“Like that?” His voice is husky, and I wonder if he’s as affected by this as I am.
“Perfect.” The word comes out breathless. “You’re—you’re doing it perfectly.”
We stand like that for longer than necessary, his hand over mine, his body warm against my back, both of us pretending this is just about cooking eggs and not about the way I’m trembling, the way his breath has quickened, or the way neither of us seems able to move away.
The eggs finish cooking so we can stop this demonstration. But I’m frozen, caught in this moment, and he’s not moving either.
“Vera.” My name is barely a whisper, and I feel it more than hear it.
“We should—” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Should what? Step apart? Acknowledge what’s happening? Pretend it isn’t?
His hand tightens over mine on the spatula just for a second. Just enough for me to know he feels it too, this pull between us that gets stronger every time we’re close.
Then he’s stepping back, releasing my hand, and the loss of his warmth makes me want to cry.
“The eggs look good,” he says, and his voice is carefully neutral. “Thank you for teaching me.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. My whole body is still buzzing from his close contact and all the unsaid things that pass between us.
We eat the eggs in silence. They’re perfect. But I barely taste them.
The next three days follow a similar pattern.
Forced proximity. Accidental touches. Moments that feel too much like what a marriage should be.
Like when we wash dishes together that evening. I wash, he dries, and we fall into an easy rhythm that feels like we’ve been doing it forever. He tries to put a pot away in the wrong cabinet, and I reach around him to redirect it to the right place. Our bodies press together for just a second—my front against his back—and we both freeze.
“Sorry,” I breathe, but I don’t move away immediately. He’s so solid, so warm, and for just that moment, I let myself feel it.
He makes a sound low in his throat that might be agreement or might be something else entirely. Then he’s shifting away, and the moment breaks.
Or when I’m reading in the library and he comes in to work. He settles in the chair across from me, spreading papers across thecoffee table, and we exist in comfortable silence for hours. Every so often, our eyes meet and in those glances, I see something that mirrors what I’m feeling—want and confusion and this terrible awareness of each other.
Or when I come down late one night for water and find him in the kitchen doing the same. We don’t speak. Instead, we move around each other in the darkness, and when I reach for a glass at the same time he does, our fingers brush. The contact sends electricity up my arm and my breath hitches audibly.
He doesn’t let go immediately. His fingers linger against mine for a beat too long, and in the dim light from the stove, I see his jaw clench.
Then he’s pulling back, handing me the glass, and disappearing upstairs without a word.
These moments are killing me. Each one chips away at my carefully constructed walls and makes me want things I have no right to want.
And the guilt is eating me alive.
Alexei.
What kind of person forgets the man they loved so easily? What kind of person starts having feelings for hisbrother?
I’m like a fucking bad romance novel.
I try to remember Alexei the way he was—charming, sweet, making me feel special. I try to recall why I loved him, what drew me to him, and what made those eight months feel like something real.
But increasingly, when I think about Alexei, I don’t remember the good parts. I remember the red flags I dismissed. The little things that bothered me but I ignored because I was so caught up in the romance of it all.
Like how he would cancel plans without explanation. I’d get dressed up for one of our secret dinners, wait at the hotel we always met at, and he just... wouldn’t show. He’d text hours later with a vague excuse about “family business” and promise to make it up to me. And like an idiot, I’d forgive him because he was so apologetic and charming when we finally did meet up.
Or how he’d disappear for days without contact. No calls, no texts, nothing. Then he’d reappear and act like it was completely normal, like I hadn’t been worried sick wondering if something had happened to him.
Or how he deflected every time I asked about going public with our relationship. “Soon,” he’d always say. “When the time is right. When things calm down between our families.” But things never calmed down, and the time was never right, and I started to wonder if maybe he didn’t actually want anyone to know about us.
