I was getting bored of the fucking. It had started to feel worn out. Tired. Like me. Like life.
I should leave her, go back to Corfu and just soak in the sun. I feel happy there. But that would mean leaving Dasha to her fate here with Jasper, and as much as she deserves it, I can’t.
Take her to Corfu and torture her yourself, a dark, dark part of me whispers. Not in the way Jasper does though. I would never hit her. I could make her pay, though. Fuck with her head.
Dasha’s always been the extremes to me. Like yin and yang. Part of me put her on a pedestal and she never fell off it no matter what she did. The other part has spent years hating her and seeing her as nothing but trash.
The truth is probably much more complex. She’s a person who feels, and thinks, and makes mistakes like the rest of us. Only her mistake almost cost me my life.
I eat breakfast and what seems like ages later, Dasha appears. She’s dressed in a loose t-shirt and leggings. Her hair is pulled back tight, and on her feet, she has some slip-on shoes. Her large bag is slung over her shoulder.
“Darling.” Jasper appears as if by magic, the fucking creep.
“I’m off to practice,” she says. As she reaches the front door, me trailing her, she pauses, turns to her husband and says with what seems like sincerity. “Thank you so much for last night.”
He smiles and dips his head. As we close the door behind us, I want to ask her how she can thank him? He made her lie in the garbage for fuck’s sake.
I don’t, though. I don’t say anything. Neither does she. The whole drive to the opera house is silent and tense. Once we arrive, I follow her to her changing room and stand outside as she goes in.
A few minutes later the door opens, her arm reaches out, and she pulls me in. I’m so surprised, I let her.
She closes the door, locks it, and stands with her hands on her hips. It makes me laugh. She’s got the stance of a fearsome Russian mother, but she’s a slip of a thing.
“Bohdan, what happened to you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask her, knowing full well what she means but not wanting to do this. Not now. We do this when I decide, not her.
“Your legs. What happened?” She purses her lips, and I see tears shimmering in her eyes.
Fuck her, she doesn’t get to cry crocodile tears over this.
“You happened, Dasha. You.”
I blurt the words out and immediately regret them. Fuck me, this isn’t how I pictured it. The moment I showed her what she’d done to me. The moment I made her pay.
“What? I don’t understand.”
She’s good, I’ll give her that. But, of course, she is because her whole life is a lie. “What don’t you understand?” I sneer. “That loose lips do more than sink ships?”
“What? Stop talking in riddles. What the hell happened? What has it got to do with me?”
I sigh, scrub a hand through my hair, and start to pace. “I know I fucked up, Dasha. I know. But what you did was so much worse.”
“You still haven’t told me what I did,” she points out angrily.
“I think you fucking know.” I go for the door because this isn’t how I planned it, and the white-hot fury coursing through my veins tells me I’m not in control.
She beats me to it, standing in front of the door as if she can stop me.
“Fucking move,” I order.
“No. Not until you tell me what happened to you.”
“Dasha, don’t make me force you.”
“Tell me what you mean. You can’t say shit like that, Bohdan, and not explain it. I feel like I’m going mad here. You come back into my life, then you start saying crazy stuff. I don’t know what is going on.”
“Yeah? How does it feel? I hope you fucking drown in it, Dasha, the way I did when you fucked me over.”
She stills, her face paling, and I realize just what I’ve said. I’ve basically told her I wish her harm. Me. Her supposed bodyguard. Shit.
“I’m calling your firm tonight, and you’re off my case. You’re in no mental or emotional state to keep me safe. I already have enough threats against me, Bohdan. I don’t need another one. I don’t care what you think you know about me. I didn’t do anything to