Her brows pull together.
“You’re studying medicine, taking courses you may never get to use just because something in you still reaches for it anyway. You let yourself try boxing just because it was something you wanted.” My hand slides to the back of her neck. “And you got in the ocean with me when you could’ve stayed on shore.”
Her mouth opens. Just barely.
Her weight shifts toward me. Half an inch, maybe less. But I feel it.
“That’s not pretending, Nat.” My voice roughens, but I keep it even. “That’s you finding places they can’t reach. Small ones, maybe. But yours all the same.”
She swallows. Her fists loosen against my ribs, one finger at a time, like she forgot they were clenched and is only now feeling it.
“That’s only possible because I’m here,” she says at last. “Because my father isn’t standing over me every second like usual.”
“He’s not keeping tabs on you?” I ask.
Her chin lifts a fraction. “He’s only sent Nikolai the one time. He doesn’t have to have eyes on me. He knows the Anna thing is enough to keep me in line.” Her voice goes flat around theedges, but there’s a thread of something harder under it now too. “That’s the whole point. He doesn’t need reports on every class I take or where I spend an hour in the middle of the day. He knows what leash he put on me. He expects that to be enough. It’s always been enough.”
She goes quiet after that.
The water keeps running over both of us, but the room has shrunk to the few inches between her palm on my chest and my hand on the back of her neck.
“He doesn’t know,” she says finally, more to herself than to me.
I don’t speak.
Her fingers spread a little wider against my skin. “About the courses. Or the boxing. He doesn’t know what I do here day to day.”
She swallows. “He just assumes I’ll stay in line.”
She lifts her head, and what’s in her face isn’t fear anymore. It’s the look of a person who just found a crack in a wall they’ve been staring at for years.
“And nothing happened,” she says softly. “Anna is still safe. He still thinks I’m doing exactly what he sent me here to do.”
She looks at me then. “So why would he have to know about this?”
My pulse slams once, hard, in the base of my throat.
“I still have to do what I have to do. I need to keep Anna safe. That part doesn’t change.” Her fingers tighten against my chest. “But maybe if this is the only place I get to have anything for myself, I stop telling myself I’m not allowed to want it.”
My thumb drags once over the damp skin at the back of her neck.
“Then say it, Nat.” I say it like a dare. “Tell me what you want.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth.
Then back to my eyes.
“You.” The word comes out shaky and quiet and aimed straight at my heart. “I want you, Johnny.”
Christ.
Those four words tear through me so hard I can’t breathe.
I should say something. Probably something important, maybe something smart. My brain offers nothing. It’s too busy short-circuiting while she stands there looking at me like I’m the only solid thing in her world.
I don’t move right away. I let the answer sit there between us, hot and breathing and real, because I need to know she hears it too. What she just said. What she just chose.
She does.
