Eva's Sins.

LXXV

„Rivalry - something we are afraid of, but also something we tend to reach"

  „Miss Stonebridge?" Eva heard Sophie's voice behind her the moment that she intended to enter the house after walking for about an hour through the garden in her desperate attempt, but to no avail, to clear her mind.

  Hearing her name, but still not knowing who actually called her, Eva stopped, feeling that the blood stopped flowing through her veins, her breath became interrupted, and her hands suddenly froze as if being made from ice. Even so, after a few moments of staring at a blind spot while feeling a strange buzz of emptiness in her ears, Eva deeply breathed in till she felt her heart again beating in her chest. After that, she squeezed hard her fists and turned to watch the one who called her name.

  And... the inevitable happened then: two women's glances, warm and cold at the same time, intertwined half of the road, exchanged killing energies, for there couldn't deal with kindness there when one of them was the ex and the second one was who could have taken the place of the first one next to the beloved man if she hadn't been so stubborn to chase him away eventually.

  „Do we know each other?" asked Eva eventually, after many seconds of staring at Sophie, who was piercing her with her glacial glance as if she had wanted her dead: there and at that moment. Yet, Sophie knew very well that she didn't have either the courage or the power to kill the other, even if she thought that she was more than capable of doing that.

  „To be honest, I don't know what to answer," said Sophie drily, sketching a weird smile of confusion on her face while fighting with the fingers of the gloves which she thought that they looked weird at that moment, making her look clumsy and somehow unworthy while the rival looked so beautiful, almost perfect, even though Eva's face reflected the tiredness well.

  „Then?" Eva insisted to find out the truth. After that, she took a few steps toward Sophie, making her feel her blood frozen in her veins. „How do you know my name?"

  „I saw it written on a sheet of paper," Sophie simply answered when Eva took one more step toward her.

  „On a sheet of paper?" asked Eva amused. „And... and how are you so sure that I am who you are looking for?"

  „Because I've been told that you're here."

  „Have you been told? By who?"

  „Christine Bircham," said Sophie, this time confidently, and stared into the rival's eyes, which she found of a dizzy blue and, for the first time, even if for a short time, she understood why her ex-husband lost her head for that woman when he met her.

  „Now I see," Eva answered, smiling, carefully putting the warm shawl on her shoulders. „As I understand where our respectable Mrs. Bircham vanished a few days ago: she went to meet you... the rival."

  „Actually I'm more your rival, Eva than hers. Excuse my imprudence: may I call Eva, right?"

  „Of course, not," said Eva in a severe tone. „My name can be spoken only by my close friends while you already said that you are my rival. More than that: you didn't tell me who you are."

  „If I tell you that I'm the... ex, will you understand who am I?"

  „Sophie Anderson Bell," said Eva with a hissing tone, a fact that made her voice slowly shake, and that slight shaking of her vocal tone, something that she hated at that moment, made Sophie feel that she has been avenged, thinking that at least this way she was superior in front of the rival, who she managed to intimidate.