Did she cry?
Did she panic?
Did she call the police?
Were we being hunted?
Was it just me she was looking for, or Zwierek too?
And if she did call the police, what would she even have told them?
And if she didn’t, then what did she do with Bartosz’s body?
As fucked up as Krystyna was, I still couldn’t picture her actually handling something like that on her own. Her hand moved then. Across the table, resting over mine. My body and my thoughts went still.
“You have no idea how much I missed you,”she said, her gaze resting on my hand as her thumb brushed lightly against my skin. A familiar movement, and for a second, I wasn’t in that café. I was back in that room.
“Come home with me,”she said softly.
My mind snapped. No. No, no no, but my body didn’t follow. My thoughts turned on me again, faster this time. Why would you say yes? Why would you even consider, what the fuck are you doing.
“...okay.”The word left my mouth before I could catch it. Her eyes widened.“You…”she blinked, something like shock crossing her face.
“You spoke.”
Right. That. I didn’t explain, just held her gaze. Something in her expression shifted again.
“Okay,”she repeated, slower this time, studying me like she was seeing something new.
“Okay…”
We stood and walked out of the café together. The air outside felt colder, almost hostile. We walked back to the library parking lot, where her car was still parked. The same car she and Bartosz had picked me up in from the orphanage. Krystyna unlocked the doors, but just as I reached for the handle, something in thecorner of my vision caught my eye. I only half turned, but I saw him anyway.
Zwierek.
Loitering at the far edge of the lot, half shadowed, like he had been there the entire time and just chose not to be seen until now. Our eyes met, and something in me seized. For a second, every thought fell away.
He didn’t move, didn’t signal, he just stood there watching. I looked away and got into the car. The door shut, and the sound seemed to echo through me. She started talking again almost immediately, something about traffic, about the apartment, about how it wasn’t far, how she liked the area. But my focus was elsewhere. On the way, the trees blurred past, on the feeling sitting just under my skin that refused to settle.
“I moved to a place just outside the center,”she said, glancing at me briefly before looking back on the road.
“First floor. It’s… quiet.”Her fingers tapped lightly against the steering wheel.“You’ll like it.”
Would I? I let my head fall back against the seat and closed my eyes. I only closed them for a second, but it was enough for everything to come back. A pull in my chest, the ugly sense I was driving toward something that had been expecting me.
The apartment was smaller than I expected, obsessively neat. The sort of neatness that makes you wonder what it’s compensating for. I’ve learned to distrust rooms that look too disciplined. The walls were a muted grey, but not clean grey. There was something underneath it, a colder undertone. Almost blue in certain light, like bruised skin that just began to fade. The door behind me was darker, almost black. The carpet under my shoes was a deep, washed-out red. The kind that had dulled over time, like it had absorbed too much. It didn’t feel like a home; it felt like something staged.
She closed the door behind us softly; the sound landed heavy in the room. I just stood there for a second, taking it in, letting my eyes adjust to the space. The silence, the way the air smelled faintly of something sweet layered over something older.
“You like it?”Her voice was close. Closer than it had been a second ago.
I felt her before I fully registered her movement. The shift in the air, the warmth. Then her finger touched my stomach through the fabric of my shirt and moved, slow enough to make the meaning impossible to miss.
“I’ve missed you,”she said.
There was a pull in her voice I didn’t know how to name then, only that it made my skin tighten and crawl. She stepped in front of me, her fingers finding the edge of my belt like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I thought about you,”she continued, voice dropping.
