7
Darina
Tuesdays were the slow day, by design — I'd built the schedule that way on purpose years ago, one day a week where Zarya stayed open but barely advertised it, mostly so I'd have a single afternoon to catch up on linens and invoices without sixty customers expecting conversation along with their steam.
I was elbow-deep in a stack of towels that needed folding when the alley door opened without a knock at all, which told me, before I'd even turned around, exactly who it was.
"You don't knock anymore," I said, not turning, folding the next towel with more attention than a towel had ever required of me.
"You gave me the door code on Saturday. I assumed that came with implied permission."
"I gave you the door code so you'd stop showing up like a man casing the building.
" I did turn then, and found him standing just inside the doorway, jacket off, sleeves rolled in a way I'd never once seen him allow himself inside these walls, like he'd decided somewhere on the drive over that today wasn't going to be a day for performing anything either.
"It wasn't an invitation for Tuesday afternoons. "
"No." He came closer, unhurried, the way he did everything, stopping just short of the distance that would have made this conversation impossible to have honestly. "I came because I spent four days telling myself I wasn't going to, and I've apparently run out of patience for that particular lie."
"That's becoming a theme with you. Running out of patience for your own lies."
"It is." The corner of his mouth moved, that almost-smile I'd started keeping a private inventory of without meaning to. "I used to be considerably better at sustaining them."
"How was the rest of your week, since Saturday." I asked it lightly, though there was nothing light about the question underneath it. "Aside from whatever conversation you had with yourself about not coming here, which I assume was a long one."
"Busy. Tedious, mostly — paperwork, a lawyer's office, a man I needed to reassure that he wasn't in as much trouble as he thought he was.
" He moved a stack of folded towels aside to lean against the table, watching me the entire time with the kind of attention that made the room feel smaller than its actual dimensions.
"I thought about you considerably more than the paperwork deserved. The ratio matters here."
"That's not a flattering thing to admit about your own work ethic."
"No," he agreed. "It's the truth instead, which I'm discovering, lately, is a poor substitute for flattering when it comes to you specifically. I've never once been a man who says more than he means. I find that's becoming inconvenient, around you, considering how much I apparently mean."
I set the towel down, finally, because there was no version of folding linens that survived a man looking at you like that, and the air in the back room had gone thick the way it had gone thick in my kitchen, the way it had gone thick at the counter on Saturday — except this time there was no brother on the other side of a door, no marshal's knock interrupting, nothing standing between us except whatever either of us still had left to say before we stopped saying anything at all.
"I've thought about Saturday more than I should have," I admitted, because four days of pretending otherwise had worn down whatever pride I'd been using to hold the admission back.
"I keep landing on the same problem every time.
We almost got caught by my own brother, in my own business, doing something he'd lose his mind over if he understood even half of it. "
"I know."
"So what exactly is the plan here, Rurik? Because I don't think either of us is the kind of person who does this casually, and I don't think either of us has actually said out loud what this is."
He considered that for a moment, a stillness he wore when he was choosing words with care rather than reaching for the first ones available.
"I don't have a plan. Since you're asking for honesty.
I've fifteen years of careful rules and exactly one instinct that's currently overriding every single one of them, and the instinct is winning by a margin I find genuinely unsettling.
" He took the last step that closed the distance between us, slow enough that I had every opportunity to step back and chose, deliberately, the same way I'd chosen on Saturday, not to.
"What I know is that I don't want to spend another week pretending I can simply build the rule back into place.
I tried. I failed within four days. I'd rather understand what we're actually doing than keep failing quietly. "
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It's the truth instead. I find I only have the one available where you're concerned lately."
I reached up before I'd fully decided to, my hand finding the collar of his shirt, not pulling him closer so much as simply needing something to hold while the rest of me caught up with what I already wanted.
"If we do this," I said, quiet, careful, "it has to be on terms. Real ones.
Not just two people deciding, separately, every single time, how much they're willing to risk. "
"Tell me the terms."
"My brothers don't find out. Not yet, not until I decide how and when, and that decision is mine, not yours, not Vadim's loyalty to you, not anyone's sense of what's owed to whom.
This is the one thing in my life right now that's actually mine, and I want to be the one who decides when it stops being private.
" I held his gaze, steady, because this part mattered more than anything else I had to say.
"And if it ever becomes too much — for either of us, for any reason — we walk away clean.
No grudges. No using what either of us knows against the other.
I've had exactly one man lie to me about the shape of something this year.
I won't survive a second one pretending devotion was actually leverage. "
"Agreed." He said it without hesitation, the same flat, immediate certainty he'd used the night he told me he hadn't known about Denis. "All of it. Your terms, your timeline, your decision about when this stops being private, if it ever does. I'll add exactly one condition of my own."
"Which is."
"That you tell me, honestly, the moment any part of this stops being something you actually want.
Not something you're managing, or tolerating, or keeping for the sake of not disappointing me.
The moment it stops being wanted, you say so, and I stop, completely, no negotiation.
" Something moved behind his eyes, unguarded in a way I hadn't seen from him even in my kitchen.
"I've watched men in my world mistake control for love often enough to know the difference matters more than almost anything else I could offer you. "
"That's a good condition."
"I've my moments." He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, the same gesture from Saturday, except this time there was no front door waiting to bang open behind us, no brother's voice cutting through the quiet. "Can I ask you something, while we're laying out terms."
"You can ask."
"Why now. You could have told me to leave on Saturday and meant it.
You could have told me to leave just now, before either of us said anything we couldn't take back.
I'm not asking because I doubt the answer.
I'm asking because I'd like to understand it, the way I've apparently made a habit of wanting to understand everything about you lately. "
I considered the question honestly, because it deserved an honest answer rather than a comfortable one.
"Because I spent eight months being lied to by a man who never once looked like he was risking anything to be with me.
He just was, easily, the way breathing is easy, and it turned out the ease was the whole problem — there was nothing underneath it holding the shape of an actual choice.
" I held his gaze. "You're risking considerably more than he ever did, and you keep doing it anyway, in increments, every single time you have the option not to.
That's not nothing to me. That's actually the entire thing. "
"Then I'll keep choosing it in increments," he said, "for as long as you'll let me."
I kissed him before either of us could find anything else careful to say, because four days and two interrupted almosts had worn down whatever was left of my own patience, and he met it immediately, one hand coming up to cradle my jaw with a gentleness that didn't match the rest of him at all, the other settling at my waist like he was asking permission with his palm before he'd let himself ask with words.
"Tell me if I should stop," he murmured against my mouth, the first actual words either of us managed for a long minute, and I felt the question land somewhere underneath my ribs precisely because it was a question, asked plainly, with no assumption baked into it that the answer would obviously be no.
"Don't stop," I said, and felt him exhale like he'd been holding something back specifically to hear me say it.
He kissed like he did everything else — unhurried, deliberate, paying the kind of attention that made me feel entirely, dizzyingly seen, his hands mapping the line of my waist like he was memorizing something he intended to remember in detail later.
I backed against the folding table without meaning to, scattering half-folded towels, and felt him smile against my mouth at the small domestic chaos of it before he kissed me again, slower this time, like he had nowhere else in the world he needed to be.
"This table," I managed, breathless, "is going to need re-sanitizing."
"I'll buy you a new table." His mouth found the line of my jaw, my throat, unhurried in a way that made my whole body feel lit from somewhere underneath the skin. "I'll buy you an entire new back room if it means I get to keep doing this."
"That's an absurd offer."