“Don’t make me responsible for you,” she said, recalling Vanessa’s words. “I’m not. I can’t be. It isn’t fair to put that on me.”
He sniffed and held her tighter. “You’re growing up,” he said. “You’re so much stronger than when we met.”
“Don’t you like strong women?”
He sighed and dropped his head on her shoulder.
“I love them.”
“And they love you. But if you love someone, you have to, I don’t know, do what’s best for them. And, if we stay together, we’ll fight and you’ll say cruel things that can’t be taken back and we’ll split and it’ll be horrible, and maybe something neither of us can overcome. I just want to hope. If we break now, I can keep that hope. And so can you.”
She shut her eyes, held a breath right at the top of her lungs, waiting.
“If you leave me now, that’s it,” he said.
It was hopeless. He wasn’t a man to negotiate with, and she should have realised. Even so, the words hit her like a punch to the stomach.
She’d gambled and lost.
She looked him long and hard in the eye.
“You don’t mean that.”
His gaze burned her.
“Yes. I do.”
“Then there’s nothing more to say.”
She wrestled her way out of his arms and started to look for her clothes.
Chapter Six
Because Lydia had done so much grieving for their relationship after leaving Prague, she found that she was hardly able to do any more.
She was grateful for her eyes, which were cried out, and her body, which wasn’t going to stand for any more sleepless nights. She was also grateful for her violin, which took the angst from her and turned it into music, setting the heartbreak free on the wind.
She was most grateful of all for good friends, notably Vanessa. And Ben. Ben was around a lot these days, it seemed. When she mentioned how close they seemed to be getting, though, Vanessa brushed it off. With a blush.
“Why don’t you come and stay at my place for the weekend?” offered Vanessa, at the end of their third rehearsal after the breakup.
Like the previous two, it had resembled inserting a dagger into her heart and twisting it very, very slowly for hour upon hour. Every tragic note in the music made her chest heave and her violin bump on her breastbone. She had to get a grip or her playing would be affected.
But Milan barely looked at her, bowing away with his head back and his face furiously focused. She was almost tempted to make stupid mistakes just so he would have to address them and, by extension, her. He was still in nominal charge while they waited for von Ritter to arrive at the end of the week, and he threw his weight about to such an extent that some sections of the orchestra were considering a rebellion.
If he was still drinking, he was hiding it well. This was Lydia’s sole, tiny life-raft of reassurance. He was behaving like an arse, but he was getting better.
“You sure?” asked Lydia.
She and Vanessa were standing in the percussion section while Milan and some of his loyal acolytes were talking loudly about von Ritter’s reputation.
“Of course.”
“You’re not busy this weekend?”
“Just practicing, as usual.”
“Nobody to…see?” Lydia swerved her eyes over to Ben, who was chatting with some trombonists.