Chapter 23
ELLIE
I change in my own room first.
No one can see me strolling through this house draped in Rolan’s shirt, especially not at eleven at night.
I fold it, put it on the bed, and try not to think about the fact that it smells like him.
I don’t succeed, but I try.
The kitchen is quiet at this hour. I make Anya’s chocolate and go upstairs. Her light is still on.
I knock softly even though her door is always open. She’s in bed but not asleep. Mr. Whiskers is tucked against her side, and her sketchbook is open on her lap, containing a half-finished drawing of what appears to be a serious-looking bird.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
I hand her the mug. She takes it with both hands and drinks. I sit on the edge of the bed and wait.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“You’re welcome, sweetie.”
After a moment, she looks up at me. “Are you going to stay? ”
“Here? Tonight?”
She shakes her head again. “Here, in the house, with me.”
The sentence is small, but it takes up all the space in the room.
I think about the right answer. Not the easy one. The easy one is, Of course I’ll stay, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere, delivered with a smile that closes the question.
But Anya doesn’t want the easy answer. She’s perceptive, and she’s been left enough times to know the difference between reassurance and truth.
“I’m not planning to leave,” I say. “I like it here. I like you.” I pause. “You’re the best student I’ve ever had. And I’ve had a lot of students.”
She considers this. “How many?”
“Twenty-two in my first class. Twenty-four in my second. Twenty-three in my third.”
She counts on her little fingers for a few seconds. “That’s sixty-nine.”
I laugh. “It is. You were super fast!”
She looks mildly shocked that this is surprising. “Yes.”
I make a mental note to completely restructure our mathematics curriculum.
She is being profoundly underserved by the materials I’ve been using.
“Sixty-nine students,” I say. “And you’re my favorite.”
“You’re not supposed to have favorites.”
“That’s a rule for classrooms — well, and for parents with their children. Private tutors are allowed favorites.” I pull the blanket up slightly. “I’m also not going anywhere. Okay?”
She looks at me, weighing my words.
“Okay,” she says.
“I was thinking,” I continue, “that maybe it’s time to do a makeover with your room.”
Her drowsiness shifts. “What do you mean? ”
“I mean—” I look around at the white walls, the white furniture, the space that is beautiful and completely impersonal, the room of a child who was never asked what she wanted. “You’re six now. You’re basically ancient. You should have a room that looks like you. ”
Anya glances around her room, considering the space.
“What would that look like?”
“That’s what we’d find out. We’d go pick things. Colors. Maybe decorations for the walls. New bedding, if you want it.” I pause. “What’s your favorite color?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Blue.”
“Then we start with blue.”
“Okay,” she says finally.
I kiss her forehead, turn off her lamp, and leave the door a little open on my way out, just the way she likes it.
I stand in the hall for a moment.
My room is to the left.
I turn right.
I knock before entering, which is — honestly, a somewhat absurd gesture given the events of the last several hours, but I do it anyway, only this time I don’t wait for an answer.
He’s in bed. But the version of Rolan Belov I was prepared to encounter and the version I find are not the same person.
He’s in gray sweatpants, sitting against the headboard with a yellow folder open across his lap, and the lamplight falls across the tattoos on his chest and shoulder and the cut of his collarbone.
I stand in the doorway for a second longer than is dignified.
He looks up. His eyes move over me, starting at my face and traveling downward.
I’m wearing my own clothes, a simple blouse, nothing remarkable. But the way his gaze traces the fabric against my skin makes my nerve endings prickle.
I walk toward the bed slowly .
He closes the folder.
“Anya?” he says.
“She’s fine. Down, I think. She was nearly asleep when I left.”
He nods. His eyes haven’t moved from my face.
I stop at the side of the bed. The space beside him is enormous. His bed seems designed for a person who wants to guarantee they never accidentally touch another person in their sleep, and I’m about to deliberately occupy a portion of it.
“I’m not sure I should—” I stop to gesture at the bed.
He looks at me with little patience. “Get in.”
The sheets are cold and absurdly soft. I sit against the headboard beside him and focus on the far wall ahead, which isn’t keeping my nerves at ease. My mind gallops with scenarios of what this means.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.
“You can try.”
“Why am I here?”
Silence follows. Heavy. Uncomfortable.
He reopens the folder, which I think is going to be his answer, but then he says, “I have my reasons.”
“Can I know what they are?”
“Perhaps.”
I turn toward him, taking in his carved profile in the lamplight. The jaw, the dark lashes, the way his face manages to look both completely still and completely present. He doesn’t look at me. He reads whatever’s in the folder.
“That’s not really an answer,” I say.
“No,” he agrees.
I consider pushing further. I’m tired enough that the cost-benefit analysis is running slower than usual, and the bed is extraordinarily comfortable.
I’m not aware of the exact moment I fall asleep, but one moment, I’m looking at the ceiling, and the next, I’m gone.
Warmth.
I surface from sleep slowly. The room is dark, and pressed against my back, one arm heavy across my waist, is the solid and unmistakable form of a particular Russian man who definitely did not fall asleep intending to end up in this position.
I am completely encircled.
Our bodies are touching everywhere, and his breathing is slow and even.
I stay still.
I could move and slip back into my own bed. Technically.
If I extracted myself carefully, if I shifted gradually, if I gave sufficient effort to the project of untangling — I probably could make a clean break.
I don’t.
I close my eyes and listen to him breathe, slowly drifting back asleep.
When I wake a second time, morning light drifts through the curtains. The bed is warm, and the space behind me is empty.
I sit up.
He’s gone.
Carefully, I slip back to my own room to wash my face and change, and then I head for the sunroom.
Anya will be up soon. I should already have her materials ready.
The door is partly open.
I hear them before I see them, Anya’s voice, and then a lower response, and I push the door open and stop.
Rolan is at the table. He’s not in his usual office clothes but in dark trousers and a white shirt with the cuffs rolled.
He looks less assembled than his default, which is the closest he comes to casual.
Anya is beside him, properly dressed, her hair in the neat braid Angelina does in the mornings.
There are plates on the table, toast and fruit, and they are both eating with the focused quiet of people who are comfortable in each other’s silence.
They look up when I come in.
“Ellie!” She shifts in her chair. “Come sit. We have toast.”
“I don’t want to interrupt your?—”
“Sit down, Miss Calloway.”
I move to the table and take a seat.
“I told Papa about the room.”
Unease settles in my chest. “I was going to talk to him about it. I should have done that first.”
Rolan grabs a piece of toast and takes a bite, chewing slowly.
“It’s a reasonable idea,” he says after a moment.
I glance at him. He’s looking at Anya.
“The room should have been updated years ago,” he continues. “Blue, apparently.”
Anya nods with great seriousness.
“Come to my office this afternoon,” he says to me. “I’ll give you the card.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I’m aware.” His eyes move to mine. Brief. Clear. “This afternoon.”
I stare at my coffee, nodding. “This afternoon.”
Anya eats her toast and asks Rolan about whether sparrows can find their way home if they get lost, which leads to a small, careful explanation involving navigation and instinct.
Outside the sunroom windows, the morning is gray and the trees are bare. Anya draws a small bird in the condensation on the glass with her fingertip while Rolan answers her question.
I watch them and realize this is the most dangerous thing in this house .
Not the guards or the locked rooms I’m not supposed to access.
This. The table, the toast, the gray morning light. The ease of it. How quickly it’s becoming a routine I would miss.
I drink my coffee and keep these thoughts to myself.