Mikhail
Chapter twenty-seven
If I thought I loved her before, I didn’t know what love was. Or maybe I didn’t know who Tatiana was.
I knew the Tatiana who tried hard for everyone but herself. I knew the Tatiana who played small to make other people comfortable. I knew the Tatiana that people pleased and craved attention and meaning.
This Tatiana, lying on her back on a mattress in the middle of nowhere?
She looks like a goddess. Her shirt’s ridden up, exposing a slim sliver of skin I’m dying to lick.
Her hair’s a wild, untamed mane of gold.
She doesn’t have a lick of makeup on, but her smile is so bright it cracks something in my sternum.
She writhes on the bed, uninhibited, stretching her long limbs like a cat waking from a nap.
I’ve loved Tatiana since the day she found me and decided I belonged to her. Her determination, loyalty, and thoughtfulness were things I’d never experienced before, and I was instantly addicted. She’s the only place I’ve ever belonged.
Over the years, that love morphed into longing the more time I spent with her, touching and holding her, but never really having her. What I feel for her now? It’s too big to describe. It’s like my entire being, every cell in my body, has rearranged its compass to her.
She’s hungry? I want to be the one to feed her. She’s tired? I want to be the one to tuck her into bed. She’s angry? I want to be the one she hits. She wants the Eiffel Tower? I’ll be the one to bring it to her.
And I think she might be starting to feel the same.
It thrilled me like never before when she threw aside the chess pieces to kiss me.
I keep finding myself holding my breath, as if at any moment the magic of the moment will shatter and we’ll have to go back to how we were before.
Roman’s frowning down at his phone, back in his corner of the couch.
We turned them off to conserve battery when we lost power, but he must be checking in on everyone back home.
Lev’s watching her from the fireplace mantle, where he’s added more wood - likely to keep the cabin warm enough Tati can strut around naked.
My cochlear implant beeps at me to let me know the battery is dying. I go ahead and pull the external piece off. While Tati’s moans are going to be quieter to my ears, there’s not much I can do with the power out.
I look out at the glittering snow and wonder how long we’ll have her this way. When I look back at her, glassy blue eyes stare back at me.
“Are you okay?” she asks, slowly, letting me read her lips.
I nod, but am I? The intensity of what I’m feeling for her feels like I can’t contain it in my chest. I’m pulled in two opposite directions - one wants to run to her, scoop her up, and never let her go.
Admit that I’ve been in love with her for years, and that I love her now more than ever.
That I want forever with her - wedding, babies, lazy Sunday mornings, and horse shows. For the rest of our lives.
The other part of me hesitates. I don’t want to be too much, too fast. She’s only just caught on to how I feel - how we feel.
Talking forever and having babies might scare her away.
She’s grown up with one image of her happily ever-after, and what this is is anything but that.
She imagined one boyfriend turning into one fiancé, turning into one husband.
Ro and Lev have loved her all these years in their own ways.
She’s just started thinking about being with all three of us - and only for a limited time in her mind. Maybe she still thinks her happily ever-after comes after the cabin. And only one man.
I swallow thickly, uncomfortable with not knowing. All these years, I’ve held two realities in my mind. One, where I’ll always love her, and she never knows. And the fantasy I dream at night, holding her and breathing in her jasmine shampoo.
But I think we need to talk about us. About what this is, about where she is mentally.
“Are you alright?“ I sign.
Her sated smile falls a little, and she breaks eye contact. Lev’s watching her, too, even though Roman’s still glaring at his phone.
She wraps the comforter around her, covering her body from us.
Finally, she meets my eyes again. “I hate not knowing how long this will last,” she says and signs and I let out a breath. It’s exactly how I’ve been feeling. And I’m sure something Lev and Ro have struggled with, too.
I don’t have any reassuring answers for her, though.
If we get the phone call today that they’ve uncovered who sent the shooter, she could potentially go back to school and pick right back up where she left off.
Would things go back to normal? Would we go back to just being friends?
Would she go back to trying to go on dates with other men? I’m not sure I’d survive that.
But also, what if they don’t? What if they don’t find anything for months?
According to the forecast, the snow should melt off by the end of the week. But then what? Is this our new home?
So, I gather my courage and sign, “This doesn’t have to end.“
I watch her as her eyes go distant. She’s working out what a future would look like with all of us.
The pros and cons. The family ramifications.
I look at Lev to see if he’s on the same page - if he’s willing to risk it all to continue being with her.
I expect him to object, or want to stick to our ‘what happens in the cabin stays in the cabin’ rules, but he’s unusually quiet, elbows on his knees, watching Tati.
Her lips tug up in a grin. I know she’s new to the idea of this, but at least she’s not running.
