11. Nina #2
“No,” he says. “It was a mistake.”
A laugh breaks out of me. “Of course. My resignation is a mistake because you didn’t approve it first?”
He opens the envelope and takes out the letter.
My stomach knots.
“What are you doing?”
He tears it in half.
I stare.
Then he tears it again.And again.
My mouth goes dry.
“You are not leaving me,” he says.
The words come low. Controlled. Absolute.
I stare at him. For a second, I cannot speak. Then I say, “I’m sorry?”
His eyes lock on mine. “You heard me.”
I laugh, but it sounds wrong. “You’re out of your mind.”
“You are not leaving me.”
“You mean the job.”
“No.”
The room goes silent. Everything in me stops.
He steps closer. I step back.
He notices. His face changes, just a fraction, but he doesn’t stop coming until there are only a few feet between us.
“You don’t get to decide my life,” I say.
“I know.”
“Then why are you standing in my apartment tearing up my resignation like some lunatic?”
“Because if I accepted it, I would be lying.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means I don’t accept you walking away because of something you misunderstood.”
I almost choke on the laugh that comes out of me. “Misunderstood?”
“Yes.”
“Your pregnant date kissed you in the hallway,” I say. “What’s there to misunderstand?”
His expression hardens. “She’s not my date.”
“Oh, please.”
“She was a woman I had dinner with.”
“Yes, Luka, we all know about your dinners. I practically run the archive.”
“That’s not what you think.”
“It is exactly what I think.” My voice rises despite my best effort to control it. “I have scheduled them. Canceled them. Sent flowers. Chosen wine. Updated your ridiculous diary like your love life is a compliance risk.”
His mouth tightens.
I want it to hurt.
“You are vile,” I say.
I keep going because I’m already bleeding, so why not make a mess of everything.
“You let me sit there organizing your women like I was above it, like I was different because I had a desk outside your office and knew how you took your tea. You let me think—” My voice breaks, and I hate that more than anything. “You let me think something happened between us.”
“Something did happen.”
“While one of them might be carrying your child.”
His expression goes cold. “I don’t know who the father is.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Liar.” The word comes out hard.
For one stupid second, some old instinct in me flinches before he even moves. I hate myself for it, but Luka sees it. His face changes completely.
“I deserve that,” he says.
His voice is quiet.
I blink. “What?”
“For many things,” he says. “For frightening you. For touching you and leaving. For coming here like this. For tearing up the letter. But not for lying.”
I swallow.
He steps no closer.
Because suddenly my own apartment feels too charged, too warm, too small for all the things we have not said.
“I haven’t slept with Alina,” he says.
I laugh again, but weaker this time. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s true.”
“I plan your dates.”
“Yes.”
“They intensified,” I say. “You were meeting a different woman practically every other night.”
“Yes.”
I scowl. “Don’t yes me like that proves your innocence.”
“They were dates,” he says. “Nothing more.”
“I haven’t slept with Alina,” he says.
I laugh again, but weaker this time. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you keep scheduling them?”
“Because stopping would have made people ask questions I did not want answered.”
“What questions?”
He looks at me then, and something in his face breaks past control. “Why I could not stand the thought of touching another woman.”
My breath leaves me.
He continues, voice lower now, rougher. “Why I took them to dinner and could not hear them speak because I was thinking of you correcting my notes that morning. Why I sent them home early because their perfume was wrong. Why I sat across from beautiful women and felt nothing but irritation because none of them laughed at me with enough disrespect.”
My throat tightens painfully. “Luka.”
“No.” He shakes his head once, like he has started and now cannot stop, like the honesty has become its own kind of violence. “You called me vile. Perhaps I am. But I didn’t touch them. I could not.”
My hands curl into the sleeves of my sweater.
I cannot breathe properly.
This cannot be true. It cannot.
Because if it is true, then…
“Because of me?” I ask, barely audible.
His eyes darken. “Because I cannot stop thinking about one person.”
I hold my breath. He takes one step closer. This time I don’t move back.
“You,” he says.
I stare at him, heart pounding so hard it feels painful.
He looks almost angry with me for hearing it. With himself for saying it. With the whole world for making it true.
“And when you sent me that text,” he says, voice low and harsh now, “that dirty, reckless message in the middle of my board meeting, it gave me the permission I’d spent years denying myself.”
My lips part.
He sees it.
His gaze drops there and returns to my eyes with visible effort.
“I should have deleted it,” he says. “I should have called you into my office and done the decent thing. I should have reminded you who I am, who your brother is to me, why this cannot happen.”
He’s close enough now that I can see the strain around his mouth. The pallor beneath his skin. The pain from his shoulder riding under every controlled breath. His sling is gone, but his injured arm stays close to his body, useless enough to make him angrier.
“But I read it,” he says. “And all I could think was that you were offering those words to another man.”
My stomach pulls tight.
His voice drops lower. “I could not bear it.”
I should say something. I cannot.
“I could not bear the thought of you thinking of his mouth,” he says. “His hands. His body. I could not sit there and let you belong to some boring fool with good timing because I had been too noble, too old, too afraid of Misha’s judgment to admit that I wanted you.”
His good hand lifts, then stops, as if touching me without permission has become something he is actively fighting.
“I did not touch you because I wanted a secretary,” he says.
“I did not touch you because you were convenient or because you were another woman in a diary. I touched you because I have wanted you so badly it made me cruel.”
My eyes sting. I hate that. I hate him. I want him.
“So what?” I whisper. “You want credit for restraint after you ruined me on your conference table?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want?”
His answer comes immediately. “You.”
The room goes dead silent.
He says it again, like it costs him something and he wants to pay anyway. “You. Angry. Difficult. Too young for me. Too honest for this life. Too important to Misha. Too close to every line I should never cross.”
My breath catches.
“And still,” he says, “you.”
I slap him.
The sound cracks through the apartment before I know I’m going to do it.
His face turns slightly with the force of it.
My palm burns.
For one horrified second, I freeze.
Some animal part of my body expects retaliation. A grabbed wrist. A shouted word. The room turning dangerous in a way I cannot undo.
Luka does none of that.
He stands there with his face turned, jaw tight, cheek slowly reddening beneath my handprint, and breathes once through his nose.
Then he looks back at me, but does not. My palm is still stinging from the force of hitting him.
“You’re awful,” I say, voice breaking.
“Yes.”
“You’re arrogant.”
“Yes.”
“You’re selfish and impossible and you have no concept of boundaries.”
“I’m learning.”
I let out a sound that is almost a laugh and almost a sob.
His eyes move over my face, and the anger between us changes shape so suddenly I feel dizzy. It does not disappear. It becomes heat. It becomes the kind of silence that has weight and breath and teeth.
He’s still too close.
His cheek is still marked from my hand.
And somehow that makes him look more human than I have ever seen him.
“You should leave,” I say.
“Yes.” He doesn’t move. His eyes drop to my mouth.
I don’t think.
If I think, I will remember Alina. The baby. Misha. The resignation pieces in his hand. The garage. The boardroom. Every reason this is doomed before it has even properly started.
So I don’t think.
I reach up, grab his face in both hands, and kiss him.
For half a second, he goes completely still.
Then Luka Kazan breaks.
His good arm comes around my waist, hard and immediate, dragging me against him with a sound low in his chest that feels torn out rather than chosen. His mouth opens under mine, and the first real kiss between us is nothing like the almost.