Page 105 of Your Sharpest Edge
“You’re not going to fail,” he added, and I believed him.
For some wild reason, I trusted that he was telling me the truth.
“I’ll try it, but with work and Damien, I can’t really commit to a lot.” I stressed.
“I get it. Try it for Carlos’s wife. She was the first one with a big following and had some ideas. I told her you’d connect with her via social media if you were interested.”
I nodded. I was on social media, but I wasn’t active. I avoided sharing any photos of Damien because I didn’t want Dimitri to somehow find out where we were. It was part of the court order that he had access to my number to make his calls, but he never had my address and never would.
“Okay, I’ll try.”
Another shit-eating grin spread across Alex’s face. “That brings me to another thing. That shirt that you made me for the first time. Do you remember it?”
“Obviously.”
“Look above the desk.” I looked over my shoulder where the desk was and saw a shadow box frame with the shirt proudly hung inside it.
“Oh my god, Alex. If anyone were to come here, they’d fire me. That thing is ridiculous.”
I looked at all the random holes, the patchy pattern, and the very obvious hem. It looked like a child’s craft project.
But then I looked down at the dress I was wearing. The seam delicately folded in on the bottom, the raw edges on the top by the bust. The way the bows were stable and perfectly positioned at the top of my shoulders. It wasn’t perfect, but neither was I. It was proof of how far I’d come. My eyes fluttered back up, meeting Alex’s intense gaze.
“Why?”
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“I would do anything for you. I’ve always felt like this.” My heart was beating fast and loud. I wanted to dive over the table, take her hands into mine, and cover them with kisses. I wanted to tell her all the reasons I wanted to do this for her were because I was madly and wildly in love with Anastasia Illyiana and have been for the last five years.
“No.” She shook her head quite a few times before bracing her hands on the table.
We hadn’t even gotten to dinner and were already having this conversation.
I leaned over the table. “Anastasia. I met you, and you were married, but the moment I laid eyes on you in my apartment over a vat of borscht, I knew there was something very special about you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I couldn’t let myself fall in love with you back then. I did everything to avoid you, but the day you walked into my apartment with those bruises, my frozen heart shattered into amillion pieces. I couldn’t let you go because losing you meant not knowing if you were safe.”
“But it’s not your fault. What happened wasn’t because of you. He had everything planned. He was a bad guy, Alex.”
“I know that now,” I told her. “But I blamed myself. I thought I was protecting you by not saying anything. I kept thinking about my family and my cheating father and wanted so desperately not to be like him that I left you in the dust. I blamed myself that night. I still think I do.”
Tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
“After we got into our first fight, I spent the next day obsessing over whether or not I pushed you away.”
“Y-you didn’t,” she said faintly.
“I knew you were special to me, but...” I closed my eyes, imagining the day Damien was born.
“Alex, please.”
My chair squeaked across the wooden floors as I pushed it back and stood. I walked over to where Anastasia was, grabbed her hands and held tightly.
“When Damien was born and I was at the hospital, I fell in love with you, Anastasia. I’m crazy about you.” Tears ran freely down her cheeks. “I loved you so much that when you asked me to leave, I did it without a second thought because you told me that if I loved you, I’d also let you go.”
