“He’s trying,” I admit. “But I don’t want him to do these things out of guilt. I want him to do them out of—”
“Love?” Max suggests, and I flush.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “When I met him, I thought there was something there. No—Iknowthere was something there. A connection. But I didn’t let myself dwell on it. I knew I was too broken for him, and even if I hadn’t been—” I shake my head. “I’m not the kind of girl who gets to be with a man like him.”
“Why?” Max raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“I—” I stare at him. “I’m no one. My father was a Bratva brigadier in Russia, a traitor who was killed by his own brothers. My mother fled here with me. My name is disgraced there, disgraced on the tongue of every Russian who hears it. I was a ballerina, not exactly the kind of career a woman chooses if she thinks she’ll marry a man like Liam—and then….” I break off, fighting back the sudden, hot tears that threaten to rise up. “Then I was nothing. Now, I’m nothing. Just a girl with ruined feet and no future.”
“That’s not how Liam sees you.”
“He’s not thinking clearly.”
“Are you sure?” Max looks at me keenly, and I have a sudden feeling that he’s seeing something deeper in me, down to my soul almost, if I believed in such a thing. I’ve never put much stock in churches or God or priests, and I think Max can sense that. it doesn’t feel so much like he’s here as someone who was once a priest, as someone who could be a friend. “You say you have no future. But now you have a chance for one again. You’re free. No one owns you. No one has any hold on you. You could leave here if you wanted to. So why do you stay?”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Max gives me a knowing look. “I know that’s not true, Ana. Sofia would welcome you in an instant if you needed a place to live. Even Viktor and Caterina would take you in—they’ve already given Sasha and me both a place in their household while we need it. You’re not short of friends in Manhattan, whatever excuses you might give yourself.”
“Were you like this as a priest?” I press my lips together, wrapping my arms around my waist. “Relentless? Is that why they defrocked you?”
Max smirks. “Hardly. That’s another story, though, and we’re talking about you.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“Then that’s your choice.” He shrugs. “I’m here to listen, or not, to whatever you wish to say, however much or little.”
“And Liam put you up to this?”
“I offered.”
“Why?” I blink at him, startled. The memory of his hands on mine, grounding me through the panic attack on the plane, comes back to me. “Why are you doing any of this? Just guilt?”
“No.” Max shakes his head, his whiskey-amber eyes meeting mine. He’s incredibly handsome, with an aquiline nose, sharp jaw, and thick, soft-looking dark hair, but it’s the same as Niall. He’s beautiful to look at, but I don’t feel any stirring of desire towards him. Not like Liam, who makes me feel dizzy and breathless just from being near him.
“I stayed in Boston and offered to give my help if need be because I thought you and Liam both might need a friend. Someone who cared. In my experience, those are not easily come by and shouldn’t be dismissed carelessly.”
“I’m sorry.” I feel slightly ashamed. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t apologize. You’ve been through a lot.” Max shrugs. “I think it would be unusual if you didn’t lash out sometimes.”
I lick my lips nervously, looking at him. “So what are you trying to tell me? About my future—”
“You say you don’t have one, or didn’t—but that’s not true any longer. So it’s time for you to think about what you want that to be.” Max is quiet for a moment, letting the words sink in. “I can’t possibly understand what you’ve been through, Ana—I think there are very few people who could. But Idoknow what it’s like to think that your life will be one thing and have it turn into something else, by something out of your control that you would never have chosen. I know what it’s like to feel that loss and how it weighs on you. How it feels to become a person that sometimes, you don’t recognize any longer.”
He pauses, and I see something cross his face, a grief that I recognize. He’s trying to hide it, I can tell. But I recognize it because I’ve seen it in my own face in the mirror, the knowledge of how much I’ve lost and how much I can never, ever regain.
“I was a different man, once, than the one sitting in front of you now,” Max says quietly. “Things happened beyond my control, and I reacted to them. Whether the choices I made were right or wrong, only time can tell. But I live every day with the weight of what I’ve done and the consequences of those choices—along with everything that I’ve lost on account of them. And now—” He shakes his head, giving me a tight smile. “I’m sorry. I’m not here to talk about myself. I just want you to know that—there are parts of what you’ve gone through that I understand. And I want you to know that however broken you feel, thereisa future for you past all of this. You just have to decide what you want it to be.”
“I loved Alexandre,” I say quietly. “I know it’s wrong that I loved him. I know I shouldn’t have—or at least that’s what everyone tells me. And because I loved him—because Istilllove him, even after what he did, I might lose whatever chance I could have at a future with Liam…even if I want one.”
“Liam told me what he made him do,” Max says quietly. “That’s all of it that he’s shared with me. It was a cruel and terrible thing to do,” he adds. “I can’t deny that.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I should hate him. I shouldn’t care about him after he did that. He violated me, my trust in him, and he violated Liam too. Everything that I thought he was, that I thought I saw in him—”
“But you did see something.”
I look up, startled. “What?”