Chapter 3 – Lev #2
The thought came from nowhere and everywhere, hitting me with a force that left me breathless.
I tried to push it away, tried to focus on the rational reasons for staying—the collection, the venue, the hundred moving pieces that required my attention.
But underneath it all was a truth I’d been avoiding for five years.
I cared about him. More than I should, more than was safe, more than made any kind of rational sense.
Hours passed in a blur of failed sketches and abandoned phone calls. I tried to work, tried to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of creation, but my mind kept drifting to steel-gray eyes and the memory of hands that had touched me like I was something precious and dangerous at the same time.
By the time Irene arrived at my door, I was pacing the length of my studio like a caged animal, my nerves stretched so thin I felt like I might shatter at the slightest touch.
“You look like hell,” she said by way of greeting, settling onto the couch with the ease of someone who’d been navigating my emotional crises for years.
“Thank you. That’s exactly what every girl wants to hear.”
“Anya.” Her voice was gentle but firm, the tone she used when she was about to say something I didn’t want to hear. “We need to talk.”
I stopped pacing and looked at her—really looked at her.
Irene had always been the steady one, the voice of reason in a world that often felt like it was spinning out of control.
If she was worried, if she’d driven across town to sit in my studio and have this conversation, then maybe I was missing something important.
“Talk about what?”
“About why you’re falling apart over a man you claim to hate.”
The words hit me like a slap, partly because they were true and partly because I’d thought I was hiding it better than that.
“I don’t hate him,” I said quietly.
“I know. That’s the problem.”
She patted the cushion beside her, and after a moment’s hesitation, I sat down.
The couch had been a gift from her and Milo when I’d first opened the studio—butter-soft leather the color of caramel, big enough for two people to curl up with coffee and dreams and the kind of conversations that lasted until dawn.
“He’s alone right now,” she said, her voice soft. “Completely alone. No family, no one to help him through this except whatever bottle he finds at the bottom of a glass.”
The image she painted—Lev drunk and grieving and isolated—made something twist painfully in my chest.
“He has friends. Business associates. Women who—”
“Who what? Care about him?” Irene’s laugh was sharp enough to cut. “Anya, honey, when was the last time you went on a date?”
The question caught me off guard. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Answer me. When was the last time you let someone get close to you? Really close?”
I opened my mouth to respond and found I couldn’t.
Because the truth was embarrassing and pathetic and completely accurate.
There had been dates, of course. Dinner with the art gallery owner who’d wanted to discuss a potential collaboration.
Coffee with the journalist who’d interviewed me for Vogue.
A handful of carefully orchestrated evenings that had ended with polite handshakes and promises to call that we both knew were lies.
But close? Really, truly close?
“Five years,” Irene said softly, reading the answer in my silence. “Five years since you let someone past your walls. Five years since you trusted someone enough to be vulnerable.”
“That’s not—”
“It is.” Her eyes were kind but relentless. “You’ve been waiting, Anya. All this time, through every safe, boring date with every safe, boring man, you’ve been waiting for someone who kissed you once in a club and then disappeared from your life.”
The truth of it hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs and leaving me dizzy with the force of recognition.
Five years of holding everyone at arm’s length, five years of finding excuses and building walls and telling myself it was about independence and focus and protecting the life I’d built.
Five years of waiting for a man who’d touched me like fire and then walked away without looking back.
“Only Lev dared to come close,” I whispered, the words torn from somewhere deep in my chest. “Only him. And I let him, just once, and I’ve never forgotten how it felt to burn.”
Irene reached over and took my hand, her fingers warm and steady against mine.
“Then maybe it’s time to stop running from the fire and go see if it’s still burning.”
I pulled my hand away and stood up, sudden energy coursing through me like electricity. She was right. God help me, she was absolutely right. I’d spent five years telling myself I hated everything about Lev’s world while secretly, desperately hoping he’d find his way back into mine.
“This is insane,” I said, already moving toward the door.
