Page 12

I sat up a little straighter, running the mental math faster than I probably should have with this little sleep. Pavel and Nina would be home, sure, but their work didn’t start until later. They slept like corpses on weekdays. If we were very quiet…

I licked my lips and leaned toward him.

“Hey,” I whispered, nudging his knee lightly with mine. “We have to be up so early. Why don’t you just sleep at my place?”

He blinked at me, slow. “What?”

“Vera’s with her friend Mira tonight,” I murmured, keeping my voice low in case the cabbie was nosy. “We’d have the room to ourselves. We’d just have to be silent. Nina and Pavel are home. But they don’t get up until late.”

His brows lifted slowly, confusion shifting into something else. A smile, wide and lazy, spread across his face like honey slipping down warm bread.

“Are you sure?” he asked, almost like he couldn’t believe it.

I nodded. “Positive.”

He gave a soft chuckle, the kind you only hear when someone is so exhausted they’re floating, and leaned his head slightly toward mine. “Then yes. I’d like that.”

I turned to the cabbie, who hadn’t looked back once—bless him—and tapped the back of the seat.

“Change of plans,” I said. “Pod’yem 47, Kvartira 3.”

The driver grunted in acknowledgment, and the car turned down a different street, the tires whispering against the slush. I felt the tug of excitement again, hot and a little dangerous.

This was stupid. Maybe. But it also felt… right.

Dimitri reached over and rested his hand on mine, just for a second, a quick press of warmth between us.

And I let him.

As the cab turned down my block, I leaned toward Dimitri again and whispered, “Once we’re inside, we can’t speak. Not even a whisper. Okay?”

He nodded, already catching the tone of this new game we were playing—one where the stakes were real, where every creak in the floorboards might cost us more than a night’s sleep.

We stepped out into the cold. The chill hit our faces like a reminder of the world we’d briefly escaped. I paid the driver, careful not to wince at the amount, and we stood for a beat under the dim streetlamp, looking up at my building like it might swallow us whole.

Then we went inside and began the long climb upstairs.

The stairwell smelled of boiled cabbage, the same as always. My legs ached, but I couldn’t feel anything through the pounding in my chest. Each step sounded like a gunshot in the cavernous stairwell, even though we moved as quietly as shadows.

At the landing, I pressed a finger to my lips and looked over my shoulder.

Dimitri was behind me, his lips curved upward in something close to mischief, his breath fogging softly in the stairwell.

Shoes off. Leave them in the hall. Every step mattered now.

I slipped the key into the lock as slowly as I could, the tumblers clicking softly. The door swung open without a sound.

We moved like ghosts.

The apartment was dark, save for a sliver of light from under Nina and Pavel’s door. The scent of floor polish drifted faintly in the air.

I took Dimitri’s hand briefly and guided him down the narrow hallway to my room. Our room, technically. Vera’s and mine. But that thought twisted in my stomach and I shoved it away.

We reached the door and stepped inside.

Once closed, the bedroom became its own tiny universe. Quiet. Still. The only sound was our breathing and the muffled ticking of the clock on the nightstand.

We stripped out of our outer layers slowly, with practiced silence.

I turned my back as I pulled my sweater off, feeling the weight of the day leave my shoulders.

Dimitri’s shirt made a soft rustle behind me, and when I turned around, he was already sitting on the edge of the bed, barefoot and rumpled, waiting for me like it was the most normal thing in the world.

It wasn’t. Not for me.

This was my first time sleeping beside a man. Not sex—not that. But this: the intimacy of sharing a bed, of trusting someone enough to fall asleep next to him in the most dangerous city in the world for boys like us.

I climbed in next to him and pulled the blanket over our bodies. For a moment, we lay flat on our backs, barely breathing, the ceiling above us washed in faint orange light from a faraway streetlamp. I felt the heat from his arm next to mine, and it made me shiver.

Then I turned to him. Slid one arm around his waist. Pulled him to me.

It wasn’t sexual—not really. Not at first. I just needed to hold him. To be held. To feel like I wasn’t completely alone.

But my body didn’t care about that distinction. As soon as my chest pressed against his back, as soon as I tucked my knees behind his, I felt it—my erection, unbidden, pressing into the space between us.

I closed my eyes and ignored it. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t the point. I wasn’t here to do anything. I was here to be. To exist in the arms of a man I might be falling in love with. Someone who made the music in my head crescendo with every breath he took.

Dimitri exhaled, deep and slow. His body softened under my arm. His breathing grew rhythmic, gentle, and I knew he was already asleep.

I wasn’t.

I stared at the dark, my heart thudding like a timpani, every sound amplified in this illegal symphony we were composing between us.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy ones. Moving past the door.

I froze.

Every muscle in my body seized, and my breath caught in my throat. A single sound. One whisper. One bump of the mattress and everything might come undone.

Then—flush.

A toilet. Just a toilet.

The footsteps retreated, and I heard the soft groan of floorboards as someone climbed back into their bed.

I let myself breathe again, and the tension slid out of me all at once, leaving me dizzy.

Dimitri murmured something in his sleep—nonsense, a fragment of a dream—and shifted in my arms.

And just like that, I was in heaven.

Right there, in that tiny bed with the peeling wallpaper and the too-thin mattress, I had everything I wanted. I felt his weight against me. His warmth. His trust.

I didn’t sleep. Not for a long time.

I just held him. Let the music in my head rise and fall like a lullaby.

And prayed, silently, that I would get to do this again. That the night wouldn’t end with this being a onetime miracle.

That somehow, despite everything, we could find our way to more.