8. The Dinner #2
"Everything's different when they're already dead," I say. "The hard part is keeping them alive."
He looks at me like I've said something profound. Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't. It's hard to tell anymore.
Aleksander's phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, his jaw tightening, and I see something flicker across his face—annoyance, maybe, or resignation.
"I have to take this," he says. "Business." He stands, pushing back his chair, and for a moment he looks at me. Just looks. Grey eyes on mine, steady and unreadable. "Gabriel will keep you company. I won't be long."
He leaves. The door closes behind him with a soft click, and then it's just the two of us. Me and Gabe. Me and the quiet boy who came to my diner and asked about veterinary school and looked at me like I was something worth looking at.
"Your father," I say. "He's not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Someone who didn't have children who wanted to be doctors."
Gabriel's mouth twitches. "He doesn't want me to be a doctor. He wants me to be like him. But I can't." He looks down at his hands—long fingers, clean nails, the hands of someone who hasn't done the kind of work I've done. "I've seen what he does. What the family does. I can't be part of it."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because it's Christmas break. Because he's my father. Because..." He trails off, his eyes finding mine. "Because I wanted to see you."
The words hang in the air between us. I should say something. I should laugh, deflect, make a joke about stalkers and diners and the dangers of late-night coffee. But I don't. Because I wanted to see him too. I've been wanting to see him every night, even before I knew who he was.
"Show me the garden," I say.
The garden is frozen.
The path from the house leads through a hedge—manicured, sculpted, the kind of hedge that costs more to maintain than most people's salaries—and into a space that must be beautiful in the spring. There are statues. Benches. A pond that's iced over, its surface reflecting the moon like a mirror.
But tonight, in November, it's just cold. The kind of cold that seeps through your skin and settles in your bones. The kind of cold that makes you want to be close to someone else, just for the warmth.
Gabriel walks beside me, his hands in his pockets, his breath fogging the air. We don't talk. We don't need to. There's something about the silence between us that feels more honest than words.
And then it starts to snow.
Not much—just a few flakes at first, drifting down from the sky like messages from somewhere far away. They land on Gabriel's hair, on his shoulders, on the sleeves of his sweater. He looks up, and his face changes—softens, opens, becomes something I haven't seen before.
"I've always loved the snow," he says. "When I was a kid, I used to stand outside and try to catch them on my tongue. My mother would laugh at me."
"Your mother," I say. "Aleksander said she was dead."
"She was murdered." He says it flatly, like it's a fact he's learned to live with. "When I was eight. Someone shot her."
I stop walking. The snow falls around us, soft and silent, and I look at Gabriel's face in the pale light. He's not looking at me. He's looking at the sky, at the snow, at something I can't see.
"That's who I come from," he says. "That's what I'm trying to escape."
"Gabriel..."
"I know." He finally looks at me. His eyes are dark—brown, almost black, the color of earth after rain. "I know I should have told you. I know I'm a coward. But I couldn't stand the thought of you looking at me the way everyone else looks at me. Like I'm already one of them."
"You're not one of them."
"You don't know that."
"I know." I step closer. The snow is falling harder now, catching in my hair, on my eyelashes, on the blue dress that's too thin for this weather.
"I know because I've seen what they are.
And you're not that. You're the boy who wants to save people.
The boy who stayed up late drinking coffee and asking questions about calves and mothers and the things that break us. "
He stares at me. His chest is rising and falling too fast, and I can see the pulse in his throat, the tremor in his hands.
"Monika," he whispers. "Can I—"
He doesn't finish the question. He doesn't have to.
I kiss him.
Or maybe he kisses me. It's hard to tell.
The space between us closes like a wound healing, like a door shutting, like something that was always going to happen finally happening.
His lips are soft—softer than I expected—and they taste like wine and snow and something else. Something that might be hope.
He's shaking. His hands come up to my face, cupping my cheeks, and I feel the tremors running through his fingers like electricity.
He's not practiced. He's not smooth. He's just a boy who's been watching me for weeks, who's been building up to this moment in his head, who's terrified and desperate and so achingly tender that I want to cry.
I kiss him back because he's safe. Because he's sweet. Because I haven't been touched in months—not really, not like this—and the loneliness has been eating me alive from the inside.
But also because I want to. Because when I look at Gabriel, I see someone who might understand. Someone who might see the girl I used to be, before the city and the warehouse and the cages. Someone who might help me find her again.
He pulls back just far enough to look at my face. His eyes are wide, almost frightened, and his lips are pink from the cold.
"I've been watching you," he whispers. "I know that sounds terrible. I don't mean it terribly."
"I know."
"I just—I couldn't stop. You were so... you. And I've never met anyone like you. Someone who isn't afraid of my father. Someone who looks at me like I'm not already ruined."
"Gabriel." I put my hand on his chest, over his heart. It's beating fast—so fast, like a bird trapped in a cage. "You're not ruined. You're just... in progress."
He laughs. It's a broken sound, wet and raw, and I realize he's crying. The tears are freezing on his cheeks, tiny crystals in the light from the house, and I wipe them away with my thumb.
"I don't deserve you," he says.
"Nobody deserves anything. You just earn it."
The snow falls around us, thick and white, covering the frozen garden in a blanket of silence. We stand there for a long time, holding each other, not talking. His arms wrap around my waist, and I rest my head on his chest, and I listen to his heart slow from a gallop to something steadier.
In the distance, I hear the door of the mansion open. Aleksander's voice, calling Gabriel's name.
We don't move.
"Tomorrow," Gabriel says. "Come to the diner. I'll be there."
"You're always there."
"This time I'll tell you the truth. Everything. About my father, about the family, about the things I've seen." He pulls back and looks at me, and his eyes are red-rimmed but steady. "You deserve to know what you're getting into."
"I already know what I'm getting into."
"No." He shakes his head. "You don't. Not yet."
He kisses me again—quick, soft, a promise—and then he's walking back toward the house, his footsteps crunching in the snow, his figure growing smaller and smaller until he disappears through the hedge.
I stand in the garden alone, the snow covering my hair, my shoulders, the blue dress that's too thin for November. My lips are numb. My fingers are cold. But somewhere in my chest, something is warm.
Something that feels like the beginning of an end.
Or the end of a beginning.
I walk back to the house. Viktor is waiting by the car, holding the door open, his face as blank as ever.
I slide into the back seat and close my eyes, and I think about Gabriel's hands on my face, his lips on mine, the way he said I've been watching you like it was a confession and a prayer all at once.
He's been watching me.
And I've been watching him too. I just didn't know it.
The car pulls away from the mansion. The gate closes behind us. And somewhere in the hills, in a house full of shadows and secrets, Aleksander Mire is standing at a window, watching the taillights disappear into the dark.
I wonder what he's thinking.
I wonder if he saw us in the garden.
I wonder if he cares.