Chapter 15 Vera #2
His hand settles over mine on the spatula, guiding my movements. And oh God, I can’t breathe. His fingers are warm and strong, completely engulfing my hand. His chest presses against my back as he leans forward to see the pan better, and I can feel every breath he takes.
This is torture. Sweet, devastating torture.
“Like that?” His voice is husky, and I wonder if he’s as affected by this as I am.
“Perfect.” The word comes out breathless. “You’re—you’re doing it perfectly.”
We stand like that for longer than necessary, his hand over mine, his body warm against my back, both of us pretending this is just about cooking eggs and not about the way I’m trembling, the way his breath has quickened, or the way neither of us seems able to move away.
The eggs finish cooking so we can stop this demonstration. But I’m frozen, caught in this moment, and he’s not moving either.
“Vera.” My name is barely a whisper, and I feel it more than hear it.
“We should—” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Should what? Step apart? Acknowledge what’s happening? Pretend it isn’t?
His hand tightens over mine on the spatula just for a second. Just enough for me to know he feels it too, this pull between us that gets stronger every time we’re close.
Then he’s stepping back, releasing my hand, and the loss of his warmth makes me want to cry.
“The eggs look good,” he says, and his voice is carefully neutral. “Thank you for teaching me.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. My whole body is still buzzing from his close contact and all the unsaid things that pass between us.
We eat the eggs in silence. They’re perfect. But I barely taste them.
The next three days follow a similar pattern.
Forced proximity. Accidental touches. Moments that feel too much like what a marriage should be.
Like when we wash dishes together that evening.
I wash, he dries, and we fall into an easy rhythm that feels like we’ve been doing it forever.
He tries to put a pot away in the wrong cabinet, and I reach around him to redirect it to the right place.
Our bodies press together for just a second—my front against his back—and we both freeze.
“Sorry,” I breathe, but I don’t move away immediately. He’s so solid, so warm, and for just that moment, I let myself feel it.
He makes a sound low in his throat that might be agreement or might be something else entirely. Then he’s shifting away, and the moment breaks.
Or when I’m reading in the library and he comes in to work.
He settles in the chair across from me, spreading papers across the coffee table, and we exist in comfortable silence for hours.
Every so often, our eyes meet and in those glances, I see something that mirrors what I’m feeling—want and confusion and this terrible awareness of each other.
Or when I come down late one night for water and find him in the kitchen doing the same.
We don’t speak. Instead, we move around each other in the darkness, and when I reach for a glass at the same time he does, our fingers brush.
The contact sends electricity up my arm and my breath hitches audibly.
He doesn’t let go immediately. His fingers linger against mine for a beat too long, and in the dim light from the stove, I see his jaw clench.
Then he’s pulling back, handing me the glass, and disappearing upstairs without a word.
These moments are killing me. Each one chips away at my carefully constructed walls and makes me want things I have no right to want.
And the guilt is eating me alive.
Alexei.
What kind of person forgets the man they loved so easily? What kind of person starts having feelings for his brother?
I’m like a fucking bad romance novel.
I try to remember Alexei the way he was—charming, sweet, making me feel special. I try to recall why I loved him, what drew me to him, and what made those eight months feel like something real.
But increasingly, when I think about Alexei, I don’t remember the good parts. I remember the red flags I dismissed. The little things that bothered me but I ignored because I was so caught up in the romance of it all.
Like how he would cancel plans without explanation.
I’d get dressed up for one of our secret dinners, wait at the hotel we always met at, and he just..
. wouldn’t show. He’d text hours later with a vague excuse about “family business” and promise to make it up to me.
And like an idiot, I’d forgive him because he was so apologetic and charming when we finally did meet up.
Or how he’d disappear for days without contact. No calls, no texts, nothing. Then he’d reappear and act like it was completely normal, like I hadn’t been worried sick wondering if something had happened to him.
Or how he deflected every time I asked about going public with our relationship.
“Soon,” he’d always say. “When the time is right. When things calm down between our families.” But things never calmed down, and the time was never right, and I started to wonder if maybe he didn’t actually want anyone to know about us.
