8. Isla
ISLA
I woke up to the smell of jasmine tea, the exact blend I had been buying myself for three years, steeping in a kitchen that was not mine.
For a full ten seconds I lay there convinced I was still asleep, because there was no version of reality where a man with three mismatched mugs and a fridge full of regret also happened to own my tea.
I got up anyway, pulling the blanket around my shoulders, and followed the smell into the kitchen. Morning light came in flat and gray through the single window, catching the steam rising off the kettle like it had something to prove.
Nikolai stood at the counter already dressed, one hand braced against it like he had been standing there a while deciding something. The photograph from last night was nowhere in sight. Neither was any explanation for what had happened when I found it.
"Morning," I said carefully, testing the water.
"Morning." His voice was steady, but the stillness underneath it had not fully burned off yet.
I did not ask him about the picture. I had turned it over in my head half the night, all the ways I might bring it up gently, and every version I built ended the same way, with him closing off completely and both of us worse for it.
Some doors needed a person to decide on their own when to open them again. I understood that better than most, having spent three years watching families learn it the hard way at bedsides.
"There's tea," I said instead, nodding at the kettle. "Actual tea. My tea, specifically, which is either an enormous coincidence or extremely concerning."
"It is not a coincidence."
"That's not actually less concerning."
Something almost like humor flickered across his face before he smoothed it back down. "I have an early morning. I will explain later."
"You always say that."
"I usually mean it eventually."
"Are you all right?" I asked, before I could talk myself out of it. "After last night."
He was quiet for a beat too long. "I will be."
"That's not the same as yes."
"No," he admitted. "It is not."
I let that sit between us instead of pushing for more, the same way he'd let plenty of my own half-answers slide over the last two days. It seemed only fair to return the favor, even if every instinct I had spent three years sharpening told me to keep digging until someone felt better.
He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair, the one angled just so, and paused at the door long enough to look back at me once. Not at the kitchen, not at the drawer across the room. At me.
"Lock it behind me," he said, and then he was gone, the door clicking shut with the same fast, practiced motion I had watched him use on every door in this apartment.
I stood there a moment in the quiet, then did exactly as I was told, deadbolt and chain, both, the way he'd drilled into me the night before.
I made myself a cup of the tea, if only to confirm I was not losing my mind, and it was exactly right down to the amount of jasmine, which told me nothing except that someone had paid closer attention to my life than I had ever given him credit for.
I refilled the kettle before I left it, out of habit more than kindness, and found half a loaf of decent bread in a cabinet that had otherwise looked abandoned.
I made a sandwich, wrapped it, and left it on the counter with a note that just said EAT SOMETHING, because apparently I was already fluent in his own house rules.
There was something oddly tender about leaving something behind for a man who left nothing behind for anyone by design. I told myself it did not mean much. I did not entirely believe myself.
Only after I'd eaten and showered and run out of small tasks to distract myself with did I let the tea thing fully catch up to me.
I had been buying that exact blend from the same tiny shop near the hospital for three years. Nobody knew that.
Renee thought I drank plain green tea and never corrected the assumption because it was easier than explaining. I had certainly never told Nikolai, not in any conversation I could remember having with him.
Which meant he had either gone digging through my life without asking, or noticed something about me so specific it made my skin prickle to think about how long he must have been paying attention.
I dug through my bag until I found the card he had given me the first night at his apartment, a plain white rectangle with nothing on it but a number, the one meant for emergencies only.
This did not remotely qualify as an emergency. I dialed it anyway.
It picked up on the second ring. "Yes."
"Is this Matvei?"
A pause, long enough that I wondered if I had the wrong number entirely. "Depends who is asking."
"Isla. I'm staying with Nikolai. He gave me this number for emergencies."
"Is this an emergency?"
"Sort of. It's an emotional emergency."
Another pause, this one heavier with what I could only describe as deep, weary patience. "What is the emergency?"
"How did Nikolai know what kind of tea I drink? Specifically. Down to the brand."
Silence on the other end lasted long enough that I checked the screen to make sure the call hadn't dropped.
"He notices things," Matvei said finally. "It is the job."
"That's not an answer."
"It is the only one I have been authorized to give."
"Authorized by who? Is there a committee?"
"I do not answer questions about internal procedure."
