22. Ruslan
RUSLAN
The fever comes in the afternoon. The wound aches differently, my skin turns too hot, and the room begins to move at the edges.
Mila places a wet cloth on my forehead with great seriousness.
Nadia stands beside her with a notebook. “His temperature is high.”
Mila whispers, “Should we give him soup?”
Nadia says, “Soup is not medicine.”
“It’s emotional medicine,” Mila says.
I try to answer, but sleep takes me before I can.
When I wake again, the apartment is filled with sunlight. My mouth is dry. The blanket is pulled up to my chest, and the couch is more comfortable than it has any right to be. I have slept in expensive houses, guarded rooms, hotel suites, and cars with guns under the seat.
I sleep better here.
Voices come from the kitchen.
Karina says, “I can take them. I’m going that way anyway.”
Zoya answers, tired. “You have your own work.”
“I have an urgent meeting after drop-off. I’ll manage.”
“The school only reopened today. They may be nervous.”
“That’s why I’ll take them inside myself,” Karina says. “You stay here and finish your work. Also, someone has to make sure your couch patient doesn’t pretend he can walk.”
Zoya sighs. “Don’t call him that.”
“What should I call him? The bleeding problem?”
“Karina.”
“Fine. I’ll be polite. The wounded disaster.”
Mila’s voice comes next, soft but excited. “Can we tell Miss Elena he had fever?”
Nadia says, “No. That is private medical information.”
Karina says, “Nadia is right. We do not share his private medical information, even though he is extremely dramatic.”
“I heard that,” I say, though my voice is rough.
The kitchen goes quiet.
Then Mila runs in. “You’re awake!” She climbs halfway onto the couch before remembering the rules and stopping herself. “I’m not lying on you.”
“I see that.”
Nadia appears behind her with her schoolbag. “You should drink water.”
Karina follows, holding both lunch boxes. “Look at him. Already being bullied by children. Nature is healing.”
Zoya comes last. Her hair is tied back. Her face is tired. She looks at me for one second too long, then looks away. “Fever is down,” she says. “Dr. Mehra said to keep taking the antibiotics.”
“I will.”
“Good.”
Mila waves at me with both hands. “We’re going to school.”
“Learn something useful,” I say.
Nadia adjusts her backpack straps. “Most school things are useful if applied correctly.”
Mila adds, “Except cutting paper straight.”
Zoya says, “Go before Aunt Karina changes her mind.”
Karina kisses Zoya’s cheek, takes the girls, and leaves.
The apartment becomes quiet.
Too quiet.
Zoya goes back to her room for a meeting. I hear her voice through the half-open door, calm and professional, talking about archive indexing, duplicate entries, field corrections, and scanned records.
I drift again.
When I wake, the fever has loosened its grip. My leg still hurts, but my head is clearer.
Zoya is at the dining table now, laptop open, headset around her neck. She’s working through a spreadsheet, one hand in her hair, glasses sliding slightly down her nose.
She doesn’t know I’m awake.
I watch her for a minute. Not because I should. Because I can’t stop.
For six years, I had her in pieces. A message at midnight. A joke when she was tired. A confession she would delete before I could answer. A need she would only admit in the dark.
She doesn’t know I know.
She doesn’t know the man on her couch is the same man she has been texting all these years.
I should tell her. I know that.
Instead, I reach for my phone.
I send her a message from the number she knows: Are you alone?
At the table, her phone lights up.
She glances at it.
Her whole body changes. Not much. Enough.
She looks toward the hallway first, checking for the girls. Then toward me.
I keep my eyes half-closed.
She picks up the phone, responds: Not a good time.
I type back: That usually means it is.
Her jaw tightens.
She looks at me again.
I don’t move.
She sends: I’m working.
Me: I know. That’s why I’m imagining you at your table, trying to behave.
Her fingers pause. Her cheeks color.
I should stop.
I don’t.
Me: I’m imagining your thighs pressed together under the table. Your hand pretending to fix your dress. Your breath changing because you’re thinking about all the things you shouldn’t want.
She shifts in her chair.
Slowly. Like she hates herself for reacting.
My body tightens.
She sends: You don’t know what I’m doing.
Me: I know what you do when you want to be touched.
She swallows.
Her hand drops from the table to her lap.
My mouth goes dry.
Me: Slide your hand under your waistband.
She stares at the screen. For a long moment, she does nothing.
Then her knees shift apart slightly. Her hand moves.
Not much. Just enough.
Enough to make me forget the wound in my leg.
Me: Good girl.
Her eyes close.
The words hit her. I see it.
