She was looking at my hands.
More specifically, at the cut on my finger.
It’s nearly healed now. Just a thin pink line. Barely visible. But she studied it with an expression I couldn’t quite read, as if the wound itself was a language she was still trying to translate.
The sound that follows is so quiet I almost miss it.
A door opening down the hall.
Slow. Careful. The kind of movement made by someone trying very hard not to be heard.
Bare feet on hardwood.
The footsteps stop outside my door. Silence stretches long enough for my heartbeat to start climbing. Then two soft taps land against the wood.
I turn on the lamp and cross the room, opening the door to find Katya standing in the hallway wearing thin grey pajamas. Her dark hair falls loose around her shoulders and her bare feet are pale against the floorboards.
“I can’t sleep,” she says.
I step aside and open the door wider. “Come in.”
She hesitates for the briefest moment before walking past me.
“Can I get you something?” I ask. “Tea?”
She shakes her head, frowning slightly as her teeth catch her lower lip in a gesture that nearly unravels what little restraint I have left.
“I keep…” She stops and starts again. “Every night I lie there trying to sleep and I can’t because I keep—”
Her jaw tightens.
“What is it, Katya?” I ask quietly.
She closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, there’s color rising along her throat.
“You,” she says. “Your hand. When you cut your finger and you…” She gestures awkwardly toward her mouth. “You put it in your mouth. And I can’t stop thinking about it.”
She looks furious with herself.
“Every night,” she mutters. “Every single night, Killian. That’s all I see. Your stupid finger in your stupid mouth, and I don’t even know why.”
My mouth twitches before I can stop it. Her eyes narrow immediately.
“Did you just almost smile?”
“No.”
“You did. Your mouth did the thing.”
“There was no thing.”
She points accusingly at my face. “That thing. The one you do when Iris says something ridiculous.”
Something in her composure is dissolving now, replaced by something raw and entirely unfiltered.
“This isn’t funny, Killian. I’m standing in your room in the middle of the night telling you I can’t sleep because of you, and you’re—”
“I’m not laughing.”
