We sat. Ate quietly. A silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t awkward—not the kind that made you want to crawl out of your skin. It was… warm. Like the world had gone quiet on purpose just so we could chew in peace.
He gave me a look mid-bite. Flat. Knowing. The kind that said you’re trouble, without saying a word.
I raised a brow right back. “What? You’re the one who kidnapped me with soup and pity. Don’t give me the wounded hockey player glare now.”
He didn’t smile—because that would’ve been too human for him—but his voice came dry and unimpressed. “Next time I’ll leave you crying in your ice cream."
I gasped, clutching my chest like he’d personally insulted my bloodline. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I might.”
“You’re all threats and no follow-through,” I shot back, poking at my forkful of rice. “Russian Reaper, my butt. You’re basically a stoic golden retriever in a tracksuit.”
He actually made a sound—a sound. A scoff-laugh hybrid that might’ve been a chuckle if he hadn’t shut it down immediately.
And just like that, we were back.
Not fixed. Not perfect.
But sitting across from each other in a too-clean kitchen, trading jabs over leftovers, and for now?
That was more than I thought I needed.
“What’s next for you, then?” he asked, like it was a totally casual thing to toss out while we sat in a kitchen full of leftover soup and existential dread. He tilted his head slightly, and somehow that small, barely-there movement pulled my whole spine into a stiff line. His gaze locked with mine, steady and focused, and wow—rude.
I looked down at my half-eaten bowl of… honestly; I had no idea. Rice? Mush? Existential carbs? My fork tapped gently against the ceramic, the clink sounding louder than it should’ve. I didn’t have an answer. Not a clean one. Not a neat five-step plan. Just a brain full of cotton and questions.
“I don’t know what I'm going to do next,” I said, slow and cautious, like the words might bite back. But the moment they left my mouth? My chest didn’t cave. My stomach didn’t lurch. “But for the first time… that doesn’t feel terrifying.”
I looked back up at him, expecting the usual—judgment or, worse, that tight-lipped sympathy people gave when they didn’t know what to say. But all I saw was something softer. Warmer. His expression didn’t scream pity or fix it. It just… listened.
“Maybe I don’t need to know yet,” I went on, feeling the weight slide off my shoulders one syllable at a time. “Maybe it's enough to know where I don't want to be.”
He nodded. No comments. No lectures. Just agreement, quiet and solid like a stone in a stream.
“Good,” he said eventually, voice low and grounded. “You're moving forward without a map.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. “You make me sound way more impressive than I am.”
“You don’t have to be impressive.”
Again—rude.
I looked down at the bowl, tracing a finger along the rim. “One step at a time?”
“Exactly.” He’d smiled—not a full one, but enough to make my heart do a very inconvenient skip. “And you already took the biggest one. You left.”
That warm, fizzy pride bloomed in my chest again. Not the kind you broadcasted on Instagram with dramatic captions—but the kind that hummed quietly, reminding you that you survived something that almost swallowed you.
“Yeah,” I said softly, letting the moment breathe.
And we sat there, just the two of us and the hum of the fridge and the weird comfort of knowing that sometimes the most important decisions didn’t come with confetti or closure.
Just soup. And a maybe.
“Actually,” I said, straightening up and squinting around the kitchen like I was on a personal mission, “can we discuss the temperature in here? Because I’m pretty sure my soul just tried to hibernate.”
Nikolai arched an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. “It’s seventy-two degrees.”
