I should deflect. Make a joke. Give her a carefully crafted half-truth.
Instead, I say: "I haven't felt anything in seventeen years. Not really. Not until I heard you talking about hearts at that gala."
Her fork stills. "Misha..."
"You made me feel something, Bianca. I don't know what to do with that."
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm, slightly greasy from the bread she's been eating, absolutely perfect.
"Maybe you don't have to do anything," she says. "Maybe you just have to let yourself feel it."
I should tell her the truth then. Should confess who I am, what I am, why being with me will destroy her.
Instead, I turn her hand over and press a kiss to her palm.
"Maybe," I say.
It is the cruelest lie I ever tell.
The weeks that follow are a fever dream.
I carve time from my schedule ruthlessly, delegating responsibilities I've never trusted anyone else to handle. Dmitri notices but says nothing—just gives me long looks that I pretend not to see.
I meet Bianca between her classes, bringing coffee and pastries to the bench outside her anatomy building. I sit in my car outside her apartment at night, watching her window until the light goes out, telling myself I'm keeping her safe.
I'm keeping myself sane.
She introduces me to her world—study groups and library sessions and cheap Thai food eaten cross-legged on her apartment floor. I help her quiz for exams, reading questions from flashcards I don't understand, watching her face light up when she gets the answers right.
"You're good at this," she says one night, head in my lap while she reviews cardiac anatomy. "The teaching thing. You should have been a professor."
I stroke her hair, thinking about what I actually am. "I don't have the patience."
"You have patience with me."
"You're different."
She tilts her head back to look at me, upside down and smiling. "Why? What makes me different?"
Everything, I think.You're everything.
"You talk about hearts like they're holy," I say. "It's hard not to be patient with someone who sees the world that way."
Her smile softens into something more vulnerable. "And how do you see the world?"
Bloody. Brutal. Full of men like me who destroy everything they touch.
"Better," I say, "when I'm looking at you."
She pulls me down and kisses me.
It isn't our first kiss—that happened on date two, in my car, her lips tasting like the tiramisu we'd shared. But it's different. Deeper. Full of something I don't have words for.
"Stay tonight," she whispers against my mouth.
My entire body screams yes. I want her so badly I can barely think, can barely breathe past the wanting.
"Not yet," I say, pulling back. "When it happens, I want it to be right."
