Page 35 of Forced Mafia Bride
She nodded, pulling on the strings of her hoodie. It was the first time I had seen her in something other than a suit, and it fitted her in an odd feminine way.
“For now. It’s safe. No one will think to look for us here.”
I turned to her, my eyes searching as I tried to shake off the feeling of unease that had been growing inside me. After that day with Nikolai, I knew I couldn’t continue to stay around him. It was toxic enough to hate someone and have sex with the same person. I needed realfreedom. Away from Ronan and thetorture I’d grown with over the past years. Away fromhim,too—the man who managed to stir ice and fire in me at the same time.
“But what’s the real plan? How long do we have to stay here?”
She took a deep breath, her eyes still glued to the world beyond the window. “Laying low for a few more days until things blow over. Then we can start thinking about our next move: to leave the city. That’s the plan. We can do this, okay? I just need you to be strong.”
And that was the one word that broke me because there was something else that rammed against my chest like a sledgehammer.Somethingthat crushed the weight of my shoulder with each breath I took.
How long was I supposed to stay strong?
“Hey…hey, what’s wrong?” She gathered me by the shoulders, rubbing my back as the tears slipped from my eyes. “I promise, we’re not going to stay here for long, okay? It’s just temporary.”
I shook my head.That isn’t it.“That’s not it.”How am I going to tell her?“Oh, Hannah….”
A fresh roll of waterworks started down my cheeks, and she could only offer back rubs, supporting the best way she knew how. Although I knew, before starting this new life, I was going to have to come clean.
I pulled away from her, rubbed my hands on my jeans, and stared hard at the floor before speaking. “It’s just….”
She encouraged softly, patting my arm. “It’s just what, Rosalyn?”
“I….” I swallowed, coughing back a chokehold of tears. “I really don’t know how it happened. I…I swear we…. I made sure we used protection….”
Her hands stilled, and the sadness in her eyes morphed into something unreadable.
“You had sex? With aYezhov?”
Her tone was neither judgmental nor exciting, just plain curious and maybe a pinch hurt, but my shoulders felt heavy, like they bore the weight of the world on them.
I licked my dry lips and fiddled with my fingers. “I swear, it wasn’t planned.”
“It was that night, wasn’t it? The night of the Bercyna, at your house?”
“Yes.” I swallowed, refusing to look her in the eye, scared of what I might have seen.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
It was there now, more pronounced—the hurt that I kept such a big thing from her.
My lips wobbled.
I didn’t want to cry. I wastiredof the tears.
“Hannah….”
Rapidly, she blinked, wiping her glassy eyes before resuming her familiar stiff posture, but when she spoke, I had never heard such an amount of emotion laced in her voice like now. She flicked her lashes and folded her arms across her chest.
“This is not about me. Let’s not make it about me. I’m just…I wish you’d told me.”
I wished so, too, that I had been bold enough to tell her then, but would it really have changed anything?
When I didn’t speak anymore, she nudged my shoulder with a raised brow.
“So what happened?”
That insane pressure returned. The one that made me feel like I’d been stabbed in the heart and left to bleed to my death in a cold alley.