Putting this matter to rest once and for all was the one thing that could make her stop kissing him now. Pulling back, she was struck by the magnificent sight he made sprawled there, dwarfing the bed, the whole room, his raven hair strewn around his majestic head.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he spoke first, his voice hushed like a fervent prayer. But it was what he said that made her jackknife up, gape down on him.
“Anastasia, moye serdtse, ya nye magu zhit’ byes tyeba. I can’t live without you, my heart. I won’t. Marry me.”
His words and their meaning registered at once this time. And so did their total shock. He...he...
Ivan was proposing.
And she only knew one thing. She had to find her voice, to blurt out an acceptance.
But something held her back. His agitation. It went beyond worrying about her response. It hit pause on her surging jubilation.
She pulled him up. “There’s something wrong here, Ivan. You don’t seem happy about asking me this.”
“I am, or I will be when you say yes.”
Knowing there was more to this than he was letting on, she persisted, eyes roaming his face, feverishly attempting to see inside him. “If there’s any element of honor or duty or anything else involved here—”
“All my honor and duty and everything else I am are all about you.” She started to protest and his lips silenced hers, before he pulled back to pledge, “You’re everything to me, Anastasia, everything. I love you. I have always and will always love you. Only ever you.”
“Oh, God, Ivan, I love you, too. You’re everything to me, too. You have always been and will always be. But—”
“No buts, moya lyubov, my love.”
“Yes, Ivan, but. These things you never told me are still like a rock on your chest, a constant crushing pain. I feel them and they hurt me, too. They’re not in your past, but very much in your present and I love you too much to let you carry them into your future. I want you with every fiber of my being and I was coming to tell you I’d do anything to be with you. But I won’t let you spare me, I won’t let you hide your pain and suffering from me anymore.”
* * *
Ivan knew this was it. She wouldn’t be satisfied with any more evasions. She couldn’t bear any more uncertainty, wouldn’t let him carry the burden alone any longer.
Feeling he’d be tearing out thorns that had been long embedded deep in his flesh, where scar tissue had formed layers that now had to be ripped open to extract them, he stalled.
“Say yes first, Anastasia. Say you’ll marry me.”
“This isn’t about me now, Ivan. This is about you. Let me in all the way, my love, let me heal you like you healed me.”
At his butchered groan, she contained him in such tenderness, such magnanimity that he’d never known existed, or that he’d ever be blessed enough to experience.
Kissing his brow, the voice he now lived to hear shook with all of her love and allegiance. “Be with me completely, Ivan. Be mine like I’m yours, past, present and future.”
Capitulating once and for all, he surrendered all that he was.
His secrets, his sins, his suffering.
Down to the last mutilating detail.
Nine
Anastasia thought she’d known the worst kind of devastation when Alex had been murdered.
But there seemed to be more kinds that were just as horrifying. And even more shocking.
Ivan. His past. What had been done to him. What he’d had to endure. What he’d been made to do. What he’d had to do to escape, to rebuild himself, to build his life and power.
If she’d tried to guess for as long as she lived, she would have never imagined anything of this nature or magnitude.
But what was too terrible for her to contemplate was not what had been done to him. But by whom. His parents. The parents he’d loved and idolized. The people she’d known all her life, who’d been as much a part of her being as her own parents, and whom she’d loved and trusted almost as much.
And it explained everything. Everything. About him, who he was, how he’d come to be this way, what he could do. It explained his actions, past and present. Why he’d left her, why he’d stayed away even though he’d needed her and Alex in his life, why he’d tortured himself with depriving himself of them. Because he couldn’t bear to be near the people who’d bought their own lives at the price of his.
And it explained his turmoil now. If anything was a testament to his love, it was that he’d come offering his heart, his life. He would endure the torture of living that life close to the family that had betrayed and abandoned him in this unspeakable way, just to be with her.