He didn’t lift a hand to take it.
Didn’t blink. Didn’t move.
So I set it gently on the table beside him and stepped back, putting distance between my body and his unreadable stare.
“I truly apologize for my son’s... barbaric impulsiveness,” I managed. “We’re leaving tomorrow. You won’t have to deal with us any longer, Mr. Volkov. Please forgive the intrusion.”
He studied me the way a wolf studies a deer that suddenly grew fangs—head slightly tilted, lashes lowered, pupils blown wide with something feral and unnameable. The silence stretched so long it became a blade, thin and trembling, waiting for one of us to bleed first.
Then—
Without warning—
He unfolded from the couch in one single, fluid, predatory motion.
Six-foot-four of controlled ruin.
And even after five years, even after the hatred, even after the world had collapsed between us—he was devastating.
He stepped closer, until the air between us trembled. Until I could smell every piece of him: tobacco, lake water, clean soap, and the same dark cologne that once soaked into my pillows and made me ache for him even when I hated him.
He lifted the cigarette to his lips—not rushed, not casual, but with the lazy confidence of someone who had killed men withless effort than breathing. He inhaled, exhaled...and angled the smoke away from my face.
A small thing. But it hit me like a punch.
He hadn’t done that consciously. It was an old habit. A reflex from a life he believed was buried.
His eyes—those storm-grey eyes that once softened only for me—dragged down my face, my throat, my shoulders, my waist.
He took in the muscle I’d built—my arms, my back, my posture. The cautious strength in my stance. The fire in my gaze.
You’re... different,” he murmured, not as a compliment, but as a puzzle he was trying to solve. “She was unmistakably plus-sized.”
She.
My ghost.
His ghost.
‘Penelope Volkov.’
Dead.
Gone.
Rotting in a grave I never lay in.
My mouth dried.
He moved. Circling me—slowly, languidly—like a man orbiting a memory he doesn’t trust.
“Same eyes,” he said softly.
A step.
“Same mouth.”
Another step.
