Chapter 29 TWENTY NINE
Chapter 29 TWENTY NINE
ANYA'S POV
My legs started bouncing right after I wolfed down the entire stack of pancakes on the plates. I’d eaten so greedily that my gut was hurting much worse than before I started to eat.
I wrapped my arms around myself, fingers digging into the camisole top I had on which Rosie had laid alongside a pair of blue jeans..
Rosie looked amused watching me be so jittery, constantly looking over my shoulders in the barely lit room. My eyes bounced all over the place, from the windows, to the bathroom door, to the main door leading to the hallway cracked open a bit.
When my eyes landed on her again, and I could have sworn the corner of her lips looked like she was fighting back a smile.
Her head tilted. ‘‘You know he didn’t go to war right?’’
I didn’t asnwer.
‘‘And he’s going to be back soon.’’
I tried to convince myself, more than her that… “...I don’t care.”
Her brows twitched mockingly. ‘‘Really?”
“Yes.” I stressed.
I could have sworn she looked like she was really fighting back a smile.
“You look like—”
“I’m not BOTHERED.” I persisted.
She slouched back into her seat. “I thought.”
Again, this time, my aggression was fueled by how on the edge I was. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to insinuate. But I’ll tell you this. I DO NOT care about Sergei. Not even a little bit. Wanting to know where he went doesn’t mean I care about him. When I walked in earlier… you looked like you were fastened to a bomb. It’s just common human decency that I asked where he went to… or… if something had happened.. This is a man I’d gotten married to…” My fingers trembled as I wiggled it in the air, flashing the ring—which ever since it had been slipped into my hand I’d still refused to look pointedly at—in her face. “His ring is on my finger. Wanting to know where he went is common decency. NOTHING ELSE. Again, I DO NOT CARE.’’
After the long rant, I was a little breathless and yet, Rosie looked like she wasn’t a little bit convinced, or maybe she did and she just enjoyed pushing me to the edge.
“Not a little bit…”
“No.” I snapped.
Her eyes squinted.
“Not even….”
“Rosie…”
She held her hands up in a surrender. “I’m just a little curious you know…”
“I know nothing. I don’t give a damn.”
“Hmmm.” She hummed.
I arched my brow.
“You really think I do?”
“I don't know what to think.”
“I don't care.”
“You already said so… if you repeat it one more time id just belive you're trying to convince yourself more than you're trying to convince me…”
I tried, hard, not to look over my shoulders again. I didn’t want to prove her point right. Yet, I didn’t understand why I was so on the edge for him… especially FOR A MOROZOV. Him being away or being here made no difference. He was a terror to my system. A nervous wreck. A man I didn’t even want to think about but yet kept crawling into my thoughts.
The next few minutes crawled by in silence as I slouched into the leather couch behind me, waiting on the time he’d return. My ears were perked listening for any sound in the house but there was nothing yet.
Rosie and I maintained eye contact the entire time.
Just watching each other, never for once breaking the silence… until I did.
“You live here?” A geunine question, but the blink of her eyes told me she wasn’t comfortable with it.
"Yes.." She muttered.
I didn’t hold back.
"How long?" And most importantly. “Why are you here?”
“Anya…” The way she called my name was like a weary mother. I didn’t let her finish.
“It’s just odd.”
“What is?”
“You being here… only you… amongst men like…” I trailed off. “....Sergei.’
There was a few minutes silence before she spoke. Her voice soft. “Sergei… isn’t has bad as you think.”
“He—”
She cut off my protest before I could even put the words to together.
“I know what you want to say. I understand your point of view. I know what he did. All of his crimes… his… filth. I know he killed your father…. and …” Her throat closed up. “And… he touched you last night.” Touch was such a flowery langauge for rape, and the look of annoyance on my face must have let her know that angered me, but, she was quick to try rectify her mistake. ‘‘And never for once am I in support of the horrible things he’d done. But… here’s the thing…. I have known him for a long time….”
“....And that justify the murders? The atrocities? The… RAPE?”
Rosie, taken aback by the hardness of my voice, shook her head aggreisvely. “I already said. Nothing does. Nothing will. No redemeption for the horrible horrible things he’s done… but… Anya…..” her voice softened like she was talking about a child. “He wasn’t like this before. The Sergei I used to know… would never even hurt a fly.’’
I didn’t know what to say in response to that. She sounded like she was supporting him. I was supposed to be angry… wrong… I was angry, but it was mixed with more intruige than pure rage.
‘‘How long have you known him for?”
“Long enough.” She barely stated.
‘‘How… long?”
She didn’t want to answer.
“Before the….” It was hard to be blunt in situations like this. “Before the attack?”
Rosie’s hand, that had been stroking the cat in her thighs paused, and her head lifted to me. The look in her eyes told me what I wanted to know. That was a touchy subject. The attack. The one that Sergei had told me about. My father’s men raiding the Morozov estate. My father’s men killing off his siblings. My father’s men….
“He told you.” She merely whispered. She didn’t look like she had a grudge against me. But, God, how fast her soft-looking face had morphed from netural to beet-red was like someone had flipped a switch somewhere in her head, toying with her emotions. She tried to hide it—tried—because blinking rapidly barely stopped the tears glistening in her eyes. “Yes,” She answered, “Before the attack.”
I didn’t ask anything for a long time but my eyes drifted to her legs again in the oversized sweatpants she had on. The light overhead was warm, but I’d seen earlier that she had been bare foot and that her toenails had pink chipped polish on them. The question I wanted to ask haunted me even before I could put them to words.
“You were there?”
She held my eyes from across the table. Green and glistening. I could tell just how much triggered she was getting. The way her chest rose, fell, almost as if she was daring me to teeter too close to that wall she’d built around herself over the years.
“Yes,” she whispered.
I couldn’t rip my eyes off her legs. Just resting there. Just unmoving. Limp. “What happened?”