The last line leaves me softer than I intended. There is no retrieving it.
I finally look at him.
Something in his face changes the second my eyes meet his. Not pity, thank Christ. Nikolaj would know better than to insult me with pity. It’s something steadier than that. Something almost fierce in its tenderness because he understands exactly what I’ve handed him and how much it cost to say it aloud without a joke wrapped around it.
He reaches up and smooths two fingers over the line of my jaw, a gesture so simple I nearly close my eyes with it on instinct. “Vincenzo.”
“Don’t be kind,” I say immediately.
His brows lift. “Why not?”
“Because I’m already making enough of a fool of myself.”
He actually smiles then, small and dangerous and warm in a way that drags me straight back into all the reasons I’m doomed where he’s concerned. “You’re making a fool of yourself because you’re in love, not because you’re wrong.”
“That is not remotely reassuring.”
“It’s honest.”
“Which is even worse.”
He laughs softly and then steps in closer until there is no room left for pretending this is still just a conversation by a window.
One hand settles at my waist, broad and possessive without any of the urgency we’re both used to from each other. The absence of urgency is what gets me. He isn’t grabbing because he thinks I’ll vanish. He’s holding because he wants to.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do, and he studies my face for a long second. Under that attention, I feel all the old instinctive defenses trying to rise. Charm. Deflection. Precision. Anything but the simple, naked truth of being seen. He has always been too good at stripping that out of me.
“You’re grieving the version of us that only existed in stolen pieces,” he says quietly. “That’s what this is.”
I blink at him.
The sentence hits with the clean force of recognition. I didn’t have the language for it. Of course, he does. Of course, he can take the heartbreak out of my chest and hold it up in one blunt line until I can finally see the shape properly.
He goes on before I can answer. “You got used to us being built around edges. Around running out of time and having to leave before the room finished cooling. So now that there’s space, your body doesn’t know what the fuck to do with it.”
A rough, surprised laugh escapes me, because only Nikolaj would phrase emotional clarity like that and somehow make it more comforting rather than less. “That is a horrifyingly inelegant diagnosis.”
“I’m Russian. Lower your standards.”
“You say that as if Russians don’t routinely make melodrama into statecraft.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“We do it with better coats.”
That actually gets a real smile out of me, brief and helpless. His eyes catch it immediately and soften further, and the ache in my chest suddenly becomes bearable enough to hold.
“What does free look like, then?” I ask.
He tilts his head slightly, considering. “I don’t know yet.”
That answer should frustrate me. Instead, it lands with something like relief because it means I’m not the only one standing on unfamiliar ground and trying not to look at the drop.
Nikolaj’s thumb strokes once over the side of my waist through the thin shirt. “Maybe it looks boring sometimes.”
