“You should go,” I say.
He exhales. “Katya, please.”
“I said ‘go.’”
His jaw tightens with irritation. He always has so little patience for the aftermath of his own cruelty.
He walks to the door, then pauses like he expects me to stop him. Like some small, pathetic part of him wants me to beg. It makes me hate him more.
But I do absolutely nothing.
Finally, he steps into the hall.
A moment later, I hear his footsteps on the stairs.
The front door opens, closes, and the house goes quiet.
I stand in the center of my bedroom until my legs start to shake.
Then I sit on the edge of the bed.
At first, I wait for heartbreak.
I wait for the dramatic, devastating ache of losing the man I was supposed to marry. I wait for grief to split me open. For love to rise up, wounded and loyal, begging me to remember the good parts. His hand at the small of my back. His mouth on my cheek in front of our families. The night he proposed beneath white flowers and chandeliers while everyone clapped.
But it doesnotcome.
Not the way it should.
All I can taste is the embarrassment.
It coats my tongue. It sits at the back of my throat until I feel like I might be sick. He did not just leave me…
He choseVika.
Vika, who used to stand in my doorway when we were teenagers and ask to borrow my lipstick.
Vika, who smiled when people told us we looked nothing alike.
Vika, who once said, with that soft little laugh of hers, that some women were made to be adored and some were made to be respected.
My eyes sting again.
I look away from the door and my gaze lands on my passport.
It sits on the vanity beside my ticket folder and a small velvet pouch of jewelry my mother helped me choose. My name gleams on the cover in gold letters.
Katerina Sergeevna Markova.
Tomorrow morning, that passport is supposed to take me to Moscow.
I had been so excited.
And I hate myself for that, too.
I had pretended not to be, of course. I had rolled my eyes when Mama fussed over my coats. I had told Lev I was not nervous about meeting the Morozovs properly, not all of them at once. I had acted like it was just another trip, another dinner, another performance.
But the truth?