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“Then I didn’t.”

I squint at him.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he just decided to kiss me at the exact moment I said I wanted him to. Maybe I’m overthinking this. I never heard him speak Russian before, so how could he understand me?

He couldn’t.

I push him away. Firmly. For my own protection. “Either way. Don’t… don’t kiss me again.”

He chuckles and drags his thumb across his own lower lip.

“Impossible. You taste too sweet.”

Kento

He blushes.

It’s the cutest thing on him. The way the color creeps across his cheeks, completely betraying him. He can glare at me all he wants, but that blush ruins the effect every time.

Then he pushes at my chest with both hands like a little gremlin as I watch him start rummaging around for a subject change. I can see it happening. The gears turning behind the green eyes, searching for anything at all to point at that isn’t what we just did.

“Why did you fight with Dim—”

I stop him before the second syllable lands, and my voice comes out flat and cool. I feel the patience drain out of me in one clean line. “It’s Dimitri. Not Dima.”

He blinks at me. “Dima said you—”

“Dimitri,” I repeat.

I hate that Dimitri gets a special name. I want one. I want something that belongs only to me when it comes from Ilya’s mouth.

His eyes narrow at me. “Dima said you fought him last year. Why?”

I go through it in my head and remember his birthday.

Obviously I was stalking him. Let’s not pretend otherwise. We are far past that point in this relationship. I snuck into the house the way I always did, climbed in through the window, and left my gift on his bed: the drawing I made for him, the first one from under the tree, plus a bag of candies arranged in a careful little circle so he would know it was on purpose. I went back out through the window and was literally halfway down the drainpipe when a door opened behind me, and I watched his best friend come in with some girl and push her onto the mattress.

They knocked the candies off the bed and didn’t notice the drawing. They crushed it.

“He ruined my gift for you,” I say.

He frowns. “What gift?”

“It doesn’t matter. I left it on your bed, and he brought some girl and fucked her on it.”

“They fucked on my bed?!”

He wheels on the spot like he is about to go find Dimitri and take his head off. Whatever else I love about him, this is the part I’d keep: the complete absence of hesitation.

“Oh, that bitch is going to hear from me.”

I smile. I like when he insults Dimitri.

“Don’t worry,” I say, mild. “I burned your bed, baby.”

The reaction is instantaneous. His whole face empties of language for a second. “You burned my bed?”

“Mhm.”