Chapter Thirty-Five
LUKA
I wake slowly.
Not the way I normally do, where my body snaps to attention, and my mind follows a second later, already building the day into a list of tasks and reps and controlled movements.
This is slower, heavier, like my brain is pushing through water, surfacing for air, and then sinking again before it fully understands where it is.
The first thing I feel is warmth under my cheek.
I shift slightly, and the warmth shifts with me, which is when my mind finally catches up enough to register that I’m not on my bed. I’m not even in a normal sleeping position. My head is angled wrong, my neck stiff, one arm curled around something that isn’t a pillow.
My eyes cracked open.
The room is dim in the early morning light, the blinds letting in thin strips of gray. I blink once, twice, because everything is still slightly out of focus, like my body is holding onto sickness as a punishment.
Then I realize what I’m holding.
Her.
My head is in Natalia’s lap.
My cheek is pressed against her thigh, and my arm is wrapped around her leg like I did it in my sleep and never let go. Like some part of me decided last night that if I loosened my grip, she would disappear and I’d wake up alone and humiliated on the bathroom tile again.
I don’t move for a long moment.
Natalia is slumped against the back of the couch, head tipped to the side, hair escaping her bun in messy strands. Her face is calm in sleep, but even asleep, she looks tired. Not the kind of tired you fix with a nap. The kind that sits behind the eyes after weeks of holding yourself together.
She can’t be comfortable. No one sleeps sitting upright like that unless they have a reason.
I stare at her, letting memory return in short waves.
The bathroom floor.
Her voice cut through the fog.
Hands on my shoulders, grounding me.
The cold cloth on my forehead.
The glass of blue water and her telling me I needed to drink it, like she could command my body into behaving.
And then… the part I almost don’t want to remember because it makes my chest feel too tight.
Just stay with me… please.
I asked.
In the haze of fever and weakness, I asked.
And she did.
She stayed when it was inconvenient. When there was no audience. When there was nothing in it for her except the simple act of being there.
Not because she had something to gain.
Because I asked.
The thought makes something shift inside me, subtle but dangerous, like a piece of stone cracking under pressure.
I swallow and test my body carefully. My stomach still feels tender, but the violent nausea is gone. My throat is raw. My skin feels cooler. The fever has broken, leaving behind the exhaustion like a heavy coat.
My arm tightens unintentionally around her thigh as I try to sit up.
Natalia stirs, a small sound in the back of her throat, but she doesn’t wake. Her head tips forward slightly, and I have a brief, sharp panic that she’s going to fall over.
I reach up and steady her shoulder gently.
She doesn’t wake.
She just shifts, her cheek settling against the cushion, still asleep, still stubbornly here.
For a moment, I just sat there, breathing, watching her, trying to understand the shape of this.
Because Natalia has never belonged in my life. Not in the neat, controlled way I keep everything arranged. She arrived like a storm I couldn’t predict, and then refused to leave, and I did what I always do when something gets too close.
I her away—I ran. I made her pay for my fear.
And still she came back.
Not with demands, but with strategy.
With her hands on my forehead and a delivery order on my counter, and a stupid joke about true crime podcasts because she was trying to keep herself from panicking.
My throat tightens.
I don’t want her waking up on my couch like this, stiff-necked and sore, because she spent the night holding my weight like I’m someone worth staying for.
I don’t want her paying physically for a request I shouldn’t have made.
So I make a decision before my mind can argue me out of it.
I slide my arm carefully out from around her leg, moving slowly so I don’t wake her, then stand. My body sways slightly, and I pause, hand gripping the back of the couch until my balance returns.
When I’m steady, I bend and slide one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back.
She’s warm. Light in my arms. Her head rolled against my shoulder, hair brushing my neck.
She murmurs something incoherent, and her hand curls briefly against my chest, a reflex, as if even half-asleep she’s searching for something solid.
I carried her down the short hallway and into my bedroom.
The bed has been unmade for days because I haven’t had the energy to care about anything except not feeling sick, and the sight of it makes me grimace. Still, it’s better than the couch.
I pull the covers back and lower her carefully onto the mattress.
She settles instantly, body relaxing into the softness, her mouth parting slightly as she exhales.
I stand there for a second too long.
Because seeing her in my bed does something unsettling.