Or how our conversations were always about him.
His problems with his family. His frustrations about not being taken seriously by Dimitri.
His dreams for the future. And when I tried to talk about my life, my fears, my own frustrations with my family—he’d listen, but not really.
He’d nod and make sympathetic sounds, but then redirect the conversation back to himself.
Or how he made grand promises about our future—“We’ll run away together, just the two of us, somewhere our families can’t touch us”—but never concrete plans. It was always someday, eventually, when things were different. Never now.
I thought it was romantic at the time. That the secrecy and the stolen moments and the forbidden nature of it all made it more special. More intense. Like we were fated lovers like my stupid romance novels always went on about.
But now, with distance and perspective I didn’t have before, I’m starting to think maybe I loved the fantasy more than the man.
The realization makes me feel sick and guilty. So guilty I can barely stand it.
Alexei is dead and I’m finding fault with him. Dismissing what we had as if it meant nothing.
What does that make me?
On the fourth night, after a quiet dinner of pasta and meatballs I taught Dimitri how to make (he only burned the meatballs a little), he pours us both tea and we end up in the library.
Somehow my space has become our space. He works on his investigation into the attacks, and I read or just exist in his presence, and it feels—
It feels right.
Tonight, he’s not working. He’s just sitting in the chair across from me, tea in hand, staring at the fireplace with an expression I can’t read.
The silence stretches between us, not uncomfortable but weighted, like there are things that need to be said but neither of us knows how to start.
“Tell me about him.” Dimitri's voice breaks the quiet, and I look up, startled. “About you and Alexei. I need—” He stops, jaw working. “I need to understand.”
Everything in me wants to refuse. I want to keep that part of my life private and protected because talking about Alexei with Dimitri feels like the ultimate betrayal of Alexei’s memory and whatever I thought we had.
But maybe that’s exactly why I should do it. Maybe if I talk about Alexei, I can remember why I loved him. Maybe it will stop these confusing feelings for Dimitri. Maybe it will remind me who I’m supposed to be mourning.
“Okay,” I say, swallowing heavily. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” He takes a sip of his tea, his eyes never leaving my face. “Start at the beginning.”
So I do. I tell him about the bar where we met. It was some upscale place in the city where I’d gone with a friend from college. Alexei had been there with his own friends, and my friend had nudged me, giggling. “Don’t look now, but there’s a really cute blond guy staring at you, Vee.”
I obviously had looked and our eyes had met across the room in that cliché way and when he smiled at me, my legs felt so weak I had to hold onto the bar for dear life.
“He came over to talk to me,” I say, and I can still remember that moment so clearly.
“He was so charming. So easy to talk to. We ended up talking for hours about everything and nothing. Books, movies, places we wanted to travel. He made me laugh. He made me feel—” I stop, searching for the word. “Seen. Like I mattered.”
Dimitri’s expression is impassive, but I see his hand tighten on his teacup.
“When did you learn he was a Volkov?”
“The second date.” I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
“He looked familiar to me, you know? I just couldn’t place him.
He told me his last name, and I—I almost walked out right there in the restaurant.
” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, remembering the fear and anger I felt when Alexei told me he was a Volkov.
“But you didn’t walk out,” Dimitri points out. “Why?”
I shrug helplessly, arms wrapped around my legs again.
“No, I didn’t walk out. Why I didn’t?” I’m lost in thought, remembering Alexei’s warm hand grabbing my arm as I stood up to leave.
“He swore that our families’ war didn’t have to be our war.
We could be different. That love could overcome anything.
” I laugh bitterly, remembering how I fell for it hook line and sinker.
“God, I was so naive. I actually believed him.”
Dimitri’s lips purse. “What happened after that?”
I hesitate. How much does he want to know? But from the look in his eyes, he wants to know everything. So I tell him.
The secret meetings in hotels and restaurants two towns over. The burner phones we used to contact each other. The elaborate lies I told my family about where I was going and how good I got at sneaking out. The constant fear of being caught mixed with the thrill of doing something forbidden.
“Did you love him?”