Page 93 of Cashmere Ruin
“No!” I shake my head. “You shouldn’t. I?—”
“Let me speak. Please.”
Stunned, I obey.
“Back then, you weren’t taking her away from a loving father—you were taking her away from your own fate. You’ve been treated as a second choice all your life, and then I treated you that way, too. You thought I’d do the same to her, didn’t you? That’s why you took her.”
“And I was wrong! I should’ve talked to you.”
“Yes,” he admits, voice raw. “Yes, you should’ve talked to me. But I didn’t make it easy, did I?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. If you thought I was a monster, it does. If you thought I’d be a monster to her?—”
“But you wouldn’t have been!” I say. “You’re a great dad, Matvey. I see it every day.”
“And you’re a great mom.”
“Stop that. You said you wouldn’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“But you are! You?—”
“April!” he barks, but it’s desperate. “You accused me of not listening to you once. You were right. But now, I want you to listen to me. I needyou to listen to me.”
Wordlessly, I nod.
“You made a choice,” he rasps. “You made the only choice you thought you could make. You did what was best for your child. Forourchild. Even if it broke your heart to do it.”
“How do you know that?” I murmur. “That it broke my heart?”
“Because it broke mine, too.”
My breath hitches. The skyline blinks at me from afar, hazy one second and sharp the next, like a camera lens hunting for focus.
“You said there can’t be love without trust,” he presses on, taking a step towards the railing. “You’re right. There can’t be.”
“So you never loved me?”
“No, April. I loved you from the start.”
Please, don’t let me wake up. If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.
“From the second I saw you in that shop, I loved you. From the second I touched you the first time, kissed you the first time, I knew there would never be another.”
I want it to be true. I want so bad for it to be true, it’s killing me. “What about trust?”
“Trust doesn’t come easy to me,” he whispers. “When you have the kind of life I’ve had, you learn quickly that you can’t trust anyone. You push fear out and harden your heart, but trust is the one thing that can still kill you. Trust is a weakness.”
“That’s why you didn’t trust me?”
“No, April. That’s why I refused to admit I already did.”
Around the railing, my hands are shaking. “What?”
“I buried it,” he confesses, one step closer to my turned back. “I didn’t want to face it. But I did trust you, April. I trusted you more than anyone. And when the time came to choose between my blood and you… I got scared. Because I realized that, deep down, I’d already made my choice. So you’re not the one who ran—I was. I ran away from the truth and from you. And I can never apologize enough for that.”