He pinches each fold into sharp creases, but I see the pause in his fingers. “Because you lit up when you mentioned them last night. Even in the middle of the argument.”
I didn’t know I’d done that. The idea that he clocked it—that he was watching me closely enough to register light whilewe were arguing about assassins and background checks—does something to my stomach.
“There’s this one kid,” I say. “Marcus. He couldn’t read a single word in September. Wouldn’t even look at the page, he was so embarrassed he’d fold himself smaller and smaller until he was practically under the desk.” I pick up my coffee, warming my hands around the cup. “I sat with him every day during snack time. No pressure. Just... presence. Last week he read a full sentence out loud.The cat is big.” I laugh, still thrilled by his accomplishment. “He looked up at me after, and his whole face—”
I stop.
Maxim has put the newspaper down. He’s looking at me with an expression I haven’t seen on him before. Not the cold assessment. Not the predatory patience. Something unguarded, just for a second—a flicker of want so profound it mirrors grief. He shuts it down so quickly I almost miss it, but the residue remains, hovering in his eyes.
“He looked up,” I finish quietly, “and I thought, that’s it. That’s the job, right there.”
“That’s why,” he says.
“What?”
“Why you teach.” He picks up his coffee, but his gaze stays on mine, unwavering. “Not because it’s practical. Because of that. Because you have something that you’re intrinsically good at that brings joy to you and gives that same joy to others.” He hesitates, then adds, “That’s not nothing.”
I swallow. “Do you? Ever do something because of that?”
He looks at me across the counter, steam rising from his cup, morning light gray and endless behind him. He says nothing for so long that silence becomes its own answer. “Eat your eggs,” he says finally.
I eat my eggs. And I smile into my coffee, where he can’t quite see it.
***
That afternoon he shows me a scar. It’s not intentional. He’s coming back from the gym attached to the guest room, sweat darkening the neck of his shirt, his chest bare beneath an unzipped hoodie. His torso is a tapestry of ink—saints watched over by script I can’t read, daggers and wolves and stars that ripple as he moves. The scar is tucked around a bloody dagger tattoo near his shoulder, bigger than the rest, a crater of puckered skin at the back where something went all the way through. I ask about it before I can stop myself. I expect him to shut it down the same way he shut down my questions at breakfast.
Instead, he says, quietly, “A man who thought he could take what was mine.”
“What happened to him?”
The look he gives me is answer enough. A graveyard in a single glance.
“And you?” I ask. “What happened to you?”
“Hospital. Three weeks.” Flat. Clinical.
“Were you alone?”
A pause. The air-conditioning hums. “Yes.”
I reach out and touch it—fingertips, light, barely a contact—and his whole body freezes the way it did in the hallway that first night. Absolute, animal stillness.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it.
“Don’t be.” His voice is rougher than it was. “It made me harder to kill.”
“That’s a terrible thing to be grateful for.”
“Yes.” A beat. A muscle tics in his jaw. “It is.”
I expect him to pull away. To armor up. Instead, his hand lifts, slow and deliberate, and he wraps his fingers around my wrist. Not to push me off. To anchor himself. His thumb strokes the divot of my pulse. Then his grip tightens.
“Come here,” he growls, and the dominance crashes back in like a tide. He pulls me flush against him, his damp skin bleeding through my sweater, his mouth descending on mine with a hunger that bruises. He tastes like salt and coffee and something darker. His hand fists in my hair, angling my head exactly where he wants it, kissing me with a command that leaves no room for hesitation. I melt into it, into him, this monster who lets me touch his wounds and then reminds me exactly how dangerous he is.
When he breaks away, we’re both breathing hard. “You don’t get to feel sorry for me,” he says against my lips.
“I don’t.”
