Russia? Another family? The only conceivable reason he might hide something like that from me was he didn’t want me in their lives. And, eventually, in his too. Je ne pleurerai pas. Tu ne pleureras pas. Nous ne pleurerons pas. I will not cry. You will not cry. We will not cry. The conjugations failed me, and a single, annoying tear ran down my cheek. Ivan angled my chin up to his and wiped it away, the soft brush of his thumb wrapping me in warmth and contentment. Something else filled the space between us. A pull. An attraction. A little electricity. Some days, when I was feeling particularly suffocated, it sparked hotter than others. Neither of us ever acted on it. My excuse was the fortune-teller I went to when I was fourteen. At that very gothic age, I’d asked her what my purpose was in life. She’d frowned, sitting behind her crystal ball, and then said I would find the man meant for me and that he would take my breath away. It was a generic response she probably told everyone, but it stuck to me like glue. I breathed just fine around Ivan. And Carter, despite experimenting with him out of sheer boredom. Not to mention, he was incredibly persuasive. My time was running out like the last few grains of sand spilling through an hourglass. Yet still, I waited. For more. For some silly idea Madame Richie had put into my head. That was my excuse. Now, I was curious to know Ivan’s. I leaned into the thumb running across my cheek and blinked soft eyes up to his. “How come you’ve never kissed me?” “Because I want to live more,” he deadpanned. A corner of my lips lifted. I’d never even heard my papa raise his voice before, and certainly not to Ivan, who was practically a son to him. “But really?” He gave me a weighty look and dropped his hand. “No more talk about Moscow, all right?” Releasing a sigh, I nodded. I watched him walk up the lawn to the house, the sway and expanse of the Atlantic settling in my bones with a sense of longing and seclusion from the rest of the world.