Chapter 10 Stefan
TEN
STEFAN
SANOK, POLAND
Out in the floral-wallpapered corridor, lined with generations of family portraits, I press my back against the wall, listening in on Rosalie ease Mama’s nightly concerns while growing closer to her delivery day.
We’re all impatiently awaiting. What should be excitement for a new baby, a new sibling, our family growing, is terrifying for us all.
Mama has been through too much over the years, losing babies, even ones close to their assumed delivery date.
Of course, this one last try was a plan before the Reich stormed through our city.
The odds are stacked against our family, Mama, and this baby. Rosalie is our only hope.
The moment she quietly steps out of Mama and Papa’s bedroom, I take a hold of her hand and yank her down the hall.
“What in the world are you doing?” she hisses.
“Hush! Don’t you trust me?”
“No!” She cries out with laughter.
“That’s what I thought.”
Seconds whisk by before a cool breeze swipes at my warm cheeks. We continue running until the sky-high trees swallow us up into a glittered moon-lit clearing.
“Hi,” I say, grinning as we both fight to catch our breath.
“Hi,” she replies, biting her cheek. My dress shoes slip and slide over thin layers of ice covered leaves as I yank a rolled-up blanket out from beneath my arm, blousing it into the air before it drapes gently over Rosalie’s shoulders. “What are we doing out here?”
My gaze drops between us as I dig the toe of my shoe into a small pile of stiff leaves. “Did you know it’s been over three months since you arrived here?”
“In fact, it’s been three months, two weeks, six days, ten hours—and when I last looked at the clock, fifteen minutes since I arrived here.”
“You and your numbers,” I counter, loving that her passion for time reflects her father’s.
“Numbers matter,” she replies.
“They do. Very much so. In that time—”
“One hundred and twelve days,” she interrupts with her accuracy.
“Yes, over those one hundred and twelve days, I’ve encountered every one of your quizzical looks that you know I can’t decipher.
I’ve watched for the moments when your eyes somehow smile even when your lips refuse to comply.
And most importantly, I’ve counted one hundred and fifty-two of your superfluous insults that each end with an adorable quiet laugh you think I can’t hear. ”
“You’ve counted?”
“Every single one.”
“You have nothing better to do with your time?” she quips.
“One hundred and fifty-three,” I lament. “But…there’s only been one time you didn’t stop me from pulling you outside and into the middle of the woods.”
“You’ve only tried this one time,” she says with a mischievous raised brow.
“You know as well as I do, your insults are just an excuse to talk to me.” I couldn’t be surer of my words.
“I don’t need an excuse to talk to you,” she says, matter of fact.
“Is that why you didn’t say a word when I caught you staring at my bare chest when you walked past my bedroom last week? Or maybe it was because I caught you as you walked right into the wall pillar due to your distraction.”
Laughter shoots out of her nose, her hands cupping her face. “You saw that?”
“I heard it first, to be fair.”
Rosalie rubs her fingers over her closed eyes. “You’re—” she begins.
“Handsome, charming, funny…I know.”
And I love to make her roll her eyes.
“Is that why you felt the need to drag me outside in the freezing cold tonight?”
I drop my hands into my pockets and roll back on my heels. “No. You said something to my mother this morning—something I’ve been reciting in my head all day.”
She looks confused, her brows knit together. “I don’t know what I said…”
“You said: ‘Live in the moment, breathe in the time, and let tomorrow be a mystery,’” I recite.
“Oh,” she says, her response a single note.
“Well, I took your advice, and now I’m living in the moment…”
“I see,” she says, biting her bottom lip as I’m wondering what precise thought is going through her mind now.
“I know you don’t have a reason to think much of me or even wonder what I’m thinking when I look at you, but at the same time, I have a feeling that, maybe, you might think of me the way I think about you. Like we could be the only two people left in this world.”
“Stefan, you live on top of a hill. There aren’t other people up here.” She continues to joke, and jab, her only defense against me when I can clearly see she’s losing her grip on a crumbling ledge.
“My parents adore you. Even Eloise—I heard her tell a friend she was your new closest friend, which is quite adorable coming from her.”
“And what is it you’ve been thinking—” she says with a shiver, her jaw stiffening. “What have you been thinking when you look at me?”
I curl my hand around her elbow, bringing her in closer.
“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and…
I look forward to seeing you after work.
And worse, I eat up your insults like they’re compliments no one’s ever given me.
You’re stronger than anyone I’ve ever known, and I’m fascinated by it. By you.”
