“You’ve gone very quiet,” he says.
I don’t answer immediately. He knows me well enough to hear that for what it is.
When I glance over my shoulder, he is leaning one hip against the kitchen doorway in linen trousers and a black shirt with the top few buttons left open. There’s a glass in his hand, and he’s barefoot.
His face is calmer than usual, his edges softened by sea air, island light, and the simple fact that he is not in Moscow, and no one here expects the Pakhan unless he chooses to wear the title.
He studies me for one second, then comes closer.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I smile automatically. “That’s an unfair question.”
“Why?”
“Because if I knew precisely, I’d already be lying to you about it.”
His mouth curves faintly at that. I look back out the window because that smile will make this harder if I let it. The sea below is taking on a golden hue now, late sun spilling over the surface in long, torn strips that look almost liquid enough to touch. It is absurdly beautiful here, which only makes the ache under my ribs more offensive.
Nikolaj stops beside me rather than in front of me. Smart. He’s not forcing eye contact or making this into a confrontation when what I need is probably the opposite of being cornered, even by him.
“You hate the island,” he says after a beat.
I let out a soft laugh despite myself. “No.”
“You hate that I bought it.”
“No.”
“Still think the island idea is insane.”
“Yes,” I say. “But that’s not the same thing.”
His glass taps lightly against the windowsill as he sets it down. He folds his arms and leans one shoulder beside mine, both of us facing the same view now. “Then say it.”
I close my eyes for one second because he is very good at this when he wants to be, and I wish that surprised me more than it does.
The younger Nikolaj only ever learned how to coax by accident, usually halfway through a threat, and then furious at himself for caring enough to notice a wound. This older version knows exactly what he’s doing and has the patience to let silence open on its own.
“It feels wrong,” I say finally.
The words sound pathetic once they’re out, and I hate that immediately.
“What does?” he asks.
“This.” I gesture vaguely to the room, the sea, him, the whole impossible arrangement spread around us like a miracle I don’ttrust. “All of it. Not wrong morally. Wrong in the sense that my body keeps expecting someone to walk in and remind me this can’t possibly be ours.”
I keep my eyes on the horizon because looking at him while saying this would be intolerably earnest, and I’d rather die dramatically at sea than let him enjoy that too much.
“We’ve never had…” I stop and try again because the sentence matters enough to deserve accuracy. “We’ve never had space.”
The words settle between us.
I continue before I can decide against it. “We’ve had moments. Rooms. Stolen hours. We’ve had urgency, secrecy, and all the things that make people stupid enough to confuse survival with romance. We’ve had hotel beds, gyms, kitchens, and mornings that came too fast. But we’ve never had…” Again, I gesture helplessly. “This. A place where no one is watching and no one expects us to be anything else.”
Nikolaj is quiet. I can feel him listening with his whole body, which is somehow more unnerving than an interruption would have been.
“And I don’t know how to be calm with you here,” I say, and there it is, the humiliating center of it finally exposed. “I don’t know what that means. On this island, we can be free, and I don’t know what free even looks like in practice because we’ve only ever been sneaking around or losing each other.”
