Chapter 9
Mina
The door clicked behind me, and I just… stood there.
In the middle of Nikolai’s icy murder-den-of-a-house, letting the quiet wrap around me like a weighted blanket I didn’t know I needed.
It was still clean. Still moody. Still giving haunted Scandinavian showroom.
But today? It didn’t feel like a stranger’s space anymore.
“Maybe I’ll redecorate,” I muttered to absolutely no one, eyeing the sharp corners and stoic, colorless everything. “Throw pillows. Fairy lights. A plant that won’t die immediately.”
The thought made me smile—tiny, but real.
I kicked off my shoes with a little too much enthusiasm (take THAT, metaphor for baggage), and padded down the hall to the bedroom.
And there it was. His shirt. Still draped over the back of the chair like a personal invitation to lose all dignity and wear something that wasn’t mine—but also totally was.
I slipped it over my head. Instantly swallowed. Ten out of ten, would drown in oversized Russian softness again. It smelled like him—like cedarwood, cold air, and stubbornness—and it settled on me like a hug I didn’t have to earn.
Fuzzy socks? Secured. Tension? Evicted. My shoulders finally stopped auditioning for a role as earrings, and my spine uncoiled like, oh, we’re safe now? Cool, thanks for the heads-up.
The bedroom was still too neat, too stark, but now it felt less like a sterile crime scene and more like…
a reset button. The light spilled through the blinds in soft lines across the hardwood, and for the first time in forever, the screaming in my brain—about Mikel, about the cheating, about the what-now—took a backseat.
I looked around, planted my fuzzy-socked feet firmly on his terrifyingly expensive floor, and whispered to no one in particular, “Okay. This is mine too.”
Just for now. Just in this weird little pocket of time. But still—mine.
I took a breath. Then another. And with every inhale, the past felt smaller. With every exhale, I felt a little more like myself again.
Not broken. Not stupid. Just here. And that was enough.
I pushed open the bathroom door and froze as my reflection caught me mid-step. Yikes.
For a second, I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror.
She looked like she’d just walked off a movie set titled Emotional Apocalypse: Pajamas and Poor Life Choices.
My hair was doing its own thing (bless it), my skin had that pale, stress-glow vibe, and my eyes—ugh.
Dark circles for days. Like, if I smiled too hard, TSA would mistake them for carry-on luggage.
But then I looked closer. Past the chaos. Past the exhaustion and makeup-less honesty of my face.
She was still there. I was still there.
A little bruised. A little cracked. But—annoyingly—alive.
I leaned in and squinted at myself like I was solving a mystery. And maybe I was, because under all that wreckage from the Great Mikel Meltdown?, there was something simmering. Not weakness. Not failure.
Fire.
This is what leaving looks like, I thought, blinking at my puffy, tired reflection. Not with fireworks or middle fingers or dramatic speeches in the rain. Just… me. Breathing. Standing. Choosing myself for once without needing permission.
I took a deep breath. Not the shaky, teary kind either. A real one. Full of air and clarity and lavender-scented soap.
The girl in the mirror—messy bun, Nikolai’s giant shirt sliding off one shoulder, eyes still red but awake—she looked like someone who’d been through something.
But also like someone who was done with being small.
I smoothed the collar of his shirt. It felt ridiculously safe, like a warm barricade against everything sharp in the world. Which made no sense. It was just cotton and fabric softener and faint traces of Reaper cologne. But right now? It was armor.
“No more hiding,” I said to my reflection, voice low but sure.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, she didn’t look scared. Just a little tired. A little pissed. And 100% done taking crumbs from anyone who couldn’t offer the whole damn cookie.
Including Mikel.
Especially Mikel.
I stood up straighter and gave myself a nod like, Okay. Let’s see who we can be now.
Then I stole Nikolai’s face cream from the counter.
Obviously.
I padded out of the hallway, still wrapped in Nikolai’s shirt like it was my official sad girl uniform, only to find him in the kitchen doing something shockingly domestic.
The man who literally growled at a ref two nights ago was now standing in front of a microwave, reheating something in Tupperware like a grumpy suburban dad.
“Wow,” I said, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Didn’t peg you for a leftover guy.”
He didn’t turn. Just calmly pressed a button. “It’s protein. Protein doesn’t expire.”
“Okay, that’s… definitely not how expiration works.”
