“Your face is laughing.”
The twitch becomes a pull. The pull becomes something dangerously close to a smile.
Because the woman I’ve been in love with for seven days just walked down the hall in the middle of the night to tell me she can’t stop thinking about my mouth.
She chose.
She couldn’t sleep, and she came to me.
“Katya,” I say carefully.
“What?”
“Sit down.”
She perches on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, back straight, hands folded in her lap, the flush still visible along her neck.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she says quietly.
“That’s okay.”
“I think I want…” She falters, frustration tightening her voice. “More. More than tea through a door and goodnight in the hallway. But I don’t understand what more means because nobody ever—”
She stops, shaking her head.
“I don’t have the language for this.”
I watch her struggle with something she’s never been allowed to name.
“I thought if I came here and told you,” she says slowly, “maybe it would stop.”
“It won’t stop.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“What you’re feeling isn’t something broken,” I tell her quietly. “It’s something that was never allowed to exist before.”
She studies my face carefully.
“Killian,” she whispers.
“Katya.”
The silence between us changes.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says again, but this time the words sound more curious than frightened.
“Neither do I.”
She looks at me for a long moment before her gaze drifts slowly down my chest, across my stomach, and back to my eyes.
Then she says quietly,
“I’m ready to be your wife now. If you want me to be.”
Katya
The words leave my mouth before I can reconsider them.
