Chapter 11
One of the first things I learned about Zwierek was to forget everything I thought I knew about human behavior. He was the kind of presence that slips into your routine without asking for permission and then, at some point, becomes a part of it.
I would see him in the hallway before I noticed that either Krystyna or Bartosz had opened the lock.
Sometimes, at the far end, leaning against the wall like he had always been standing there.
Sometimes already looking at me before I had even fully turned the corner, as if he had been waiting for that exact moment.
We didn’t speak, or at least I didn’t, but it didn’t matter.
There are ways of understanding someone that don’t require language.
Attention, instinct, and the body’s small betrayals.
He learned mine quickly, but I learned his faster.
He didn’t hide it. Most people filter themselves without realizing it.
They soften certain reactions, delay others, adjust their expressions just enough to stay within something that looks acceptable.
He didn’t. If anything, he seemed almost curious about what would happen if he let go of it, and that made him easier to read.
I spent a lot of time thinking about his sudden appearance in my life, but honestly, it was probably the other way around. Somehow, I had stepped into his life, not the opposite. He’d already been behind that door the very first day I arrived at the house, long before I even knew he existed.
I’ve always been naturally curious, but life had also taught me that not everything needs an answer. At least not immediately. Some things sit there for a while before they make any kind of sense, and sometimes pushing too hard only makes them slip further away from you.
I had so many questions I wanted to ask him. Things I wanted him to explain to me. Where he came from. How long he’d been behind that door. Why I felt calmer around him than I did around most real people. But I had no idea how to communicate any of it to him.
The first time I followed him outside, it wasn’t a decision. He moved, I noticed, and then I was walking behind him without remembering when I had started. The house fell away fast.
Wooden floors replaced by gravel, gravel by damp earth that softened under each step.
The air changed, too. Less contained, colder, but cleaner in a way that made the house feel stale in comparison.
The forest started abruptly. Trees close enough together that the light had to force its way through them.
He didn’t slow down.
Branches caught against his sleeves and slipped away again without leaving marks.
Twigs snapped underfoot, sharp and brief, swallowed immediately by everything around us.
I stayed a step behind, watching. Always watching.
He didn’t turn to check if I was still there; that was the first thing I noticed. The second, he knew anyway.
We started going there almost every day.
The forest never looked the same.
Some days it felt open, the space between the trees stretching wide, light slipping through in long, pale lines that didn’t quite reach the ground.
Other days it closed in. Branches lower, air heavier, sound duller.
He seemed to prefer those days. I could tell by the way he moved.
Like he was paying attention to something I couldn’t see yet.
“She visits you at night, doesn’t she?”
The words settled somewhere in my core. How the fuck did he know?
One explanation, of course, could’ve been that he had heard it, but after Bartosz had walked in on us, while my cock was buried deep inside her, she’d gone quiet as a mouse whenever she came into my room at night.
The only logical explanation my brain could come up with was that Zwierek must’ve been her favorite toy before I showed up.
We were deeper in than usual. The ground uneven, roots pushing through the soil in lines that forced each step to be placed carefully.
“You don’t stop it,” he continued, still not looking at me.
My eyes stayed on him. There wasn’t anything to deny or explain. He exhaled slowly through his nose.
“And him,” he added, quieter now.
“He doesn't even try to make it quiet.”
Bartosz.
He didn’t say it, but the image was already there.
I let my gaze flick, just briefly. He saw it immediately. Of course, he did. For a moment, something changed in his expression.
“She used to.” A short pause.
“Not anymore, not since you arrived.”
So I was right, but it landed wrong. Because it wasn’t just information, it was distance. Something he had moved through, left behind, and I hadn’t.
Zwierek carried this natural sense of maturity and authority that made it easy for me to look up to him, but this only added to it. The thought stayed with me just long enough for him to notice.
“You’re still in it, though.”
That time he did look at me. Direct and not blinking. There was something in it that wasn’t observation anymore. This was harsher than that, something that pressed deeper than just the surface.
“You don’t have to be.”
It took a second. Not to hear it, but to understand it. He just let it sit there between us and waited. When it landed, it felt wrong. My head moved before I thought about it. No. A clear, solid refusal. There was no hesitation in it. That… that was too far. That wasn’t something you, no.
He just stood there watching me. And then, he smiled.
Something that didn’t match the situation at all.
The whole situation felt absurd, and I couldn’t figure out whether he was joking or actually meant what he was hinting at.
Or maybe he wasn’t even hinting at what I thought he was.
Maybe that was just my fucked-up brain twisting it into something else.
“You think it’s extreme,” he said, sounding almost thoughtful.
“It’s not.” His fingers moved absently along the bark of a tree beside him, nails pressing just enough to leave faint lines in the surface.
“It’s a small act.”
“People just pretend it isn’t.”
There was no gravity in the way he said it.
No emphasis, that was what made it worse.
Because to him, it wasn’t extreme. It was simple, obvious, easy to solve.
After that day, the conversations changed.
He didn’t bring it up directly again, not like that.
Instead, he started circling it from different angles. Different words, but same action.
“If something keeps taking from you,” he said once, crouched down, dragging a broken branch through the dirt in slow, controlled lines.
“Then it’s clearly not supposed to stay.”
The lines crossed, overlapped. Became something unrecognizable.
“People wait,” he continued, almost bored by the idea,
“like waiting makes it fair.” His head tilted.
“It doesn’t. Pain is only useful once,” he said. We were standing still that time. No movement, just a deep stillness settling among the trees.
“After that, it’s just repetition.” His gaze shifted to me.
“And repetition is a choice, Rowan.”
That part didn’t sit as easily, because it implied something else. Something I hadn't fully placed yet. He saw that too, he always fucking did. And instead of pushing, he let it sit, let it build, piece by piece.
I looked up to him from the beginning.
It happened naturally. Like some older brother I never wanted, never expected to have, and then suddenly did anyway.
My whole life had taught me not to trust other people, especially not the ones I was supposed to admire or feel safe around.
People like that always ended up disappointing you eventually.
But maybe that was what felt different about Zwierek.
He never asked anything from me. Never expected anything either. He was just there, and somehow he let me be there too, existing beside him without having to explain myself or turn into something else to earn it.
When you grow up the way I did, you learn to trust your instincts because most of the time they’re the only thing keeping you alive. And every instinct I had told me Zwierek was someone I could trust, so I never questioned it.
To this day, I still can’t explain why, but I came to see him as someone I could follow, a kind of chosen older brother.
He quickly became the only person I felt I could trust, and the only one I had ever truly looked up to.
I was always right behind him. Close enough that the space between us didn’t feel like distance anymore.
He stopped eventually. Turned just enough that I could see his face fully. There was something different about him that day. Like something had clicked into place.
“You get it now.” He stepped closer, not invading, just removing what little space had been left.
“That’s all it takes… understanding.”
Simple, like it was nothing. Like it had always been nothing.
On the way back, the forest felt different.
Same trees, same ground, same path. But something had shifted in the way I moved through it.
In the way I looked at things, how I placed them.
And as the house came back into view, unchanged from the outside, I understood something.
That this, whatever it was, wasn’t something staying contained out there. It wasn’t limited to those walls; it was already moving. And once something like that starts, it doesn’t stop. Not on its own.