He hated when she did that, when she said his name with that kind of sigh, the one that said she didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know what was best to say. He’d last heard it in Merano, when he’d caught her in that Mountain Inn and it was just as hard to here now. But at least she was looking him in the eye now. Maybe that meant actual honesty from someone he wasn’t sure was capable of it all the time. She hadn’t been happy. She hadn’t been enjoying things for a while but she could have just told him that. It would have been so much easier if she’d just said that way back when. But she hadn’t She’d let it get as bad as it had.
“Its not? You loved me but you were having a hard time of it. That said you didn’t ever tell me.” Her honesty, when it came hurt his ego just as much now as it had then in spite of how he’d changed. It stung. It probably always would sting. It hadn’t been great, he knew that. But treated her terribly? What had he done that was so horrible? “It wasn’t a good time, they were starting to say I was losing it, starting to call me crazy and it was an act, you know that, you know it was just for more money, more fame. You knew and you still just kept...pushing me. Saying I had to play nice with Commies all that. Cause the thing is I think its that you wouldn’t talk to me. That you didn’t tell me when you thought you were treated bad. Things could have changed”
Better than him. Oh he knew that. He knew that slimy commie bastard was far from better than him. He might have won but how had he done that. “I was angry and hurt too. You know I only lost that match cause my head wasn’t in the game. My girl and my career in one day, wasn’t a hell of a lot of fun. And then to see you with him all over the news, in England. Living a lovely little life with a man who’d done exactly what my Dad had done, walked out. Left his kids. And on top of that a Commie? Come on Florence you had to know what you were doing? You had to be getting something from him I wasn’t giving you and I want to know what the hell that was. If you left me for him there had to be a damn good reason?”
He shook his head, “No, we weren’t the same, we hadn’t been the same in a while. But here’s a question. If you could do it all over? If you could go back, do it all again. What would you do different? Would you stay with me? Just not go running back to England with Sergievsky? What would change?” Worrying enough question but he had to know. The conversation was happening and if he didn’t ask now he was pretty sure he never would.