"Yes. More."
I move. Slowly at first. She's tight and warm and every instinct I have is telling me to lose control, but I don't. I won't. This is her first time and it will be on her terms even if it kills me. I watch her face as her body opens up to mine, as the tension gives way to something liquid and urgent, as her hips start to move with me.
"More," she says again, and this time it's a demand.
I give her more. Deeper. Harder. She wraps her legs around me and pulls me closer and makes sounds against my neck that undo me one syllable at a time. Her fingers drag down my back and squeeze my ass, and I want more. I want all of it. Every sound, every mark, every trembling breath.
Her body tightens around me and I feel her come apart. She shakes with it, her whole body contracting, and I follow her over the edge with my face pressed into her hair and her name caught between my teeth.
"Thank you," she says quietly, once we’ve both caught our breath.
"Don't thank me for sex."
"I'm not thanking you for the sex." She lifts her head and looks at me. Her eyes are clear. Clearer than I've seen them. "I'm thanking you for making me feel like I'm not broken."
I push a strand of hair behind her ear. She turns into my hand the way a flower turns toward sunlight.
"You were never broken," I say. "You were just carrying something too heavy on your own."
She presses her face into my palm. I feel the wet heat of a tear against my skin. This one is different from the ones last night. This one doesn't burn.
Sunlight moves across the sheets. My arm is around her and my hand rests on the curve of her hip, her heartbeat slowing against my ribs.
“Thank you for telling me the truth. I can’t imagine what that must have cost you.”
She smiles. “I think it was worth it.”
Nadia
A week ago, I didn't know what happy felt like. I'd forgotten the shape of it. The way it sits in your chest like something warm, filling up spaces you didn't realize were hollow.
I remember now.
"What about this one?" Darya holds up a swatch of ivory fabric against my face and tilts her head. "Too yellow?"
"It's fine."
"Fine isn't good enough for a wedding dress, Nadia. Fine is what you say about a sandwich." She tosses the swatch onto the growing pile on the kitchen table and picks up another. "This one. Cream. It's softer against your skin."
My mother is standing at the counter with her reading glasses on, flipping through a catalog she picked up from a bridal shop in town. She's been circling things with a red pen all morning. Dresses, shoes, hair accessories. She has a system. She has spreadsheets. My mother approaches wedding planning the way generals approach warfare, and she is in her element.
"We don't have time for a custom dress," she says without looking up. "Not with this timeline. But Valentina's daughter got married last year, and she had a beautiful gown from that shop on Birch Street. We could go today."
"Mom, I have a shift at noon."
"About that." She puts the pen down and looks at me over the top of her glasses. "You've cut back to three shifts a week. Rosa said you could take more time off if you needed it. Why are you still working at all? The wedding is in six days."
Because I've worked sixty-hour weeks for three years and my body doesn't know how to stop. Because the routine is familiar. Because even though Kyle's messages have stopped and the silence on my phone feels like a miracle, there's a part of me that doesn't trust it yet. A part that keeps waiting for the other shoe to fall through the floor.
"I like working," I say. "It keeps me busy."
"You have plenty to keep you busy." She gestures at the table, which is covered in fabric swatches, seating charts, menu options, and a guest list that keeps growing because apparently every connected family within a hundred miles needs to be invited when her daughter gets married. "This is a full-time job, Nadia."
Darya nudges me with her elbow. She's nineteen, sharp-eyed, and far too perceptive for my comfort. "You seem different," she says quietly while Mom goes back to her catalog.
"Different how?"
"I don't know. Lighter." She studies me. "When Dad first told us about the arrangement, I thought you'd fight it. You've been so... closed off. For years. I figured you'd say no and lock yourself in your room."
