Page 19 of Pas de Trois
“Nikolai. Nikolai, wake up. Look at me.” Her entire body trembles. “If you really love me, you’ll open your goddamn eyes and look at me…”
Anya presses her lips to his, lingering with a kiss, and I freeze. She has stunned me into silence, and I can’t move.
What is she doing?
Why did she do that?
“Nikolai?” she says, her voice hardly a whisper as she stares at him, the tips of their noses practically touching. “Nikolai?”
Her voice catches and tears stream down her cheeks like waterfalls. She sobs, letting her cry echo through the open space of the dance studio, the sound of her sadness bouncing off the walls and slamming into my heart.
“It hurts. I hate him.” Her sobs take over everything and nothing else is happening in the world right now. “I hate him so much. Why does this hurt? Why does it hurt?”
I latch my arms around her waist and drag her from Nikolai’s dead body. She reaches for me as I pull her closer, her small limbs wrapping around me as I hold her tight. She squeezes me harder than ever before and sobs into the side of my neck, drenching me in her pain.
My own tears fall.
Not for Nikolai, but for my girl.
As far as I’m concerned, this is just one more awful thing that Nikolai has done to her. He tried to redeem himself at the final hour, only to go and die on her.
“Why does it hurt?” she repeats softly.
I rub my hands over her back, trying to comfort her when I have no idea how. I give her silence, letting her have her emotional purge. The longer we sit here with each other, the more she cries and hurts, the more my own pain washes over me. Before long I’m crying with her, and I can’t even say why.
Nikolai stole us.
He enslaved us, he hurt us, he brutalized us.
He sold Anya to someone more sadistic than himself.
And then he helped us.
He helped us.
There are so many questions left unanswered and they’re all rushing around in my head, scrambling my brain. But the questions tumble down our cheeks as tears because we will never get those answers.
The whys, the what ifs, the how could he possibly…
They all just died with Nikolai.
Anya’s crying slows and her sobs fade into small hiccups of hurt. All her tears have been shed and she goes quiet and still in my arms. I reach up behind her, cradling the back of her head before stroking my hand down her long, dark hair. She pulls her head back so she can look at me and lets her forehead fall against mine.
“I’m sorry for being crazy again,” she whispers.
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“I kissed him.” Her eyes glass over again with fresh tears as she looks at me. “I’m so sorry. I kissed him.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know why I kissed him.”
“Hey. It’s okay. It’s okay, baby.” I stroke her hair again. “It’s all okay. I promise.”
I take a deep breath, holding her gaze with hope that I can feed her strength from within me. It forces me to swallow my own pain—it does hurt that she willingly put her lips to his, but I don’t feel justified judging her for that. I know my only choice is to get over it.
Somehow.
But that’s not her concern.
This whole damn thing is the cluster fuck to end all cluster fucks.