He glanced over his shoulder, one brow raised, and I swear the corner of his mouth twitched. Just a little.
The microwave beeped. He grabbed two forks, handed me one without ceremony, and gestured to the kitchen island like we were an old married couple who did this every Tuesday.
We sat. Ate quietly. A silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t awkward—not the kind that made you want to crawl out of your skin. It was… warm. Like the world had gone quiet on purpose just so we could chew in peace.
He gave me a look mid-bite. Flat. Knowing. The kind that said you’re trouble, without saying a word.
I raised a brow right back. “What? You’re the one who kidnapped me with soup and pity. Don’t give me the wounded hockey player glare now.”
He didn’t smile—because that would’ve been too human for him—but his voice came dry and unimpressed. “Next time I’ll leave you crying in your ice cream."
I gasped, clutching my chest like he’d personally insulted my bloodline. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I might.”
“You’re all threats and no follow-through,” I shot back, poking at my forkful of rice. “Russian Reaper, my butt. You’re basically a stoic golden retriever in a tracksuit.”
He actually made a sound—a sound. A scoff-laugh hybrid that might’ve been a chuckle if he hadn’t shut it down immediately.
And just like that, we were back.
Not fixed. Not perfect.
But sitting across from each other in a too-clean kitchen, trading jabs over leftovers, and for now?
That was more than I thought I needed.
“What’s next for you, then?” he asked, like it was a totally casual thing to toss out while we sat in a kitchen full of leftover soup and existential dread.
He tilted his head slightly, and somehow that small, barely-there movement pulled my whole spine into a stiff line.
His gaze locked with mine, steady and focused, and wow—rude.
I looked down at my half-eaten bowl of… honestly; I had no idea. Rice? Mush? Existential carbs? My fork tapped gently against the ceramic, the clink sounding louder than it should’ve. I didn’t have an answer. Not a clean one. Not a neat five-step plan. Just a brain full of cotton and questions.
“I don’t know what I'm going to do next,” I said, slow and cautious, like the words might bite back. But the moment they left my mouth? My chest didn’t cave. My stomach didn’t lurch. “But for the first time… that doesn’t feel terrifying.”
I looked back up at him, expecting the usual—judgment or, worse, that tight-lipped sympathy people gave when they didn’t know what to say. But all I saw was something softer. Warmer. His expression didn’t scream pity or fix it. It just… listened.
“Maybe I don’t need to know yet,” I went on, feeling the weight slide off my shoulders one syllable at a time. “Maybe it's enough to know where I don't want to be.”
He nodded. No comments. No lectures. Just agreement, quiet and solid like a stone in a stream.
“Good,” he said eventually, voice low and grounded. “You're moving forward without a map.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. “You make me sound way more impressive than I am.”
“You don’t have to be impressive.”
Again—rude.
I looked down at the bowl, tracing a finger along the rim. “One step at a time?”
“Exactly.” He’d smiled—not a full one, but enough to make my heart do a very inconvenient skip. “And you already took the biggest one. You left.”
That warm, fizzy pride bloomed in my chest again. Not the kind you broadcasted on Instagram with dramatic captions—but the kind that hummed quietly, reminding you that you survived something that almost swallowed you.
“Yeah,” I said softly, letting the moment breathe.
And we sat there, just the two of us and the hum of the fridge and the weird comfort of knowing that sometimes the most important decisions didn’t come with confetti or closure.
Just soup. And a maybe.
“Actually,” I said, straightening up and squinting around the kitchen like I was on a personal mission, “can we discuss the temperature in here? Because I’m pretty sure my soul just tried to hibernate.”
Nikolai arched an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. “It’s seventy-two degrees.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Seventy-two where? Siberia?”
“That’s room temperature.”
“For a walk-in freezer, maybe,” I shot back, tugging the sleeves of his shirt over my hands like makeshift mittens. “Do your thermostats come pre-installed with emotional detachment?”
His mouth twitched—almost a smile. “I like it cold. It keeps the house clean.”
“Oh, so the dust bunnies freeze to death before they can colonize?” I asked, deadpan.
“Exactly.”
I wrapped my arms around myself dramatically. “Okay, Russian Reaper. But just know—if I get frostbite, I’m haunting you. Forever.”