It isn’t sexual. Not at first. It’s quieter than that.
She looks like she belongs there.
Like she’s always belonged there.
And that thought is the kind that can ruin a man.
I force myself to look away, to focus on something practical, something that keeps me from standing here and staring at her like a fool.
I step back into the hallway. The apartment is too clean.
Not the usual clean, but the kind of clean that smells like disinfectant and effort.
It hits me when I pass the bathroom. Bleach.
Sharp and unmistakable, lingering in the air as if she tried to scrub the night out of the tile.
I push the bathroom door open and see it immediately.
The wastebasket has been rinsed and lined. The counter was wiped down. The sink was spotless. Even the floor looks like it’s been mopped.
Of course she did.
Of course, Natalia Kovac, crisis manager extraordinaire, can’t walk away from a mess, even a mess made by my body turning against me, without restoring order.
I lean over the sink and brace my hands on the counter, staring at my reflection.
My eyes are bloodshot. My skin is still pale. I look like a man who got dragged through something and barely made it out.
I brush my teeth.
Then, because the taste still clings and I hate the memory of last night sitting in my mouth, I brush them again.
I take a shower that’s hotter than it needs to be, letting the water hit my shoulders until my muscles loosen and my mind stops spinning. I stand there longer than necessary, hands on the tiled wall, breathing slowly, letting myself come back into my body.
When I’m done, I dry off and dress in sweats and a t-shirt, something clean that doesn’t remind me of weakness.
Then I go to the kitchen and order food.
Not sick-person food. Not broth and crackers.
Real food. Eggs. Toast. Coffee. Something for her too—something she’ll eat even if she insists she isn’t hungry. I added an extra pastry because I remembered the way she wrapped both hands around her mug at the café in Switzerland, like warmth matters to her even when she pretends it doesn’t.
The delivery estimate is twenty-five minutes.
In that time, I paced.
Not because I’m restless.
Because my brain is doing the thing it always does when something doesn’t fit neatly into my rules.
It keeps circling back to the same question. Why did she stay?
And then, more dangerously. What do I do with that?
I hear movement down the hallway. The sound of my bedroom door opening. Her soft footsteps headed towards me.
I turn, and Natalia appears at the end of the hall, hair a mess, and eyes heavy with sleep.
She stops when she sees me, and for a second, we just stare at each other.
Natalia clears her throat. "Did you move me. I just woke up in your bed."
"I did. You spent the entire night on sitting straight up on the couch. You couldn’t have been comfortable," I say.
Her eyes flicker away. "It was fine."
"It wasn’t."
She walks into the kitchen slowly, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to be here. Like she expects me to tell her to leave now that I’m upright and no longer delirious.
I watch her closely because the last time we spoke, I was cold enough to make her eyes go glassy. And yet she still came. She still stayed.
"Are you… better?" she asks carefully.
"I’m not dying," I reply.
A ghost of a smile tugs at her mouth. "That’s a low bar for you, Popovich."
"I set realistic goals."
I see the moment that the reality between us hits her. Her shoulders tense slightly.
"I didn’t mean to tell Carey," she says quietly, as if she’s been holding the words in her throat all night. "I know that’s not what you want to hear, because it doesn’t change what happened, but I—Luka, I just wish I could prove to you that I didn’t mean to do it."
The ache I've been feeling in my chest ever since I saw Carey's text on her phone, hits me again.
"You did tell her," I say.
Her eyes drop. "Yes."
"And you knew what I asked."
"Yes," she whispers. "And I was wrong."
The remorse on her face is real. There's a remorse on her face that I know is genuine. She wishes she could take it back and I believe it.
It makes me angry and relieved at the same time, which is an unpleasant combination.
"I didn’t leak it," she adds, lifting her eyes back to mine. "I never wanted it out there. I wanted to go to the Olympic Committee with a plan, the way we talked about. I wanted you to still have control."
Control… That word is always the problem.
"I know," I say finally, and she goes still, as if she wasn’t expecting agreement.
Her brows pull together slightly. "You… do?"
I exhale and then nod. "I know you didn’t want it out."
She doesn’t move. She looks like she’s afraid this is a trap. Like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"I asked you to stay," I say, voice lower now. "And you stayed. Why?"
Her throat works as she swallows. "You were sick."
"That’s not an answer."