“Probably,” she agreed. “But sometimes the best things are.”
I grabbed my keys and jacket, my heart hammering against my ribs with a rhythm that felt like anticipation and terror in equal measure. “If this goes badly—”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” She smiled, and it was full of the kind of confidence I wished I felt. “And I know him, even if you think I don’t. He’s been waiting too, Anya. Maybe not as obviously as you, but he’s been waiting.”
The drive to Lev’s apartment felt like traveling through a dream—familiar streets transformed by darkness and the weight of possibility.
I’d been to his building exactly once before, years ago, when Maxim had sent me to deliver some documents he’d forgotten.
Even then, I’d been struck by how perfectly the space reflected its owner—all clean lines and expensive materials and not a single personal touch that might reveal something vulnerable underneath the surface.
I parked in the visitor’s space and sat in my car for a full five minutes, hands gripping the steering wheel while I tried to talk myself out of what I was about to do.
This was crazy. Lev Antonov wasn’t the kind of man who needed comfort from anyone, least of all from his best friend’s little sister who’d thrown herself at him once and been gently, definitively rejected.
But then I remembered the look in his eyes five years ago, right before he’d kissed me. The way he’d said my name like it was a prayer and a curse wrapped together. The way he’d touched me like I was something precious and forbidden at the same time.
Maybe Irene was right. Maybe he’d been waiting too.
I got out of the car before I could change my mind and walked to the building’s entrance on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.
The lobby was all marble and mirrors, intimidating in the way that expensive things often were.
The elevator ride to the fifteenth floor lasted forever and not nearly long enough.
Standing outside his door, I almost lost my nerve entirely. What was I supposed to say? That I was sorry for his loss? That I’d driven across town because I couldn’t stop thinking about him? That I’d spent five years measuring every man I met against the memory of one kiss?
All of it was true. None of it was something I could say out loud.
I raised my hand to knock and then let it fall, the weight of my own cowardice pressing down on me like a physical thing.
This was a mistake. Lev was grieving, vulnerable, probably drunk.
The last thing he needed was me showing up at his door with my complicated feelings and my desperate need to make sure he was all right.
But as I turned to leave, I remembered his voice on the phone five years ago, the night after that kiss. How he’d called me at three in the morning just to hear me say his name. How he’d hung up without saying a word, but not before I’d heard the longing in his breathing.
I turned back to the door and pressed the bell before I could lose my nerve again.
The sound echoed in the hallway like a gunshot, and I held my breath, waiting for footsteps or voices or some sign that there was life on the other side of the door.
Nothing.
I tried again, holding the button longer this time, the chime stretching into something that sounded almost desperate.
Still nothing.
Maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe he was at some bar, drowning his grief in vodka and the company of strangers. Maybe he was with someone else, seeking comfort in ways that didn’t involve his best friend’s little sister showing up uninvited.
The thought made my stomach clench with something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy.
I was about to give up, about to retreat to my car and pretend this whole impulsive journey had never happened, when I heard it—the soft sound of a lock turning, the whisper of a door opening just wide enough for steel-gray eyes to peer through the gap.
When Lev saw me standing in his hallway, his expression shifted through surprise, confusion, and something that might have been hunger before settling into the careful mask he wore like armor.
“Anya.” My name sounded different in his voice now, rougher than I remembered, like grief had scraped away all the smooth edges. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter 3 – Lev
The vodka burned going down, but not nearly as much as the memories that crawled through my skull like acid. I sat in the dark of my living room, black leather gloves still covering my hands, staring at the half-empty glass like it might hold answers to questions I’d stopped asking years ago.
The apartment was tomb-quiet, all sharp edges and cold surfaces that reflected nothing back. Just like me. Just like the man I’d become after that night when everything burned.
I lifted the glass again, let the vodka coat my throat, and tried to drown the images that played behind my eyes like a film reel from hell. But alcohol had never been strong enough to kill the past, and tonight it felt particularly useless against the weight of my father’s final words.