Chapter 13 Polina
Polina
The cigarette smell wakes me.
It is faint enough that it could be drifting in from the street, but I know better. I reach for Lev before my eyes are fully open, and my hand finds cold sheets.
I lie still for a moment and listen. The apartment is quiet in a way that tells me I’m alone in it, and the deadbolt turn on the side door is vertical when it should be horizontal. He didn’t lock it on his way out, so he must be close enough to keep watch.
I consider letting it go. There’s a version of this where I roll over, pull up the blanket, and pretend I didn’t notice the empty bed or the unlocked door. It would be simpler, and I have always been good at choosing simpler when the alternative scares me.
Two months ago, I would have stayed in bed. Two months ago, I also didn’t know what it felt like to have someone pay attention, like everything I say and do is worth remembering.
I’ve spent my adult life being the most competent person in every room, and somehow, that’s always translated to people treating me like I didn’t need anything.
Lev has never made that mistake. He notices when I’m running on four hours of sleep before I say a word.
He shows up with food when I forget to eat, without making it a thing or waiting to be thanked.
He listens to me talk about a patient I lost and doesn’t try to fix it or minimize it or tell me I did everything I could.
He's just present.
I don’t have a logical reason for why that undoes me, and I’ve stopped trying to construct one over the past few days.
So, I get up, pull the cardigan off the back of the chair, and go find him.
He’s on the fire escape. I can see him through the glass before I push the door open. His back is to me, and a cigarette is burning between two fingers. The cold blasts against my skin when I step outside.
“I thought you quit,” I prompt.
He doesn’t startle, which means he heard me coming. “I did.”
“And yet…”
“And yet.” He takes a slow drag without looking at me.
I lean in the doorway and cross my arms. He’s in yesterday’s trousers and the shirt he wore over here, untucked with the sleeves rolled despite the temperature. The cigarette is half gone.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing that requires your attention at two in the morning.”
“You’re on my fire escape smoking a cigarette, which you only do when something heavy is on your mind. It requires my attention.” I wait. “Lev.”
He takes one more drag, then flicks the cigarette out into the dark. When he turns around, he looks exhausted.
“My family is asking questions,” he explains, “about my priorities.”
I have gotten good at reading the space between his words. I step onto the fire escape and let the door fall mostly closed behind me. The metal grating is cold through my socks, and the city spreads out below us in every direction.
“Are we in danger?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. I watch him decide how much to give me, which part of the truth survives the distance between his brain and his mouth. That pause tells me more than any answer would, and my stomach registers it first.
“Come here,” he says quietly, and opens his arm.
He pulls me into his side and wraps his arm around my shoulders, and I feel him press his lips to the top of my head before he looks back out at the city, where a cab rolls through the intersection below us and disappears.
I swallow hard to gather my courage. “I need to tell you something.”
“All right.”
I pull back enough to look at him. “We both know what our names mean. I need you to stop pretending otherwise. Whatever this is between us, I won’t build it on silence. Especially not with the wolves at our door.”
“Polina—”
“Let me finish. I have lied to my colleagues every day for two months now. I did all of it knowing whose last name you carry and what that means for mine, so no more pretending. If this is going to be real, it starts now, with the truth.”
The railing is cold under my palm as I squeeze it. He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers trail along my jaw before he drops his hand. The tenderness of it, right here in the middle of this, nearly undoes me.
“I’ve known who you are since the moment I came through your doors,” he admits.
“Then stop pretending you didn’t. That’s all I’m asking.”
The city noise fills the space around us, and he doesn’t rush to cover the quiet, which is something I’ve noticed about him. He doesn’t feel the need to fill every pause the way most people do.
“You’re right,” he concedes.
“I know I am.”
Something moves at the corner of his mouth. “You’ve known this whole time, and you still falsified my records.”
“Don’t make it sound noble. I made a split-second decision, and I’ve lived with it every day since.”
“I know. And nothing I feel is a lie. Whatever else comes, that part is true. I promise you that much.”
It’s not the kind of statement I know how to deflect.
I’ve spent two months combing through the reasons this is a bad idea.
All of them remain valid, and none of them have done anything useful.
I say nothing, and he seems to understand that silence from me isn’t the same as walking away.
He reaches over and takes my hand off the railing, lacing his fingers through mine.
The cold has gone from uncomfortable to genuinely serious. My cardigan stopped being adequate about ten minutes ago, and I’m losing sensation in places that would concern me professionally if they belonged to a patient.
“You need to go inside.” He reads my discomfort.
“You need to stop telling me what I need.”
“Polina.” There’s something almost fond in the way he says my name. The way you say the name of someone whose stubbornness you’ve come to expect.
I push off the railing. “Fine. But only because I can’t feel my feet.”
He holds the door open, and I step through first. The warmth of the apartment settles over me, and I stop in the middle of the room, turning to face him as he closes the door behind us.
He stands there with his hand on the latch, watching me with an expression he gets when he has decided something and is giving me time to arrive at the same place.
“Say it,” I tell him.
“Say what?”
“You have a tell, you know.”
He lifts one brow slightly. “Do I?”
I press my lips together as I smile and nod. “It’s very obvious.”
He lets out a chuckle and replies, “Noted.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.” He crosses toward me, and I hold my ground.
I have never backed away from anything in my life, and I’m not going to start with him.
My pulse climbs with every step he takes, and by the time he stops in front of me, my heart is hammering against my ribcage.
He’s close enough that I have to tip my chin up to make eye contact. “I just want to know one thing.”
“All right,” I breathe.
“Are you scared?”
The question lands somewhere unexpected. I consider lying, because it’s faster, and I’m good at it. But I asked him for the truth just minutes ago on a freezing fire escape, and it would be hypocritical to dodge now. “Yes,” I confess. “Aren’t you?”
“Terrified,” he admits. “Hasn’t changed anything.”
I silently agree. The part I didn’t expect was that knowing how dangerous this is and continuing anyway would stop feeling like recklessness and start feeling like the only honest thing I’ve done in years.
I’ve spent a decade being careful and correct and thoroughly alone, and I have no interest in going back to that.
I reach up and take hold of his collar.
His eyes drop to my hand and come back to my face, and the look in them makes my stomach flip.
He kisses me and brings up his hands to hold my face as he backs me hard against the wall. I pull him in tighter by the collar, and he throws his weight forward until I can feel how much he wants this. His mouth moves to my jaw, then my throat, and I tip my head back against the wall and let him.
Lev exhales against my skin, low and unsteady, and the sound of it—the evidence that he is just as affected as I am—makes my knees weak. I tangle my hands into his hair and pull, and he groans against my neck and shoves me flat against the wall.
His hands move from my face to my waist, sliding under the hem of my cardigan, and the heat from his palms against my skin after the cold outside pulls a moan from me.
He stills when he hears, and his hands involuntarily squeeze my hip bones.
When he does it again on purpose, I decide that I am finished being reasonable tonight.
I slip my hands from his hair down to his chest, where I feel his heart hammering under my palm. I look up at him to find his eyes are dark and fixed entirely on me, and the sight of him like this soaks my panties.
I drag his mouth back down to mine as he walks me down the hallway, steering me with his hands still on my waist. Neither of us is particularly graceful about it, but I don’t give a damn.
When we reach the bedroom door, he pulls back just enough to look at me, asking for permission the way he always does, and I answer him by reaching back for the handle.