Page 13 of Love Is A Draw (Check Mates #2)

T hey didn’t speak much as they walked back toward St. James, but clearly Victor was walking Gail home.

He’d offered his arm, and her grip on him was light, certain—wordless companionship.

The air between them throbbed with something new: neither command nor surrender, but shared conviction.

She followed him through the growing dusk—not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

By the time they reached the Pearlers’ house, twilight had deepened the sky to a bruised navy. The lights inside cast a light orange glow onto the street.

Victor stared at the worn stone steps, jaw working in silence—as though preparing himself. “May I—?” he finally offered, gesturing toward the front door, tone low, rough around the edges but strangely steady.

She nodded.

He knocked for her, and the butler, James, let them in.

Inside, the house pressed around them: quiet, embers smoldering in the hearth, the only sound the grandfather clock ticking steadily against the hush. Victor placed the satchel down with care. Gail stood by the doorway.

He reached into the satchel and drew out a heavy leather volume. He laid it on the small side table across the grandfather clock.

She stepped closer, and the soft light caught his profile.

He opened the volume to reveal a dense tangle of analysis moves, annotations, and diagonal arrows. But that wasn’t what made her breath catch.

It was the margin. The ink had worn to gray, the slightly uneven spacing of Grandfather’s hand—so achingly familiar. Could it truly be?

She leaned in and looked more closely. “Move fifteen.” Her fingertips rested inches from the ink. “Knight from b1 to d2. He would’ve expected c4 next.”

Victor’s breath caught. She heard it—a shift in the air.

His eyes lifted to hers. “You know it?”

“I know Dmitry Tarkov’s mind.” Her speech was steady, but her pulse was not. “I listened.” She didn’t mean just this sequence. “My full name is Avigail Tarkov.”

The silence between them thickened. Years collapsed. Echoes surfaced.

“He never let me sit with you,” she whispered. “I wasn’t allowed. But I stood outside the room. Heard you—angry, determined… a little proud. You hated when you were wrong.”

Victor blinked, slowly. His lips parted, but no words came.

“And you hated pawn sacrifices,” she added. “You said they felt like gutting yourself.”

He stared at her, unmoving. She saw it land—saw it settle in him like the answer to a puzzle he’d never quite solved.

Her hands curled into fists to keep them from trembling. “You’re him. You’re the boy from the lessons.”

Victor didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. It showed in his eyes—recognition, not from sight, but from sound. From the memory of a shadow lingering just outside the door, breath held, listening.

“You were always quiet after the sixth game,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I thought you’d gone. Then I heard you speak again.”

He nodded, slowly. “I thought I was alone. I never saw you.”

“You weren’t supposed to.” She looked at the notebook again, at the pages between them. Then up—straight into his eyes.

Something inside her slipped into place. It was him. The boy she had fallen in love with—before she knew love could exist without touch or face. He had grown into the man before her. And now—now there was nothing between them but time.

And time could be rewritten.

Gail swallowed, throat tight. “You’re the reason I believed that it was possible.”

Victor’s hand drifted toward hers—not grasping, not urgent. Just reaching.

She met him halfway.

Victor’s expression softened. “He wanted me to be exceptional.”

They both ogled the notebook for a moment.

“And now?” she asked.

He shook his head, looking away. “Now—even I’m not sure what I am.”

She stepped forward and placed her hand gently atop his—fingers brushing, deliberate. “He didn’t write those lessons because he doubted you. He wrote them because you could teach yourself. You owed him that. And you never forgot.”

His hand closed around hers.

They paused. The clock ticked once, then again.

“I’ve never shown this to anyone,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“I know.” And somehow—that was all she needed to say.

When she drew her hand back, it wasn’t retreat, it was reverence—a gesture of understanding, not distance, as though they had stepped together into some unspoken truth neither of them had expected.

She turned toward the door. “I’ll go,” she murmured, though it wasn’t a promise, but simply a way to continue when something profound had happened and she didn’t yet know what came next.

They stood on either side of the notebooks—but no longer divided. The pages between them were not barriers, but bridges. Shared memory, lived knowledge, quiet awe.

She had been the girl in the shadowed hallway—the one who listened.

He had been the boy she loved before she ever knew his name.

“Gail,” he said.

She stopped.

The words faltered at the edge of his mouth, as if he might take them back. “Will you look at the next one? There’s a line I can’t reconstruct.”

Her eyes met his. The smallest nod. “Yes.”

And in that soft, steady silence, they began again.

Gail stepped ahead, her slippers whispering over the oak floor of the great hall. She didn’t wait for him. She simply moved, purposeful and composed, and sat at the table where two chairs faced each other. Victor followed without thinking. Her confidence in chess pulled him like gravity.

He remained standing, watching her hands settle lightly in her lap, then he placed the second notebook on the table.

Darker than the rest. Smaller. The edges had frayed, the spine cracked from use.

He opened it slowly, his fingertips careful on the brittle paper.

Not like a man consulting a strategy—but like one unfolding memory.

“There,” he murmured. “It starts here. I can’t see how it ends.”

She leaned forward, and something in his chest tightened. The lamplight slanted across her cheek as she read, casting the notations into sharp relief—ink faded, edges blurred. But she read it easily, as though she already knew what she’d find.

“You were trying to trap the bishop,” she said quietly.

He nodded.

“But the position collapsed. You never looked back at the structure that made it possible.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because she was brilliant, and she was here. And he’d never known how much he needed both until just now.

Her gaze lifted, seeking his. “You play the position in front of you.”

“I must,” he replied. “What else is there?”

“You could shape it. Force the game into your hands.”

“That isn’t chess.” His dismissal came rougher than he’d meant. “It’s control.”

“No. It’s mastery.”

Victor leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table, drawing closer. The air between them warmed. “You learned that from your grandfather.”

“Yes,” she answered. “But I used it on you.”

He dropped his gaze—then laughed, quiet and disbelieving. “He’d have been proud.”

Her expression didn’t soften. It tightened. “He never let me play you.”

He lifted his eyes to hers—really seeing her this time. The ache behind her words caught him off guard. “He didn’t see that you already were a master.”

Something shifted then. Not between them—but around them. As if the room itself held its breath.

She reached forward and turned the page. Her fingers brushed his. Neither of them moved. The touch was brief, accidental, insignificant. And yet a pulse went through Victor’s bones. He looked at her—not with interest, not with admiration, but with something more. Something sharp. Something final.

She held his gaze. “I should go.”

“Yes.” But he didn’t rise.

Neither did she. The notebook sat open. The pieces waited. So did he.

At last, she stood. And so did he, because she made him want to remember how to be worthy.

Their eyes met—hers calm, composed. His... not.

“Good night, Victor Romanov,” she said.

“Avigail Tarkov,” he replied. “Would you?—”

But the words stopped. She didn’t.

She turned. Walked out. And Victor—silent, still—stood in the echo of everything they hadn’t yet said.