My heart thunders as if I’m walking on a tightrope over a canyon. Taking a risk, one I can’t undo. But time—it lives by no rules. She’s made that clear.
“Stefan, don’t be ridiculous,” she says with a scoff. “I’m—I’m—look at me…I’m nothing special. Just the daughter of a clock tower operator.”
“I am looking at you. All I’ve been doing…is looking at you.”
Her gaze catches on mine and though my knees might give out from my fraying nerves, I know there’s no turning back from this moment. I stare at her, so deeply, desperate to read her thoughts.
“I think—you’re the most—” she says.
I tighten my hand around her elbow, bracing for whatever words come out of her mouth. “The most what?”
The flutter of her lashes tells me to slip my arm behind her back, feeling her warmth radiate through the blanket. I gaze down at her, my hair falling loose over my eyes.
“Delusional man—” she utters.
Her words are like sparks to a match—a magnetizing pull I can’t restrain myself from any longer.
I take her lips with mine, folding her into my arms. We stumble and I brace my hand behind her before falling against a tree.
I sweep my other hand up the side of her neck, over her ear, cradling her head.
I hold her tighter, deepening the kiss as my heart threatens to detonate like wild fireworks.
The warmth of her chest against mine, a fire’s heat in the cold.
She curls her hands around my arms, holding on with a tight grip—like that crumbling ledge.
But I won’t break. I won’t let her fall. Not now, not ever.
When I remember we need to breathe, our lips part, and the silence snakes around us as our gazes lock. “Do you feel that?” I ask her.
“I feel everything,” she utters. “More than I can explain.”
“Everything?” I ask, my voice barely a breath. “Try…”
She shakes her head gently. “The tremor in your left hand.”
My chest tightens and knees brace. No. “My hand’s not trembling.” It’s not. Not on the outside. How could she know?
“Yes, it is,” she says softly, as if ashamed of this accusation.
I slip my hand out from behind her and glance down at my steady palm. “It’s not…” I stare harder, looking for something that can’t be seen. “My hand isn’t moving.”
“But I know,” she says with a confidence that can’t be argued with.
“How?” It’s my secret. It’s my flaw. It’s my disease to bear—no one else’s.
It’s what taught me that no girl wants to be around someone who might collapse without warning and shake so violently I might injure myself.
It’s the reason why Leah Berkowitz from Hebrew school broke up with me less than a day after we started dating.
It took me three months to get the courage to ask her out.
Then, on a Sunday morning during temple services, I woke up on the ground in the synagogue, blood dripping out of my mouth from biting my tongue during a seizure.
She must have realized then why it took me so long to ask her out. And she never spoke to me again.
“It’s not important—how…”
“Yes, it is,” I argue. I didn’t tell her. No one told her. No one would. No one truly knows me anymore now that I’m homeschooled.
Rosalie hesitates. The troubling look in her eyes tells me she can hear my thoughts out loud. “Is it epilepsy?”
I freeze. Not from the cold. From disbelief. “How—how do you—how could you possibly know?”
She drops her gaze. I’ve scared her. She doesn’t need to be burdened with this.
There’s no reason for her to even know. As if guilt is slicing through the air, she says, “I’m sorry—I’ve seen the signs.
The micro tremors, long stares, the held breath, a forgotten thought.
You stop for just a moment…when the world keeps going. ”
I take her hand in mine. “Who’s saying you’re not the one doing that to me?”
“Me?” she questions, her eyes wide, hurt, as if I’ve accused her of something malicious. That’s not what I meant.
I lean in, conveying how long this secret has held me in its captivity—a prisoner of my body.
“I didn’t want anyone outside of my family to know,” I murmur against her sweet, warm lips.
“Medicines have helped me conceal the truth, especially from the others at school before the imposed Jewish laws prohibited us from attending. The workers at my father’s factory too—anyone who might see me differently if they were to know. ”
“You have nothing to hide,” she utters, her lips sweeping gently against mine.
“I’ve always felt like I’m one breath away from the world thinking I should be institutionalized,” I explain—words I’ve never spoken out loud.
“Your entire life?”
“I was born with a curse, or so the first doctor who diagnosed me kindly put it.”
“It’s not a curse…” she whispers.
I lower my head to hers as a rush of honesty spills from my soul. “I’m Jewish, born with a disease. The Reich wants to exterminate people like me.” My chest constricts, and a breath catches in my throat. “I’m living on borrowed time.”
“No,” she hisses. “No. I’ll help you.”
I pull back as wishful threads of hope might save me. “How?”
No one can save me.