Page 23 of Cashmere Ruin
It feels like the first sip of water I’ve had in forever. I don’t stop until I’ve guzzled every last drop. “Grisha left some painkillers for you,” she adds afterwards. “Do you want them?”
Yes. My shoulder is killing me.“Medication dulls my senses,” I mutter.
“Uh, right. I’m gonna take that as a no.”
There’s a disappointed edge to her tone. It irks me—what the hell did I donow? “I said I’m fine.”
“Actually, no, you didn’t. You just gave me some bullshit, alpha male one-liner and weaseled your way out of saying what you really feel. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“What do you want me to do, April?” I snarl. “You want me to say it hurts? Fine: it hurts like a goddamn bitch.Happy now?”
“Yes!” she snarls right back. “Because at least I know what you’re thinking!”
“What was I supposed to be thinking? ‘Oh, gee, I’m so happy my father came all the way from D.C. to put a bullet in me’?!”
“How should I know? You don’t tell me anything! And when you do, you lie.”
“I never—” I start.
“Do not!” April cuts me off, standing up in a rage. “Donottell me you never lied to me, Matvey Groza, because I swear to God, I will swap your painkillers with gummy bears and pour Everclear right on your stitches.”
“I never?—”
“Never told me you loved Petra?” she spits. “Never told me her baby was yours? Newsflash, Matvey: you didn’t have to. You came home, you told me you were marrying her, and you damn well knew you didn’t have to say anything else.”
“I—”
“You knew. You fucking knew. At least respect me enough to admit that.”
I want to reject April’s words with all my heart. I want to scream loud enough to wake up the entire building,That’s not true.
But I can’t.
Because it is.
I let her connect the dots all while knowing exactly what picture she was drawing in her head. I let her think the wedding was of my own free will so that I wouldn’t have to explain why it wasn’t. I let her think the baby was mine so that I wouldn’t have to explain that it wasn’t—so that I wouldn’t have to tell herwhoseit was.
I may not have lied to her face. But I might as well have.
“You won’t tell me a single thing. You shut yourself away in your silence and leave me alone with my mind. Do you have any idea what that feels like?”
I don’t. Silence is the one thing I never had to fight. Silence means bullets aren’t flying; it means storms aren’t coming. It means that, at least for as long as that silence lasts, that no one’s getting hurt.
It was never my enemy.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not April’s.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she rasps. “Tell me that, or finally tell me the truth.”
So I do.
I tell her everything.
I tell her about going back to my apartment that morning. About finding Petra there. About how I almost shot the woman on sight.
Then I tell her what she told me.I’m pregnant.
It’s not easy at first, getting it out in the open. Every word I say gets stuck in my throat on the way out, like it knows it’s a secret. Like it knows I’m not supposed to share it.