. It was misguided, well-intentioned but cruel. And you—you have always been right. I shouldn't have blamed myself all these years, and I should never have pushed you away.

"I should never have pushed away the one person in my life who has changed it so completely even when I was determined not to let you. Even when I was broken, you guided me to the one who could fix me. Even when I hated you, you loved me. I am a changed man because of you, because of God. Because you brought God into my life, I am redeemed. I am on the right path now. I know that. But I don't want to walk down that path by myself—I want you by my side. And maybe it's the most selfish thing I've ever done, ever asked for, for you to be my wife—for real—but I know in this moment that it is the only thing I would regret not asking for."

A tear slid down my cheek. I opened my hand, the ring still in it.

"Katerina Devereaux, will you marry me? For real?"