Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(38)

When she notices me watching, she drops it like it burned her and reaches for the water again.

“You always wanted a child?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. It’s hard to think about looking after and providing for another human being when you can barely take care of yourself.” She takes a deep breath. “But that sort of changed when I met Anthony and we started making some money. It started to feel like anything was possible, including the idea of motherhood.”

I feel my hand curling into an angry fist at the mention of her ex-husband. I lower it under the table.

There’s no need to let her know how much I fucking loathe the mention of the previous man in her life.

When she mentioned the shirt she was wearing had belonged to him, it took every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep myself from ripping it right off her and burning the shreds at her feet.

I need to calm the fuck down. The fastest way to do that would be to stop talking about her ex. But I’m nothing if not a masochist.

“Did he want children?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. Big time. Right from the beginning. He used to talk about our future plans. The house we’d buy, the dog we’d have, the children we’d raise together…”

She trails off, her voice wavering. She looks sad for a moment, and I want to know if that sadness is actually related to him. Does she miss him? Is she angry for what he did to her? If she saw him on the street, would she throw her arms around him or spit in his face?

Or is this just love, twisted into a different shape by betrayal?

And if so, is it the kind of love that can be bent back to the way it was?

What would I do if the answer is yes?

“We were together eight years,” she whispers, glancing up at me like she can hear the questions rippling through my head. “Eight years is a long time. How is it possible that you can be with someone for eight whole years and still not know them?”

“In my experience, you can be with someone your entire life and still not know them.”

She blows out a breath. “That’s bleak.”

“The truth usually is.”

“Who was she?” Paige asks, holding my gaze. “The girl who broke your heart.”

I raise my eyebrows. Beneath the table, my fist tightens one more notch. “There was no girl.”

“Liar.”

I shake my head. “I’ve had a lot of different women in my life. But never anyone who mattered.”

She sits up a little straighter, her eyebrows pinched together. “You’ve never had a single girlfriend?”

“There’s no room for that. Most girlfriends don’t want to stay girlfriends forever,” I explain. “And I’ve never been one for making promises I couldn’t keep.”

“You broke up with women you actually liked because you didn’t want to get married?” She throws her arms out as if to gesture at our situation, eyes bulging in dismay. “What changed?”

“This is different. This is a business arrangement.”

She sinks down in her chair and stares at her glass of water. “Lucky me.”

Her gaze flits around the restaurant without ever landing on one spot. She’s getting fidgety and I know that she’s desperate to touch the pendant hanging against her chest. It’s a habit of hers. A safety blanket draped around her neck at all times.

“Did he give that to you?” I ask abruptly.

“What?”

“The pendant you’re always clinging to like a life raft.” It occurs to me that I’ve never even seen the damn thing. Her hand is always wrapped around it.

Her eyes narrow. “You’re one to talk. You’ve got a life raft of your own.”

“It’s not a life raft,” I tell her. “It’s a reminder.”

“Of what?”

“Of a promise I made.”

“Are you going to tell me who you made the promise to?” she asks.

“Are you going to tell me why you wear that pendant?”

She looks uncertain for a moment. She’s stingy to give away her secrets on the offhand chance that I use them against her. She’s not wrong to be worried; the chance is not actually so offhand.

Unfortunately, the waitress chooses this moment to interrupt. She introduces herself and struts her best customer service stuff to earn a good tip, but I just want her to leave.

I order the first thing I see on the menu. “Cauliflower tacos.” Even saying it aloud makes my stomach churn uncomfortably. The word itself tastes like low-fat sawdust.

“I’ll have the miso tofu wrap, please,” Paige says with a polite smile.

She never smiles at me like that.

“And what can I get you to drink?” the woman prompts. “We have—”

“Whiskey,” I cut in.

Her face falls. “We don’t have alcohol here, sir,” she says apologetically. “We do have a full-service kombucha—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, anything but that,” I snarl, remembering Konstantin blathering on about the stuff back at Orion. “Just water.”

“I’ll take a watermelon juice, please,” Paige says. “It sounds delicious. Thank you so much.”

When the waitress finally clears out, she leaves a vacuum that bristles with untold secrets.