Page 30

We were sitting under that half-broken maple tree behind the school cafeteria, the one with a trunk fat enough to lean on and shade just barely big enough to protect our peanut butter sandwiches from the wrath of Los Angeles sun.

We had both our hair in pigtails and wore matching white shirts and plaid uniform skirts.

Katya held a Capri Sun in one hand, her legs stretched out as if she owned the entire lawn, and a dramatic sigh poised on her lips.

“I swear,” she said, dragging out the words like she was narrating a romance audiobook, “if I don’t marry someone who looks like Alan Ritchson, I’m suing the universe.”

I choked on my bite of sandwich and tried to speak around a mouthful of peanut butter. “Alan Ritchson? You mean, like, full-on muscles, jawline of a demigod, and height that defies normal doorways?”

She nodded, smug. “Exactly. I want to feel like I’m dating a Marvel character. Like you, you like Superman, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and he’s not Marvel. He’s D.C. Everyone loves Superman, but I’m reconsidering because of the muscles.” I snorted. “You’ll feel like you’re dating a vending machine. One wrong hug, and your ribs will crack.”

“Worth it,” she said, eyes gleaming. “A beautiful death.”

That made me laugh so hard I dropped a grape. Katya reached over, snatched it before it rolled too far, and popped it into her mouth like a gremlin. “Five-second rule,” she said proudly.

We were ridiculous, and I loved every second of it.

“Okay, Miss Avengers,” I said, brushing crumbs off my lap, “what kind of guy do you think I’ll end up with, besides Henry Cavill?”

Katya tilted her head like she was consulting the cosmos.

“Hmm. Someone with sad poet energy. Quiet. Mysterious. Deeply obsessed with you but in a ‘I wrote you thirty sonnets and learned how to cook just to impress you’ kind of way. Or maybe a businessman who only cracks a smile once in a blue moon because he’s, you know, very professional and all about working hard, like you. ”

I squinted. “So, a golden retriever with a tortured soul.”

She grinned. “Exactly.”

I smiled, but I felt a tiny flutter in my chest. I wasn’t the type to map out my dream wedding or envision Mr. Right, but the idea of someone out there who might adore me just because I laughed too loud and cried during dog food commercials…it didn’t sound half bad.

“You better be at my wedding,” I said, nudging her ankle with mine.

Katya looked mock-offended. “Better be? Girl, I’ll be your maid of honor, hype squad, and emergency cake taster all in one.”

I laughed, eyes stinging a little from joy. “Promise?”

She held up her pinky. “Promise. And you’ll be at mine. Front row. Crying into a handkerchief while I walk down the aisle with Alan Ritchson 2.0.”

“Deal,” I whispered, locking my pinky with hers.

I blinked back the tears, staring through the window at the maple tree beside our bedroom. The memories with Katya automatically sprang up, and, as always, the tears flowed.

It had been one full week since I received the news of Katya’s recovery with dread and happiness. One week since I wanted to run away and hide from the shame of what I’d done. One week to prepare for her wrath.

But I wasn’t ready to face her.

I wrapped my hair in a ponytail, wore my baggy sweater dress, and put on the flip-flops to head downstairs.

I sat in the living room, and the silence was so thick, I could feel it pressing into my chest. The cushions beneath me did nothing to soften the dread that pooled in my stomach.

I kept smoothing my hands over my dress, over and over, as if I could press the creases out of my soul while I was at it.

Our friendship is strong enough to survive anything, I reminded myself. We had both said it once before.

I pressed my palm to my stomach, instinctively to protect our baby, and the sharp tick of the antique clock on the wall made me flinch. Any second now, they’d walk through those doors. Katya and Damien. Father and daughter. And I would have to look her in the eye.

What would I even say?

I stood and began pacing the length of the room, trying to find air in the suffocating space. My chest ached with the kind of anticipation that felt like grief. Like waiting for a door to open on the other side of a grave. I hated myself for dreading Katya’s face, her voice.

And Damien….

I couldn’t think about him or how this would worsen their relationship.

Tired, I sank back onto the edge of the couch, hands trembling in my lap.

The doors opened, and excited Russian chatter flowed across the foyer between Winter and… her.

I held my breath and kept the tears locked in.

The moment Katya stepped into the living room with Damien and Fedor looming behind her, it was as if the air itself held its own breath as well.

She looked so different: paler, a little thinner, the lines of her face drawn tighter. And she moved slower, like the world was a dream she was still waking up from.

But her eyes….

I wanted to cry. God.

Her eyes remained the same—so blue, so bright and sharp, and unapologetically happy to see me when our gazes met.

“Lena! Oh, my goodness! Papa, you called her over?”

Neither Damien nor I said a word. I stayed rooted, like being frozen with ice-water traveling down my spine.

Then her eyes…they flicked between me and him, reading too much between the silence. She didn’t know much, but I knew Katya well enough to know she couldn’t be fooled easily.

My knees wobbled like they always did when I was trying too hard to stay calm.

“Kat,” I whispered, trying to smile, my voice catching in my throat like a thread pulled too tight. “You don’t understand how happy I am that you’re back.”

“That’s why you’re crying? Because you’re so happy?” Katya took a step closer, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “But you didn’t come yesterday. Or the day before.”

There wasn’t an accusation in it—it was hurt.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

“Before I get mad at you for not coming,” she whispered, stretching out her arms for a hug. “I’ve missed you so much.”

She wrapped her arms around me before I could blink, and I forced a smile so hard it ached. My lips trembled with the effort.

My arms wrapped around her, holding her like she might slip away again if I didn’t squeeze tight enough. But it felt… wrong. Like I was lying with every breath. Like I was hugging her with a knife behind my back.

