He gripped the sides of his chairs, deciding he didn’t have to put up with this. He would go back to his seat. Devise a new plan. Figure out how to get back the woman who’d come to him last night. Make her talk to him, tell him why she was behaving this way.
“We need to talk.”
The unexpected sound of Sam’s voice lifted his eyes back to her, and he was surprised to find her now looking back at him from across the small table.
“Da, zhena. Let us talk,” he agreed. “Tell me what this is about. Please.”
Her gaze shifted away for a moment, as if his impassioned words were embarrassing. As if she were embarrassed for him.
“I have a little experience with international break ups and I know they can be… messy. I didn’t want to have this talk with you in the hotel room, in another country where I didn’t know the laws or have any recourse if you decided to, um… use your resources against me.”
He shook his head at her, confused. All he really heard in all she said were two words. Break and up. “You want to leave me. Again.”
She sighed. “Nikolai, last night. Was any of that real? Like, were you serious when you told me you wanted to be a good father to Pavel and this baby?”
“Da, of course. How can you doubt that?” he answered.
Her lips twisted as if he’d said something extremely naïve. “I get that a lot of what you said is probably true. Your background and the fact that you’ve had no therapy whatsoever probably makes it hard to distinguish between right and wrong. I’m a friend to people like you, Nikolai, and I will always do my utmost to understand what you’re going through. I’ll always try to be the best friend I can to you considering the circumstances. I hope you understand that.”
She was acting like he was some kind of lost cause. Someone who couldn’t be fixed, even by her.
“I don’t want friend,” he answered. “I want wife. You are my wife.”
“But I don’t want to be,” she said, quick and to the point, like a doctor delivering bad news. “Not anymore. Not like this. I want a divorce. And I want you to prove you meant what you said last night, by not siccing Kevin on me. I want you to agree to split custody and I want you to let me stay in Pavel’s life because he needs me, and I love him, and it would be wrong on your part to punish him because you’re angry at me.”
Nikolai blinked. It was like she’d pulled a grenade out, set it down on the table, and casually pulled out the pin.
“No,” Nikolai said as something inside of him blew up.
“Nikolai. It’s the healthiest thing to do,” she said, clasping her hands together tight. “The best thing for all of us. Please just let me go. I’m not the one to make this perfect family obsession you have happen, and there are plenty of woman—”
He picked up her tray and threw it across the cabin. “I don’t want other woman. You are my wife. You!”
“But I don’t want to be!” she screamed back at him. “I don’t want to be. So let me go! For the good of everyone, including you. If you really meant all those things you said last night, just let me go.”
She wanted a divorce. She didn’t want to be his wife. Nikolai breathed hard, his heart constricting, because he didn’t know what to do, how to handle this.
The problem was she was right. He’d do anything for Pavel. Anything for this baby. And the only way he could make her stay involved hurting her and her career irreparably.
But she was the mother of his child and at the end of the day, he must not have been as much like his father as he feared, because the thought of hurting her in any way—no he couldn’t. He let out a heavy, sad sigh.
“Okay… okay,” he said. “I will give you divorce. Split custody. Whatever you want, I will do.”
His words of concession made her close her eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief, as if her most fervent wish had just been granted.
Seeing her do this cut Nikolai to his fucking core.
“I’ll just… I’ll just clean up the tray,” she said. “Before Dave comes back.”
“Did you have nightmare, zhena?” he asked before she could turn away from him.
His question brought her eyes up, and she frowned at him. “Nikolai, don’t…”
“I will give you divorce, but first you must answer my questions. Did I have nightmare?” he asked.
She shook her head, refusing to answer.
“If you want divorce, zhena, you will answer me,” he said. “Tell me truth, what did I do? Why don’t you want to be my wife anymore? Whatever it is, I will fix it.”
She looked at him for a hot, angry second before saying. “You can’t fix it. It’s unfixable. I can’t make you—”
She stopped and shook her head again.
“What?” he asked. “Tell me.”
Ignoring him, she went across the cabin and busied herself with picking up the tray. But he didn’t give up. He continued to fight for her even though she didn’t seem at all interested in fighting for him.
“Last night meant nothing to you, zhena?” he asked.
No answer.
“It was you. You who came to me.”
She rubbed a hand over her eyes as if she were exhausted, as if this entire conversation had made her weary. “Don’t,” she said quietly. “I already feel like enough of a fool for doing that. Don’t use last night against me….”
She seemed on the verge of saying more, but then she trailed of, and he could see her taking deep breaths. Purposefully calming down. But he did not want her to calm down. He wanted her to talk to him.
“You will not breathe,” he told her. “You will not make yourself calm. You will talk to me. Yell at me. Say whatever it is you don’t say this morning in hotel. Give me words. I deserve them.”
This only made her breathe even slower and deeper, and a few seconds later, when she stood up to face him again, she was the very picture of calm.
“No,” she answered. “You don’t deserve anything from me. We’re getting a divorce. We’re splitting custody of this baby like adults, and we will work out an arrangement for Pavel. You’ll agree to this because you’re not a sociopath, and that’s what a non-sociopath would do in this situation. So that’s the end of this discussion.”
She was right. She knew it. And he knew it. He wasn’t going to hurt his children, and he would agree to the divorce. He would agree to split custody. Later.