My pulse spikes. I keep my face still.
"I'm not asking you to explain it," he says. "Not until you're ready, at least. But I want you to know that whatever you think you're hiding, I'm not afraid of it. I married you because of it."
The words are precise. The clean, surgical cut of someone who knows exactly where to slice.
Nobody has ever said that to me. Nobody has ever looked at me and seen past the mask and said I want that one. The real one. The dangerous one.
My hands are shaking. I set my glass down so he won't see.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about." I’m proud that my voice is still steady and my normal tone. Because inside I’m beginning to let panic creep into the edges of my psyche.
"You do. And I’ll be right here when you want to share more about that side of yourself."
The silence stretches between us. I wait for it to feel heavy and threatening. Instead, something in my chest loosens. The same thing that happened at the altar when he whispered in my ear. The exhale. The involuntary release of tension I didn't know I was holding until it left and I felt a ton lighter.
He sees me. He actually sees me. And he's still here. Still steady. Still looking at me with those eyes that don't flinch.
I've spent six years being invisible. Hiding the parts of myself that are sharp and dark and dangerous because the world I was born into doesn't have room for women who fight back. I buried myself under compliance and silence, and I told myself that was enough. That surviving was the same as living.
It's not. I know that now. I've known it for a while.
And this man, this stranger I married four hours ago, is the first person who has ever looked at me and said I don't want the mask. I want what's underneath.
I pick up my glass and take a long, slow drink.
"One question," I say.
"Anything," he replies and it feels like flirtation mixed with a dare. His tone makes my heart stutter.
"When you find out the rest, the parts you don't know yet, what happens then?"
He holds my gaze without blinking.
"Then I’ll claim them. Every part of you. All of it. You don’t ever have to hide from me."
I stand up and walk to his end of the couch. I watch his eyes track me, steady and dark and waiting, and I feel the thing inside me that's been coiled tight for six years start to unfurl.
I stop in front of him. Close enough that my knees almost touch his. Close enough that he has to tilt his head back to look up at me and the shift in angle makes something flicker in his expression. Surprise, maybe. The first genuine surprise I've seen from him all day.
"I don't do anything halfway," I say. "If I give you this, it's because I chose it. Not because you told me to. Not because some contract says I have to. Because I want to. Understand?"
Tension or restraint shift in his jaw. He nods once.
Yevgeny
One of my hands is wrapped around my glass, and the other is flat on my thigh. Every instinct I have is telling me to reach for her, to pull her down to me and take what she's offering before she changes her mind. But she told me this is her choice. She told me she doesn't do anything halfway. And the way she said it, with her chin raised and her dark eyes locked on mine, told me that control matters to her the same way breathing matters.
So I wait.
She reaches down and gathers the fabric of her dress in both hands. White silk bunching in her fists as she pulls it up past her knees, past her thighs. The movement is deliberate. Unhurried. She's watching my face the entire time, reading me the same way she reads a room, looking for the signs that will tell her whether she's safe.
My jaw tightens. My fingers tighten on the glass and my thigh. I see her skin. The taut muscle of her legs, the edge of white lace, and then I see something else.
A scar. At least four inches long, slightly raised in the centre, running diagonally across her upper left thigh. It's not old enough to have faded completely and not clean enough to be surgical. That scar came from a blade. Someone else's blade, from the angle of it. And the way it healed, puckered and uneven, tells me she didn't get it treated properly.
She sees me looking at it. Her hands pause on the fabric. Apprehension crosses her face. This is a test. She's showing it to me and waiting to see what I do.
I lift my gaze back to hers and hold it and I let her see that the scar doesn't change a single thing about what I want.
