Chapter 25 - Marco
We were lying in my bed.
The space was small, barely meant for one, so we were pressed close together with no real alternative.
He had fucked me thoroughly.
The memory of it was still scattered through my limbs as I traced the constellation on his chest.
My finger moved slowly, connecting the small inked stars with invisible lines, following the pattern up toward the crescent moon at the base of his throat. “I meant it,” I said quietly.
“Hmm?”
My finger paused over one particularly bright star.
“You can’t give me all that money.” I tilted my head up slightly to look at his face.
“I already did,” he said, without opening his eyes. “So don’t argue with me.”
The finality of it was exhausting.
I sighed and let my head fall back against his shoulder. It was impossible to argue with him.
I had learned this quickly, though I kept forgetting and trying anyway. Alexei didn’t engage in arguments the way other people did. He didn’t raise his voice or repeat himself or become frustrated when I pushed back. He simply ended conversations.
The check was still on my desk. One hundred thousand dollars. For Italian lessons that had barely happened. It was absurd.
It was too much. It made something uncomfortable curl in my stomach every time I thought about it.
“Are you going to tell me why you need money?”
My finger stopped moving over his chest.
“I thought you’d know by now,” I said quietly. “It’s easy to find out if you stalk me with your connections.”
His eyes opened. “I don’t like that.”
“What?”
“That.” His arm tightened slightly around me. “The idea that I would look into your life without you telling me. That’s Dimitri’s specialty. He’s a stalker. I’m not.”
I pressed my lips together.
“I prefer if you tell me things yourself, rather than me looking for them.”
I didn’t plan to tell anyone about my problems. But if he was going to give me that much, he deserved to know why.
“My mom.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “My mom is sick. She has diabetes,” I continued.
“She has for a while. But it’s gotten worse.
A lot worse, lately. She needs new treatments.
New medications. Things that our insurance doesn’t really cover, or not fully, and my dad is already working so many hours, and I try to help. ”
My throat had tightened around the words, and I forced myself to breathe through the sudden pressure in my chest.
I didn’t tell him about my own treatments.
There was a limit to what I could share, a boundary I had built so carefully around my own body’s failures that even acknowledging it in my own mind felt dangerous.
The checkups I skipped. The symptoms I hid.
The way my vision sometimes blurred when I stood too fast, or how my hands shook when I hadn’t eaten, or the exhaustion that sat in my bones like a permanent resident no matter how much I slept.
Those were mine.
Those were not for sharing.
Alexei was silent for a long moment after I finished.
I could feel him processing, could almost see the information being filed away in whatever vast, precise archive he kept behind those green eyes.
He hummed, low in his throat. “If you need more,” he said, “I can give you more.”
“No. That’s already too much.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“Alexei, I can’t just… I can’t accept that much. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Why?”
“Because what does it make me? If I take it?”
His hand came up to cover mine where it rested against his chest. His fingers were warm.
“It makes you someone who is taking care of his mother. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“But—”
“No.” He pressed my hand lightly against his heartbeat. “Listen to me, Marco. I don’t give things I can’t afford to lose and I don’t make gestures without purpose.”
“That doesn’t make it easier,” I whispered.
“It should.”
“It doesn’t.” I laughed, but the sound was broken. “It makes it harder, actually. Because now I owe you even more.”
He made a frustrated sound and shifted beneath me, turning slightly so we were face to face, his arm still wrapped around my back.
“You owe me nothing,” he said. “This isn’t a transaction. This isn’t whatever you think it is. I gave you the money because I wanted to. Because I can. Because the alternative of watching you struggle is unacceptable to me.”
“I don’t know what to do with you,” I whispered.
His mouth curved slightly. “That makes two of us.”
I laughed and let him pull me back down against his chest. “Thank you,” I said, so quietly I wasn’t sure he would hear me.
But he did.
I fell asleep again.
Or maybe I never truly woke up, just drifted in that strange space between dreams and consciousness. Alexei’s arm was still around me, his chest rising and falling under my cheek.
I should have stayed asleep.
But my chest started to hurt.
That familiar pressure that built behind my ribs like someone was tightening a band around my lungs. I knew this feeling. I had known it for years, had learned to read its subtle gradations.
I waited, breathing carefully, hoping it would pass.
It didn’t.
It grew.
A tightness that made each inhale feel slightly incomplete. I shifted minutely, trying to find a position that eased it, but Alexei’s arm was too heavy across my back and moving felt impossible without waking him.
