Page 95 of Jump on Three

I sucked in a deep breath. I’d been hoping to practice my pronunciation more before trying this, but time had run out.

After licking my suddenly dry lips, I unwound my skirt to stack my hands on the table and spoke to him in his mother tongue.

“I’ve been learning Russian. I’m not sure how well I speak it yet, but my comprehension is excellent.”

My eyes were on my picked-over scone. Ivan’s were on me.

“You—” His voice cracked, and he broke off, rubbing his mouth. “You understood my father and me yesterday?”

I nodded. “I would rather not do this. You think I’m just a weird girl, and I know that now. We don’t have to have this conversation.”

I pushed back from the table, but he caught my wrist before I could make my escape. His long fingers cuffed me in place.

“I do not want him to know you, angel.”

Nodding, I let my hair fall in front of my face. “Yes. I understand that.”

“I don’t think you do. I said those things so my father would not be interested in you. That was to protect you.”

“Oh. Strangely, it didn’t feel like that. You called me weird, and that just felt like you were being terrible.” I sniffled, and the backs of my eyes burned, but I would not cry about this. Not here, not anywhere. “I’m going to go now.”

He let me leave the dining hall but came with me, walking along the path to the language building. For someone who didn’t see me as his girlfriend and just the weird girl who followed him around, he was being quite clingy.

“Can we stop for a minute so I can explain?” he asked softly.

I stopped walking in the middle of the path, my hands on my hips. “Do you think I’m weird?”

“I think you’re wonderful.”

For the first time today, I really looked at him. His scruff was almost gone, which was a shame. Even more of a shame were the deep shadows beneath his eyes and slump of his shoulders. He was tired all the way through, just as I was.

“You made me feel awful.”

His groan came from his gut. Deep and low, it was filled with anguish. “That is the last thing I would ever want. You are important to me, and my father does not like me having things I value that he hasn’t given me.”

I squinted at him, attempting to decipher the code in which he was speaking. I came up empty, so I went the easier route and simply asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means almost all my married siblings have husbands and wives my father chose for them. He chose their careers and where they live as well.” He dragged a tattooed hand through his hair, yanking at the ends. “My father and I are not close. Anything about my life I can keep for myself, I will, and I do. You are the best thing that is just mine. I will not share any part of you with him—not your name or anything about you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest to keep my heart from spilling out. Although I was hurt and upset over the things he’d said, empathy surged through me. I could not help it.

Reaching out, the tips of my fingers grazed his. In one quick motion, he fastened his hand to mine, pulling it against his chest.

“I’m sorry I said weird, angel. I was desperate to draw his attention away from you and panicked. It was the wrong word to use. I should have told him you were none of his fucking business, but that would have caught his attention.”

“It’s a trigger word for me,” I whispered. “Not one I ever wanted to hear from you. It’s going to be difficult for me to forget.”

“No. No, no, no,” he rasped, holding my hand tighter. “If you only knew…that isn’t even close to what I think of you.”

“You used that word, though…out of all the words you could have used.”

“I don’t know why I chose it. I wasn’t thinking. I can tell you what I would have said if my father was a normal man.”

I nodded, hungry to hear something good about myself after spending the last day in self-hatred mode, wishing I could be more normal and less…me.

“I would have introduced him to my beautiful girlfriend, Evelyn Kastanos. It wouldn’t have been at random but at your favorite restaurant or the café in Savage River. Of course, he already would have known all about you because you’re always on my mind and I would have talked about you on our weekly calls. He would have already known how smart you are, what a good sister you are, that we like the same music, that your playlists are better than mine. I would have told him I thought I was dreaming the first time I saw you. Your beauty is that surreal. He would have known you’d gotten Marco to smile and regularly bring me to my knees. He’d be keeping track of our swim statistics and know you’re the fastest girl on our team. He would know how long I’ve been stuck on you and what it felt like when you first kissed me. I would have told him you make me want to learn to be gentle and calm because you deserve to have a boyfriend who is that way with you.”

My face was a ball of flames. My head was spinning. I wish he’d spoken slower, allowing me to categorize every compliment. “No one has ever said so many nice things about me in a row.”