I press my thighs together under the table anyway.
It was nothing. Barely a second. And my body reacts like he fired a starting gun.
“I passed the entrance exams.”
I look at him, hiking up a brow. That’s not nothing. “And?”
“And my father told me that Morozovs don’t become doctors.” He delivers it lightly. “So, I didn’t.”
Those entrance exams take years. There’s stiff competition involved, and not everyone is built for the process. He passed, then walked away because his father said so. And he says it like it’s nothing.
It is not nothing. It is a whole life he didn’t get to live.
I fought for six years for my spot in an operating room. He earned his place in medical school and handed it back because he was told to. That sits like a stone in my chest.
I start to say something, but he redirects, asking why I chose trauma over other specialties. I answer, and a few minutes later, he does it again when I ask about his brother. He flips it to my residency. Then I mention his father, and suddenly, we’re back on a patient case I referenced earlier. I can’t even pinpoint the moment the subject changes.
By the third time, I’m done.
“You do that a lot,” I comment.
He tilts his head. “Do what?”
“Every time I get close to asking you something real, you turn it back around.” I set down my wine.
I expect him to deny the habit, but to my surprise, he simply nods.
“You’re right,” he concedes. “I do.”
“Why?”
He waves me off, “Because my answers aren’t interesting. Yours are.”
It’s an evasion wearing the clothes of a compliment, and we both know it. But the honesty of admitting it takes the edge off, and I find myself studying the line of his jaw and the way he holds his glass, and thinking about things that have nothing to do with reconnaissance.
When the khachapuri arrives, I pull a piece of bread from the edge. The egg yolk breaks across the surface, and I let out a satisfied groan that I immediately regret.
Lev just watches me silently with pale eyes and lets the moment sit between us. The expression on his face makes the back of my neck warm.
“Good?” he asks, the word doing double duty.
I drag the bread through the melted butter slowly. “Why did you choose this place?”
“Someone wrote about it online. Called it—” his eyes stay on mine “—the kind of bread that makes you want to cancel your plans and stay.” He smiles. “I never forgot it.”
The wine glass stops halfway to my mouth.
Word for word, that’s the title of a post I wrote on a food blog I abandoned three years ago after eleven entries. Back when I was newly attending and apparently the kind of person who wrote about bread on the internet at midnight because I had no one to eat dinner with.
He couldn’t know that. Could he?
Except he chose this restaurant, and now he’s quoting my words back to me like they’re his memory.
I feel my pulse spike in my throat.
I set down the glass and run my tongue along my bottom lip, which he evidently takes as an invitation, because he refills my glass. This time, when his fingers graze mine on the stem, he lingers just a half-second longer than before, but it’s long enough to make my heart skip a beat.
“Live up to the review?” he asks.