He gave a nonchalant shrug, already heading toward the thermostat like he hadn’t just been accused of operating a cryogenic prison. “You can haunt the kitchen. It’ll improve the cooking.”
I gasped. “That’s slander. I’m practically a chef now.”
“You nearly burned eggs.”
“It was a creative interpretation of ‘crispy,’” I huffed.
But beneath all the sarcasm and goosebumps, warmth buzzed in my chest. The air still felt cold—but the company? That part finally felt warm.
“So, as a completely reasonable and not-at-all dramatic compromise,” I said, following him down the hallway with my arms still tucked into the sleeves of his oversized shirt like a blanket burrito, “I demand tribute in the form of one hoodie.”
He glanced over his shoulder, already scowling. “You’ve stolen my shirt. Now my dignity too?”
I grinned sweetly. “Yes. And your thermostat privileges.”
He muttered something in Russian that I was fairly certain wasn’t complimentary, but then he pulled open his closet and yanked a hoodie off a hanger. “Here. Don’t spill anything on it.”
“Wow,” I said, snatching it from his hand. “So much tenderness. It’s overwhelming.”
He didn’t respond—just gave me a look that said you’re lucky I tolerate you, which was code for I’m secretly amused and would absolutely give you a second hoodie if you asked nicely.
I slipped it on. It swallowed me whole in the best way—soft, warm, with sleeves that went past my hands and a hood that practically ate my head. And the smell.
Oh no.
It smelled like him.
Like that earthy, clean, ridiculously masculine scent that lived somewhere between soap, winter air, and probably danger. My stomach flipped so hard it might’ve done a cartwheel.
I cleared my throat and pretended to focus on adjusting the cuffs like they were suddenly Very Important. “Okay, fine. You win. Your house can be an icebox if I get to wear this.”
He just grunted like he didn’t notice the way I was now refusing to make eye contact.
I padded past him on my way to the couch, hoodie sleeves flopping like I had sweater paws, when something tugged at me—like unfinished business.
I stopped. Turned.
“Hey,” I said, my voice softer than I meant it to be. “Thanks. For today.”
He didn’t say anything right away. Just gave a small nod, but I saw it—the twitch of his mouth, the almost-smirk that tried very hard to act like it wasn’t a thing. Like he hadn’t just quietly rescued me from a human dumpster fire and handed me comfort on a silver platter made of sarcasm and soup.
Before it could get too weird—read: emotional—I pivoted hard.
“I’m stealing your remote,” I announced, lunging for it like a raccoon with a mission and zero shame.
His hand moved—slow, deliberate—but not fast enough.
“Too late.” I grinned, flopping dramatically onto the couch like I’d just claimed a throne. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. It’s mine now. Long live the queen.”
He just shook his head with that tired, amused look like I was equal parts chaos and exhaustion.
Honestly? Fair.
“I’m going to stick handle,” he announced, already heading toward the corner of the living room where he’d casually left a hockey stick and one of those off-ice training balls like it was totally normal furniture.
“Okay,” I said, way too absorbed in flipping through his streaming apps. “You do that. I need to see who gets eliminated from Love & Lip Gloss: Season Six. Priorities.”
I settled back into the couch, hoodie tucked around my knees, and found the episode I’d left off on. Trash TV excellence. High-stakes mascara drama. Zero regrets.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him start—smooth and focused, his hands gliding over the stick like it was muscle memory. Because it was. He barely made a sound as he moved, just the soft tap-tap of the ball against the floor.
Every now and then, I caught him glancing toward the screen.
“You’re watching,” I teased once, not looking away.
“I’m not,” he replied flatly—right before adding, “Why is that guy wearing a sequin suit in a hot tub?”
I snorted. “That’s Troy. He’s the villain. We hate him.”
“Mm.” Tap, tap, tap.
Two minutes later: “Is that the same guy from the rooftop wine fight?”
“You are watching.”
“No.”
But then he asked if Jade was the one who got proposed to by accident last season, and at that point, I just raised an eyebrow and shifted over slightly to make room.
And without fanfare, somewhere between a dramatic rose toss and a confessional meltdown, he sat beside me.
Still holding the stick. Still balancing the ball between his feet.
But not moving anymore.
Just watching. With me.
And if I noticed our arms brushing—or the way he didn’t pull away—I didn’t say anything.
Because maybe this was stick-handling too. Just a different kind of control. A softer kind of game.