Page 254 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
“I wish you had been better to me. I wish I had understood you more. I wish…” My voice breaks. “I wish you were alive enough for me to still be angry properly.”
Yaromir comes closer then, not touching me at first.
I reach for his hand. He takes mine.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her grave.
I don’t know what part I’m apologizing for.
Maybe all of it.
Yaromir bows his head slightly. Not deeply. Not dramatically. Just enough to acknowledge the dead. For a man like him, it feels like a great deal.
After a minute, he says, “We should go.”
I nod.
My side is starting to hurt more, but I don’t tell him. He already knows. His hand shifts at my waist, firmer now, and he guides me back toward the car without comment.
On the drive home, I don’t speak much. Neither does he. His thumb keeps moving over my hand, slow and steady.
The estate looks different when we arrive. Not physically. The same gates. The same long drive. The same severe house waiting at the end of it.
He told me Larisa was the one who tried to kill me. He told me he had exiled her.
Now the house belongs to just the two of us.
“Welcome home, madam.”
I smile at Nina. “Thank you.”
Her gaze drops briefly to my stomach, then returns to my face with a softness that almost undoes me.
Yaromir notices. Of course he does.
“Food,” he says.
Nina nods. “Already prepared.”
“And tea.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And soup.”
I look at him. “I’m not an invalid Victorian child.”
“You were shot.”
“Your answer to everything for the next few weeks is going to be ‘you were shot,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Nina turns her face away, but I see her smile.
Yaromir does too and chooses, mercifully, to ignore it.
“I thought you had something to show me,” I say.