"You just told me you don't answer questions, which is itself an answer, so clearly the rule has some flexibility."
There was something that might have been a laugh on the other end, quickly buried. "You talk like him when he is annoyed. It is unsettling."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"Do not tell him I said that."
"Wouldn't dream of it." I curled up tighter on the edge of the mattress.
"One more question. Does he do this a lot? The noticing thing."
"No," Matvei said, and something in the flatness of it made me believe him completely. "Not like this. I have known him a long time."
"How long is a long time?"
"Longer than you have known him. That is all I am authorized to say about that as well."
"You people and your authorization levels. Does Nikolai know you talk like a government pamphlet?"
"He is the one who trained me to talk like this. Take it up with him."
That was twice now someone in his orbit had told me the same thing in almost the same words, first him in the car, now this stranger on the phone. I decided that meant more than either of them probably intended it to.
"Thank you, Matvei. This has been extremely unhelpful and I appreciate it."
"That is generally the goal." The line went dead before I could ask anything else, which felt entirely on brand for everyone I had met so far who worked for him.
I sat with my tea going lukewarm in my hands and thought about the three years before this one, all the shifts and double shifts and small kindnesses I had handed out to strangers without once expecting anything back.
I had built an entire career on noticing what other people needed before they asked for it, the tightness in a jaw, the tremor under a bandage, the silence that meant someone was more scared than they were saying.
I was good at it. Everyone always said so, and I had never once stopped long enough to wonder who was supposed to notice the same things about me.
Nobody, usually. That was the job. You gave the noticing away and did not expect it handed back, and most days I did not mind, because minding felt like admitting I needed something I had already decided I could live without.
Apparently I had been wrong about that for longer than I realized.
I had never once stopped to consider what it might feel like to have someone do that for me anyway, quietly, without being asked, without making it into a performance of caring the way some men did when they wanted credit for it.
It felt strange. Good, but strange, the way a muscle feels when you finally stretch it out after years of not knowing it was tight.
The day passed in the particular slow, careful way that days pass when you are technically hiding from someone who wants you dead. I read half a paperback I found on his shelf, an old thriller with a cracked spine that had clearly been read more than once.
I reorganized his kitchen twice out of boredom, folded the same blanket three separate times, and stood at the window longer than I meant to, watching the water do nothing in particular.
I texted Renee twice about nothing important, just to hear from someone whose voice I already knew, and got back one message that just said I miss your face. Hurry up and be normal again.
I thought more than once about how quiet the apartment was without him in it, and how strange it was that the quiet had started to feel less like safety and more like waiting.
He came back a little after seven, tired in a way he tried not to show, and stopped short at the sight of the wrapped sandwich waiting for him on the counter.
"You did not have to do that," he said.
"I know. I did it anyway. Consider it a house rule of my own."
Something in his shoulders eased at that, small enough that most people would have missed it entirely.
He ate it standing up, the same way he seemed to do everything, and did not say anything else about it beyond a short, almost surprised look at the note, like sandwiches left by other people were not a category of object he had fully accounted for.
We did not talk about the photograph. I did not bring up Matvei. Some evenings just needed to be small and gentle and undemanding, and I let this one be exactly that.
My phone rang at eleven, sharp and wrong in the settled quiet of the apartment, Renee's name lighting up the screen.
I answered fast, already reading the hour itself as bad news before she said a single word.
"Isla." Renee's voice had none of its usual lightness in it. "I need you to stay calm."
"I'm calm. Talk."
"Reyes. Someone called in a second threat tonight, more specific than the first one, enough that security's moving him to the high-security floor right now. They want you up here."
"Why me? I'm not even on shift."
"Because he's asking for you, and because Ortiz said your name before mine when they made the call list. I don't know, Isla, just get here."
"How much worse is worse?"
"Worse enough that Ortiz called the police himself instead of waiting on hospital security. I'm not saying the rest of it over the phone. Just come."
"I'm on my way."
I was moving before she even finished the sentence, one arm shoved through my coat sleeve, the phone wedged against my shoulder, my shoes half on and my mind already three steps ahead of my body.
Nikolai was on his feet the moment he saw my face, reading the shape of the emergency before I had said a word of it out loud.
"Isla," he said. "What is it?"
I did not answer him, not with words, already halfway out the door with my coat still hanging open and my heart going twice as fast as it should.