Page 173 of Mile High Ex's Dad
I look at her for a long moment. “You’re asking me.”
“Yes.”
“Or warning me?”
“If you prefer.”
That almost makes me smile, but not quite.
She folds her arms, not defensively, more like she needs something to hold herself together while she says the rest.
“You don’t know him,” she says. “Not really. You know the version of him he allows people to see when he wants something, or when he’s decided someone matters enough to turn his full attention on them. That can feel like devotion. It can feel like safety. It can feel like being chosen in a way that’s hard to walk away from.”
Her eyes stay on mine.
“But it comes with a cost.”
I hear the ache under the control now. Not loud. Not theatrical. Old and disciplined and still alive.
“What cost?” I ask.
Her mouth tightens. “Your center of gravity changes. His needs become the weather in the room. His enemies become your enemies. His silences become things you live around. And one day you wake up and realize you’ve built your life around the shape of a man who was never going to bend enough to make room for anyone else.”
For a moment I let the silence sit between us. Then I say, quietly, “You still love him.”
She doesn’t deny it right away. That tells me more than the denial would have.
When she finally speaks, her voice is calm again, but less steady than before. “This isn’t about love.”
“Yes, it is.”
Her eyes flash. “Don’t be naive.”
“I’m not.”
That surprises her enough to make her pause.
I go on before she can take the conversation back. “I’m not saying that to be cruel,” I say. “I’m saying it because you’re standing in a hospital after your son’s wedding fell apart, talking to the woman who just had a baby, and all you really want to talk about is Viktor.”
Something in her face closes at that. “You still don’t get it do you?”
I look at her and say nothing.
She takes one step toward me, not enough to crowd me, just enough to make sure I hear every word. “He keeps choosing you,” she says. “Over and over again.”
The corridor goes very quiet.
“It’s so obvious to me that this isn’t about a passing distraction or a moment of weakness or some reckless mess that will fade once the shock wears off.” She looks down the hall for a second, then back at me. “I’ve known Viktor too long not to see it. He chooses very little with his whole heart. But when he does, everyone around him feels it.”
There’s no bitterness in her voice now.
Only certainty. And something like grief.
“I watched it on the lawn,” she says. “I heard it in the way he spoke about you. I saw it again in the hospital. He keeps choosing you in every room he walks into, whether he means to or not.”
I don’t know what to do with that. Part of me wants to reject it immediately. Part of me wants to hold it close and believe it so badly it makes my chest ache.
Alina sees all of that on my face. “That’s why I came to you,” she says. “Walk away from his life and I’ll give you ten million dollars.”