I know she has big dreams and goals, but she’s learned how to play small within a family who doesn’t see her.
Or at least, doesn’t know her deep down and has no interest or curiosity about who Tatiana is as a person.
I want her to achieve her dreams - to paint and open a gallery, bachelor’s degree or not.
And I want to be by her side as she does it.
I don’t even mind sharing her or our future together with Lev and Roman.
They’ve both been around in one capacity or another, and they both love and respect her. They both want her to succeed, too. And this cabin shows the lengths they’re willing to go to keep her safe.
If they didn’t, I wouldn’t let them around her.
Her eyes meet mine again. “I just feel like there’s a lot of pressure to do it all right now. Because we never know when someone will call saying that they caught the bad guy.”
I nod. Tati puts a ton of pressure on herself to be perfect. I’m sure that’s translating to our current situation, where she wants to do it all as soon as possible.
But she’s only human. She needs a break.
She sits up a little brighter, and I try to focus on her eyes when the comforter slips. She’s so beautiful it’s almost painful.
“Let’s make a promise,” she says. “... that whenever we go back to life as normal, whatever that looks like, we’re always safe for each other. Like, if I want to experiment, or you guys want to get off, we become each other’s people?”
I look at Lev and then at Roman to gauge their reactions, even as my heart breaks a little. She has no idea how much we all already love her. She still thinks this is just sex. That her happily ever-after doesn’t involve four people.
Lev’s jaw tightens. Roman looks up from his phone.
“That’s not gonna work for me,” Lev grinds out behind clenched teeth.
“What? Why?” Tatiana looks hurt, and I can’t have that, so I slide down onto the mattress next to her, gathering her into my arms and positioning her in my lap, the way I like to.
I like being able to touch her without being the center of her attention.
Like I’m afraid if she looks too closely she’ll see how desperate for her I am.
At least like this I can’t see her pained expression.
“That’s not going to be enough for me, knyazhna.”
She goes rigid in my arms. I wrap my large palms around her thin biceps and rub them up and down, willing her to relax.
“What do you mean?” she whispers.
“I mean...” he starts, but has to clear his throat, gathering his own courage. “I want more, Tati. After this. I want more.”
“More... what?” she asks timidly.
He pushes to his feet and starts to pace.
The sun streaming through the windows back-lights him a little, but the tension rolling off of his shoulders is obvious.
I appreciate Lev for who he is. He’s unapologetically himself, but that version of him is usually antagonistic, abrasive, loud, and condescending.
But also honest, and loyal, and surprisingly thoughtful once you got past the rough exterior.
“More of you!” I shout finally, throwing his hands up in exasperation.
I swallow. It looks like this might be it - the make-or-break moment. The moment where Tati has to decide if she could love three people or not.
I continue rubbing her arms in what I hope is a reassuring way. She’s silent for so long that my skin starts to feel too tight. I want to shake her and demand she say something - anything. I want to run away because if she says she’s not in it with us, it’ll break my heart.
But I don’t do either; I just keep rubbing her arms. Because if we’re honest, she’s had my heart in her hands since we were children. I live for her. And living with her, sleeping with her in my arms, and not confessing how much I already love her, my heart’s broken a little bit every day.
My heart is hers to break.
It always has been.
She looks at Roman, whose expression has fallen dark and serious, but he gives her a subtle nod.
This is all so fucked.
It’s not as simple as her dating whoever she wants. Her family sent me away for Christ’s sake. What the hell would they think if they found out she was dating Lev and Roman! Her father would never approve. Her brother would kill Lev. Her mother’s not going to stop setting up dates for her.
So no matter how much we want to date her, the logistics are fucking impossible.
I can feel it in her body the minute she realizes the same thing I do.
We can’t.
It doesn’t matter what any of us want.
It simply can’t happen.
Roman must realize this, too, because he’s the first to speak up. “We can go somewhere else. Europe maybe. South America. Somewhere they can’t find us. I know a guy who can get us fake IDs and passports. Entire new personas,” he says, but Tatiana stays silent.
“We can’t...” she whispers. Roman flinches as if she’s slapped him. Lev stops his pacing, but drags his hands up his face, over his scalp, and squeezes the back of his neck, tilting his head backwards as he groans.
“All we have is this cabin,” she adds sadly, her voice so small and weak it pains me. Tatiana’s larger than life. She lights up every room she goes into. She doesn’t deserve to feel or sound small and sad.
A heavy silence fills the cabin, each of us coming to terms on our own timeline. Tatiana curls up in my lap, resting her head on my chest, so I run my fingers through her hair, gently working out any tangles she got from our sexcapades.
“Then let’s make the cabin worth it,” Roman says, knowing we may only have another day or so before it’s back to life as normal.
And I listen to the sound of my own heart breaking.