She smelled like antiseptic and old lavender perfume. I wanted to cry into her shoulder and scream all the things I’d hidden for months. But instead, I said nothing. Just held her.

When she pulled away, her eyes dropped—just for a second—and that was all it took.

They landed on the soft curve beneath my sweater. My hands instinctively went to cover it, but too late. She froze.

Her face shifted slowly, like watching storm clouds roll in across a bright sky.

“Hold on, are you….” Her voice was laced with heavy disbelief. “Are you pregnant, Lena?”

Everything stopped. The world stilled. The wind didn’t dare to blow. My throat closed up as though I’d swallowed glass.

She looked at me for a long time, like she couldn’t recognize me, then her gaze flicked toward Damien again when I didn’t answer, a new kind of tension tightening across her shoulders.

“Did I miss something while I was gone?”

I opened my mouth—but nothing came. Nothing except a broken inhale.

Then, like the final nail in a coffin, his voice cut through the silence. Very cold. Very flat. Very unapologetic.

“Yes,” Damien said, stepping out from behind her. “She is. The baby is mine.”

I couldn’t look at him.

All I saw was Katya. The way her body stiffened. The way her lips parted, then pressed shut, her jaw tight and trembling. The way her eyes filled with that volcano-erupting lava.

So many things flickered through them simultaneously: hurt, betrayal, disappointment.

Her gaze flicked from me to him and back again.

“You—” she choked, her voice cracking. “Your baby is my father’s?

Wait, what is this, a fucking nightmare?

Am I awake? Is this real? My best friend fucked my dad while I was in a coma?

No. Nope. I better still be in that fucking coma, because this joke is not fucking funny. ”

Damien reached out. “Katya…”

But she hit his hands away.

“No, no, you don’t get a second pass to screw me over, dear father . Only a fool gets played a second time, and I am not a fool.” She addressed Damien, but her eyes were burning into my skull.

“No,” I breathed. “It wasn’t like that. Katya, we weren’t…. It wasn’t during the coma….”

“Whoa! Wow! So, before? I was fully conscious when you two fucked behind my back? Tell me more. When did it happen?”

“Kat, please—it wasn’t—”

“When, dammit!”

“On your birthday.”

The tears flowed down my cheeks freely now when she staggered back half a step. Like the ground had shifted beneath her, and all she could do was retreat before she drowned in it. My hands reached for her, but she flinched.

The ache in my chest was unbearable. Like my ribs were trying to fold in on themselves, crushing my lungs, my heart, everything inside me that dared to love her.

I was breaking.

“You know, the two of you should forget that I came here. Forget that I ever woke up. I’m moving out of this haunted house.”

“Kat, please…we can get past this. You don’t have to do that. We want you here. Your father wants you—”

“And now you speak for him, too. Well, thanks for the offer, Mom , but I’m an adult and very much capable of making my own decisions.”

Roughly, she brushed past Damien, marching steadily back to the door she’d only passed a moment ago. Fedor tried to block her, but Damien signaled to let her go, and waved another that instructed him to watch her.

Before Kat got past the foyer, I heard the hurt in her voice bounce off the walls when she said, “Have a nice life, Elena.”

And the doors slammed shut.

The tears stung, blurring my vision of Damien and everything else that seemed comfortable weeks ago. He stretched his arms, but a hug from him only reminded me of what seemed to be the last hug I would ever get from Katya.

Regretfully, I shook my head, walking around him and up the stairs.

There had been a sliver of hope that we’d survive this, but Katya’s anger had proved that I was wishing on falling stars.

***

It was the kind of fight that only sixteen-year-olds could have. It was intense, ridiculous, and over in a blur of hormones and half-baked logic.

I didn’t even remember exactly what started it. Something stupid. Something about a boy, or maybe a comment in passing that landed wrong.

I just remembered the way Katya’s face twisted with disbelief in the middle of third-period math, and how she muttered under her breath as she slammed her notebook shut.

By lunchtime, we weren’t talking. Which, for us, was unheard of. We were never not talking. Even when our mouths weren’t moving, we had whole conversations through a glance or an eye roll. But that day? Silence. Awkward, fidgety silence that annoyed me.

I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had a sock on inside out.

It was just…wrong. Off. I missed her. It was the kind of ache that curled up under my ribs and sulked there.

When the final bell rang, I shuffled to my locker, my heart low in my shoes.

The hallway buzzed with the usual post-school chaos: zippers, squeaking sneakers, and people shouting across the lockers. And then, like a miracle dressed in messy buns and hoodie strings, she was there, leaning against my locker, arms folded, biting her lip to keep from smiling.

Her eyes caught mine, and for a second, we just stood there.

“I’m still mad,” I said, voice small but trying to sound tough. Spoiler: I didn’t.

She huffed. “Yeah, well…I’m still right.”

I tried not to smile. Tried so hard. But then she stepped forward and opened her arms, wide and exaggerated like some cheesy cartoon character.

“Come on, Lena. Don’t make me beg in front of the band kids.”

I rolled my eyes, but my feet were already moving. “You’re so dramatic.”

She grinned. “You love it.”

And I did. Because Katya wasn’t just my best friend; she was the one who knew when I needed candy in my locker or when to pull me into dance breaks in the middle of bad days. We’d had our share of blowups—messy, fiery, teenage heart stuff—but this? This was nothing we couldn’t shake off.

“You know why I love us, Lena? It’s because our friendship is strong enough to survive anything.”

“Ditto.”

She pulled me into a tight hug, the kind that felt like coming home.

“Friends?” she whispered into my hair.

I whispered back, smiling into her shoulder. “Friends.”