“Oh, good,” she muttered. “My favorite: judgment and microwaved guilt.”
“Some people pay for that.”
“Gross.”
I pulled away from the curb; the tires crunching softly against the pavement as we rejoined the quiet street. The drive back was shorter than I remembered—probably because neither of us said much, but this time, the silence wasn’t sharp. It stretched easy between us. No pressure. No explosions. Just the kind of stillness that meant things weren’t breaking anymore.
When we pulled into the driveway, I parked and glanced at her.
“Back in the fortress,” she said with mock drama, unbuckling her seatbelt. “You have snacks in there, right?”
“Possibly,” I said. “If you behave.”
She raised a brow. “I’m literally incapable of that.”
Good. I didn’t want her to start now.
“You will not go back to him.”
I didn’t raise my voice. It wasn’t a threat, or a plea—it was a truth. A quiet command. A line drawn in stone.
Mina scoffed, but there was no fire behind it—just dry disbelief. “Absolutely not,” she muttered, shaking her head as she unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’m not perfect. I know people screw up, I know anger happens. But the bastard cheated on me with a neighbor in biker shorts. Like… really? There’s no coming back from that. None.”
She got out of the car before I could answer, already stalking toward the door like her anger was giving her momentum.
I followed.
And I’d never hated Mikel Petrov more than I did in that exact moment.
Not for the bet. Not even for the punch. But for making her believe she deserved any of it—for dragging someone like her into his garbage fire of ego and manipulation.
There was a good chance I’d hurt him. Soon.
The door shut behind us with a soft click, and she moved through my house like she’d lived here forever, muttering something about stealing all my socks and hiding the remote.
I didn’t hear most of it.
I was too busy standing in the doorway, staring after her, wondering how the hell I’d gotten so tangled up in this girl with the messiest bun and the saddest eyes and the sharpest mouth I’d ever heard.
It had barely been twenty-four hours.
I was in trouble.
Chapter 9
Mina
The door clicked behind me, and I just… stood there. In the middle of Nikolai’s icy murder-den-of-a-house, letting the quiet wrap around me like a weighted blanket I didn’t know I needed. It was still clean. Still moody. Still giving haunted Scandinavian showroom. But today? It didn’t feel like a stranger’s space anymore.
“Maybe I’ll redecorate,” I muttered to absolutely no one, eyeing the sharp corners and stoic, colorless everything. “Throw pillows. Fairy lights. A plant that won’t die immediately.”
The thought made me smile—tiny, but real.
I kicked off my shoes with a little too much enthusiasm (take THAT, metaphor for baggage), and padded down the hall to the bedroom. And there it was. His shirt. Still draped over the back of the chair like a personal invitation to lose all dignity and wear something that wasn’t mine—but also totally was.
I slipped it over my head. Instantly swallowed. Ten out of ten, would drown in oversized Russian softness again. It smelled like him—like cedarwood, cold air, and stubbornness—and it settled on me like a hug I didn’t have to earn.
Fuzzy socks? Secured. Tension? Evicted. My shoulders finally stopped auditioning for a role as earrings, and my spine uncoiled like, oh, we’re safe now? Cool, thanks for the heads-up.
