Page 116 of Reckless Obsession

I blink at her.

She gives me a small smile, then touches her heart.

“What you feel here,” she says, her palms still on her heart. “Does he feel the same?”

My heart squeezes.

And there it is.

The question I have been very successfully not answering for myself.

I shrug, but it’s weak and unconvincing.

“Maksim.”

“I don’t know.”

She says nothing, but I know she’s waiting for a real reply. I keep my eyes fixed somewhere near the blanket.

“I really don’t know, Mom.”

“You’ve been intimate with him.”

It isn’t a question.

My eyes meet hers, and then I nod once.

Her brows lift, but to her credit, she doesn’t immediately launch into maternal outrage. She just looks at me a little more closely, recalibrating.

“How long?”

I grimace. “Do we need a timeline?”

“Yes.”

I let out a tired sigh. “It started the night he finalized his divorce.”

Her eyes narrow.

“Maksim.”

“I was twenty,” I say quickly, cutting off whatever lecture is trying to form. “Before you say anything, I was twenty. Fully legal, very much an adult. And I initiated it.”

She blinks.

I keep going before she can interrupt, because that is clearly the only survival strategy available to me now.

“I initiated the first time,” I tell her. “And the second. And, honestly, all the times after that too.” I glance at her, daring her to judge me. “So if you’re about to build a case against him, don’t. I’m not some tragic child he manipulated into bed.”

Her eyes hold mine for a long moment.

“I was not about to say that.”

“No?”

“No.” Her voice is calm, but there’s steel under it now. “I was about to ask whether he ever made promises he had no intention of keeping.”

That catches me off guard.