Chapter 15 #2
He stills his movements. The shears pause mid-cut, his hand suspended in the air, his broad shoulders tensing beneath the white cotton.
He doesn't turn or push. He simply waits for me to continue, giving me the space to continue or retreat, the patience of a man who has learned that silence is sometimes the most generous thing you can offer.
"She used to garden." My voice is quiet, carried by the breeze, dissolving into the warm air.
"Before everything got bad. We had a little plot behind our house in Queens.
Tomatoes that never grew tall enough, herbs she overwatered, flowers she could never keep alive.
" A smile tugs at my mouth, small and aching.
"She'd spend hours out there with dirt under her fingernails and a sunburn on her nose.
Said it was the only place she could hear herself think. "
"What happened to the garden?"
"We moved. My father's business expanded.
We got a bigger house, hired staff, became the kind of family that has gardeners instead of gardens.
" I pick at a loose thread on the chaise cushion, twisting it between my fingers.
"She never seemed happy after that. I thought it was the move.
The distance from her friends, her neighborhood, the life she knew.
" My throat thickens. "Now I know it was everything else. "
Kon sets down the shears. Stands. Crosses the gravel to the chaise and lowers himself beside me, the cushion dipping under his weight. His shoulder presses against mine, solid and warm, and he doesn't say anything. Just sits there. Present. A wall I can lean against if I choose to.
I choose to. My head drops to his shoulder and I close my eyes.
"Tell me about her," he says, his voice low, the accent gentle around the words. "The real her. Before Seamus broke her."
So I do.
I tell him about Catherine Malone's laugh, the startling, full-bodied sound that turned heads in restaurants and embarrassed me as a teenager and is now the thing I'd give anything to hear one more time.
Her terrible singing voice, off-key and joyful, belting show tunes in the car with the windows down and zero shame.
The way she made grilled cheese sandwiches with three kinds of cheese and a secret sprinkle of paprika that she swore elevated the dish to "cuisine. "
"She read mystery novels out of order because she couldn't stand not knowing what happened." I laugh, the sound catching in my throat. "She'd read the last chapter first because she liked knowing the ending. Said it let her enjoy the journey without the anxiety."
"She sounds like someone I would have liked," Kon says, and the simplicity of the statement, the genuine warmth in his rough voice, makes my eyes sting.
"She would have hated you on principle." I lift my head and look at him, at the scar and the dark eyes and the mouth that so rarely curves but is curving now, just slightly, just for me. "She hated all powerful men."
"Smart woman."
"She was." My voice cracks, a clean break down the center. "She really was."
He pulls me against his chest, his arm wrapping around my shoulders, his chin resting on top of my head.
The roses sway in the breeze around us, crimson and pink and deep amber, petals catching the afternoon light.
He doesn't fill the silence with platitudes or reassurances.
He just holds me while I breathe through the grief, his heartbeat steady against my cheek, his warmth seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt.
"Thank you," I whisper against his chest. "For letting me talk about her."
"Thank you for trusting me with her."
We stay on the rooftop until the sun begins its descent, the light shifting from gold to copper to the deep burnt orange that sets the city skyline on fire. He shows me how to prune roses, positioning my fingers around the shears, guiding my hand to the right angle.
"Forty-five degrees," he says, his chest against my back, his arms around mine, his breath warm against my ear. "Just above the outward-facing bud. Clean cut. No tearing."
I make the cut. It's ragged, uneven, the stem crushing instead of slicing.
"That's..." He pauses, the diplomatic silence of a man choosing his words carefully. "Enthusiastic."
"It's terrible and you know it."
He laughs. A real laugh, low and rusty, like a sound his body has forgotten how to make and is rediscovering in real time. The vibration of it travels through his chest and into my back and settles in the base of my spine with a warmth that spreads outward until my whole body hums.
"You're butchering that poor plant," he says, and there's affection in the criticism, a tenderness that turns the teasing into its own kind of love language.
"I'm giving it character. Artistic pruning."
"You're giving it a death sentence."
"Same thing."
He takes my hands in his. Repositions my fingers.
Shows me the right pressure, the right angle, the right way to read the stem for where the cut wants to be.
His calloused palms dwarf mine, scarred knuckles against smooth skin, and the care with which he handles both me and the roses, equal gentleness, equal attention, equal reverence, cracks open the last locked door in my chest.
That's when I know.
I love Konstantin Vetrov. And the realization doesn't terrify me the way I always thought it would. It just settles in, quiet and sure, the way his hands settled over mine on those shears. Patient. Certain. Unwilling to let go.
I love him.
I love Konstantin Vetrov.
The words press against my chest, urgent and terrifying and nowhere near ready to leave my mouth.
I turn in his arms and kiss him, trying to pour everything I can't speak into the press of my lips against his. His mouth opens against mine, tasting of coffee and the sun-warm afternoon, and his hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, holding me against him.
That night, we take our time. No rushing. No fighting for control. Just his body over mine, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his mouth tasting my skin while he slides inside me so slowly I feel every inch stretch and fill me until my eyes roll back.
"Kon." His name falls from my lips in a voice I barely recognize. Raw. Open. No walls between us.
He groans against my neck, his hips grinding deep, hitting the spot that makes my thighs shake and my fingers claw at his back.
I don't bite back the sounds. I don't hide them against his shoulder or swallow them down.
I let him hear exactly what he does to me, every moan, every gasp, every breathless whisper of his name.
And the way his body shudders when I stop holding back tells me he's been waiting for this all along.
I fall asleep in his arms, my face pressed against the roses tattooed on his chest, the steady thrum of his heartbeat filling my ears. And for the first time since this started, I don't tell myself it means nothing.
Because it does. It means everything.
I wake in the deep hours of the night. The room is dark except for the thin slash of moonlight between the curtains.
He's asleep beside me, face relaxed, the hard lines softened, the constant vigilance dissolved.
He looks younger without the weight of the world pressing on his brow.
Younger and almost gentle, the scar on his eyebrow just a pale line, the sharp jaw unclenched, his lips slightly parted on slow, even breaths.
I trace the line of his jaw with my fingertip. The scar on his eyebrow. The curve of his lips. My touch is feather-light, barely there, the secret exploration of a woman memorizing the landscape of the man she loves.
"I love you." The whisper barely makes it past my lips, the words dissolving into the darkness of the room, existing for one fragile moment between the moonlight and his sleeping breath.
Testing. Tasting. Letting them live in the dark where they're safe, where they can't be examined or challenged or taken away.
He doesn't wake.
But I could swear he smiles.
I press my face against his chest, breathe in cedar and smoke and warmth, and close my eyes.
Tomorrow I'll have to figure out what this means. What it changes. How to carry this new, terrifying, precious thing inside my chest without dropping it.
But tonight, lying in the arms of a man who has survived so much only to give me the most precious gift. His heart.
And for the first time in years, I am not afraid.
I don’t realize just how much accepting his gift will cost us both.