She leans back in the chair, phone in one hand, the other hidden under the table. Her breathing changes. Her lips part. She’s trying to stay quiet, trying to hold herself together in a room where she thinks she’s alone.
She’s not alone.
That should shame me.
It does.
Not enough.
Then her eyes open. She looks straight at me.
I’m watching her.
She freezes. Her hand stops. The phone slips slightly in her grip.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then I lower my phone.
Her face drains of color, then burns red. “You,” she says.
I sit up slowly. “Yes.”
Her voice is barely above a whisper. “It’s you.”
“Yes.”
She pulls her hand from beneath the table like she has touched fire. “You knew.”
“I found out the night of the shooting,” I say.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
She stands so fast the chair scrapes the floor. “You bastard.”
“I am.”
“You were watching me?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flash. “Do you understand how wrong that is?”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
I hold her gaze. “Because I wanted you. Because I have wanted you for six years without knowing I already had you in the only way you would let me.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
Anger is there, but so is something else. The thing that has always been between us, even when we tried to bury it.
I shift forward, and pain cuts through my leg. I grip the couch, breathe once, and stand badly.
Zoya steps back. “Don’t.”
I stop.
Not because I want to. Because she said it.
The room goes very quiet.
I say, “Tell me to sit down, and I will.”
She stares at me.
Her chest rises and falls too fast.
I say, “Tell me to leave you alone.”
She doesn’t.
I take one slow step. Then another.
My leg protests, but I stay upright.
When I reach her, I don’t touch her. I look down at her hand, still trembling beside her thigh. “Did you want to stop?” I ask.
Her throat moves.
She hates the question.
She hates the answer more.
“No,” she whispers. “I didn’t want to stop.”
I place one hand on the table beside her, close enough to trap nothing, close enough that she can move away.
She doesn’t.
“Then don’t,” I say.
Her breath catches.
I wait. For once in my life, I wait.
Zoya looks toward the door. Toward the hallway. Toward the empty apartment. Then she looks back at me and slides her hand under her waistband again.
My hand tightens on the table.
I watch her face.
Her face tells me enough. Her eyes flutter. Her mouth softens. Her hips move slightly into her own touch, and the sound she makes is small enough that she could deny it later.
I lean closer. “That’s it.”
She shivers.
“Ruslan,” she says, half warning, half need.
That’s what breaks me.
I lower myself carefully, ignoring the pain in my leg, and go to my knees in front of her.
She looks down at me, startled. “You’re injured,” she says.
“I’m not using my leg.”
“That’s not how bodies work.”
“I’ll manage.”
Her laugh comes out shaky and breathless. “You’re insane.”
“Possibly.”
I place my hands on her hips.
Her hand slips from her waistband. For one second, I think she might push me away. Instead, she nods once.
Small. Clear. Enough.
I pull her closer and kiss her through the thin fabric first.
Her hand flies to my shoulder. “Ruslan,” she gasps.
“Tell me no,” I say against her.
She doesn’t.
I ease her clothes down just enough, slow enough for her to stop me. She doesn’t. Her fingers dig into my shoulder, then into my hair.
The first taste of her nearly destroys my control.
Six years of messages. Six years of wanting a woman without a face. Six years of wanting Zoya with every part of me I tried to cut out.
All of it is here.
She leans back against the table, one hand braced behind her, the other locked in my hair as I put my mouth on her properly.
Her hips jerk. I hold her steady.
She tries to stay quiet, but the sound breaks out of her anyway.
Soft. Desperate.
Mine.
I look up once. Her head is tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted, the morning light on her throat.
“Look at me,” I say.
She does.
The anger is still there. The hurt too. But beneath it, hot and unmistakable, is the woman from every midnight message.
I keep my eyes on hers and use my mouth until her knees start to shake.
She whispers my name like she hates me. Like she needs me. Like both things are true.
She looks down at me and goes still for half a second, like she can’t quite believe what she’s letting happen. Then her fingers tighten in my hair.
I spread her thighs wider, and she gasps as I lick her harder.
I have had six years of her in my head. Six years of her words in my phone, of her telling me what she wanted without knowing it was me she was feeding. Six years of her voice at midnight, wet and embarrassed and trying not to beg.
I drag my tongue through her once, deep and slow, and her knees nearly buckle.
“Fuck,” she whispers.
I hold her hips harder and do it again.
Her pussy is slick and hot, already opening for me, already giving me that taste I have imagined too many times to count.
I lick her the way I wanted to the first time I had her in my bed, the way I wanted to every time she texted me late and needy and stubborn and trying to pretend she wasn’t touching herself while she wrote back.
She makes a broken sound and tries to twist away.
I keep her where she is. “No,” I say against her.