One hour later, I couldn’t pretend anymore.
I woke fully, abruptly, my heart doing that strange fluttering thing it sometimes did - too fast, too light, like a bird trapped behind my sternum trying to escape.
I lay still for a moment, concentrating on my breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
The pressure persisted.
I carefully extracted myself from his arms.
He stirred, his breathing changing pattern, but he didn’t wake. His face in sleep was even more beautiful, the permanent tension around his eyes smoothed away. For a moment I just looked at him, my chest hurting in an entirely different way.
Then I turned and slipped out of bed.
The floor was cold under my bare feet. My nightshirt hung loosely around my frame, and I clutched at the hem as I made my way to the bathroom.
The bathroom light was too bright. I blinked against it, one hand pressed to my chest, and looked at myself in the mirror.
Pale.
Too pale.
My curls were a mess, wild and tangled from sleep and from his fingers.
I leaned over the sink, gripping the edges, and tried to breathe through it the way the doctors had taught me.
I coughed.
My whole body jerked with the force of it, shoulders hunching, hands white-knuckled against the porcelain. The coughing tore through my chest like it was trying to pull something up from deep inside.
When it finally subsided, I was trembling.
I spat into the sink without thinking.
Then I looked down.
And my whole world tilted.
There was blood.
My hand started shaking. I stared at it, at the evidence of my body failing.
No.
Not now.
I reached for the cabinet above the sink with a trembling hand, yanking it open too hard, making the bottles rattle against each other. My fingers found what I needed.
Three pills.
I put the pills in my mouth, filled the cup beside the sink with water, and swallowed them down in one gulp. They caught in my throat, then slid down, leaving a bitter residue I knew would linger for hours.
I rinsed my mouth.
Spit.
Rinsed again.
Made sure there was no trace of red left in the sink, no evidence that anything had been wrong. The mirror showed me a face that looked almost normal again, if you didn’t know where to look.
I breathed in.
Out.
In.
Out.
The pressure in my chest was still there, but the pills would help. They always helped, eventually. Just needed time.
I smoothed my hair with damp fingers.
You can handle this, I told my reflection.
Then, just as I reached for the door handle, the knock came.
“Little star?”
“Yes?” I called back, and was proud of how steady my voice sounded.
“Are you okay?”
I leaned my forehead against the door for one second, eyes shut, gathering myself.
“Yes,” I said. “Just give me a minute.”
Silence from the other side.
I didn’t know if he believed me. With Alexei, I never knew if he believed me.
His ability to detect lies was unnerving, but his decision to call them out was unpredictable.
Sometimes he let me have my secrets. Other times he peeled them open and examined them in the light until I had no choice but to admit what I was hiding.
I didn’t know which Alexei was standing outside this door.
I recomposed myself.
Took one more breath, deeper than the others, willing the pressure in my chest to subside even a fraction.
Then I opened the door.
His hair was messier than usual. His eyes went immediately to my face, studying with an intensity that made me want to step back and close the door again.
I gave him a smile.
“Why are you shaking?” he asked.
I looked down at my hands and found that he was right. They were trembling, just a bit.
“Nightmare,” I said quickly. “I had a nightmare,” I repeated, softer this time. “It was… it felt real. I just needed a minute.”
He looked at me.
Intently.
“Are you lying to me, Malyshka?”
My throat tightened. My eyes stung. I wanted to tell him, wanted to open my mouth and let the words spill out, all of them, everything I kept hidden.
But I couldn’t.
Because if I told him, everything would change.
Because if I told him, he would look at me differently.
And I couldn’t bear that.
From him most of all.
“No,” I whispered.
His hand came up and pulled me into his arms. He gave me every opportunity to pull away, knowing I wouldn’t.
I buried my face against his shoulder while I stood there in his arms and felt more guilty than I ever had.
Because I was lying to him.
Because I was hiding things from him.
Because I knew, with absolute clarity, that I needed to put an end to this.
Whatever we were.
Whatever this was becoming.
It needed to end soon.
Before he found out.
Before I got too attached to the softness.
Before I forgot that I was temporary, that my body was temporary, that everything good in my life had always been borrowed and never kept.
I couldn’t let him get attached to something that was already breaking.
I couldn’t let him waste his strange, fierce care on someone who wouldn’t survive to deserve it.