Page 14

Chapter Twelve

Dimitri

I didn’t know what to say. My father’s question hung in the air like a trap snapping shut around my throat. Where the hell were you last night?

I hadn’t planned this. The night with Petyr was a secret, a fragile thing that hadn’t even felt real until this morning. I wasn’t ready to explain. Hell, I wasn’t ready to lie about it either.

So I went on the offense.

“Fine,” I said, voice tighter than I wanted. “But first—why do you sleep on the couch instead of with Mama?”

His eyes flicked to me, sharp and dark behind the rearview mirror. “That’s none of your business.”

I shrugged, daring the anger to rise. “What I do with my time isn’t your business either.”

My father’s gloved hands tightened on the steering wheel. The car rumbled forward, then his voice came low and harsh, like a whip cracking in a dark room.

“If you want a good life,” he said, “you’d better behave. Find a wife. Have a kid. When I was your age, I’d already joined the Communist Party. Built a future. Something to be proud of.”

I swallowed the bitter taste of disgust and thought, I want to be nothing like you.

He didn’t stop. “Party membership opens doors. Respect. Stability. None of this drifting around like you’re lost.”

The car heater did nothing to warm me. I stared out the window, the world sliding by in muted grays and browns. The weight of what I wanted—and what was expected—pressed down like the heavy gray sky.

We pulled up in front of our building, and my father killed the engine. “I’ll help get you into the Party,” he said, voice softer but still firm. “We’ve got friends with daughters your age. Good girls. Loyal girls.”

I looked at him then, really looked. The lines on his face, the hard set of his jaw—it was a map of everything I was trying to escape.

And something inside me snapped.

“I want nothing to do with this damned system!” I yelled.

Faces turned. The doorman, an old lady clutching her groceries, a kid playing nearby—all eyes on us.

I didn’t care.

“I don’t want your Party! I don’t want a wife or a family like yours. And I don’t want to live a life that’s someone else’s idea of good!”

My chest heaved, heart pounding, not just with anger but something deeper, something fierce and desperate.

But beneath it all, softer than any scream, was the memory of last night.

Petyr’s arms around me.

The warm weight of his body.

The art we saw—the colors, the freedom in brushstrokes and broken rules.

That impossible night where I felt, for the first time, that I belonged somewhere other than this cold, cracked city.

The night I wanted to live forever.

I threw the door open and climbed out before my father could stop me. He followed, still gripping the car door like it was a weapon.

People on the sidewalk stared, whispering. I didn’t care. The cold was bitter, but my fury burned hotter.

“Do you even hear yourself?” I shouted. “You think your Party and your friends’ daughters are the only future for me? I’m not your son to mold and break!”

My father’s face darkened, lips tightening. “You’ll regret this, boy. Mark my words.”

I spat back, “I regret nothing. Not last night. Not who I am.”

A woman crossing the street glanced our way and quickened her pace. An old man leaned on his cane, watching us with tired eyes.

“I’m sick of pretending,” I said, voice cracking. “Sick of lying to everyone—including myself.”

The crowd felt like a suffocating weight. I wanted to disappear, but my body betrayed me.

Suddenly, I felt something strange, unfamiliar—a pressure building in my chest, tightening like a vise.

And then it broke.

Long, braying sobs racked my body.

I tried to choke them back. Tried to hold the damn thing together. But the tears came, hot and merciless.

To my shock, my father’s rigid stance softened.

He stepped forward slowly, like approaching a wild animal.

Then he opened his arms.

I hesitated, then stumbled into him, burying my face against his shoulder.

His coat was rough, smelling faintly of sweat and leather, but it was real. Solid.

I let the sobs spill out, raw and uncontrolled.

He held me steady, whispering something I never expected:

“I understand more than you’ll ever know.”

My father didn’t say another word right away. He just held me there, on the icy sidewalk, while I tried to remember how to breathe. The cold nipped at my cheeks, but I hardly felt it anymore. My whole body pulsed with the aftershocks of something I hadn’t let myself feel in years.

Grief. Rage. Relief.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy, but not suffocating like before. My father gave my shoulder one last squeeze, then pulled back enough to look at me. His eyes weren’t angry anymore. Just tired. Knowing.

“Come inside,” he breathed. “Before we give the neighbors more to gossip about.”

I nodded, numb now, every nerve frayed and humming. We didn’t speak as we crossed the courtyard and climbed the worn stone steps to our apartment.

Inside the entryway, we each took off our shoes in silence, setting them neatly by the radiator. Habit. Muscle memory. Even as my world collapsed inward, I could still follow the rhythm of home.

The apartment was quiet. Unnaturally so.

I looked down the hall toward the kitchen. “Mama?” I called out, already knowing the answer.

No response.

I stepped into the kitchen and saw a note sitting on the table.

I’ve gone to help Luda at her shop—she got a shipment of new dresses. There’s soup in the pot. Don’t be loud.

I read it twice, then folded it carefully and brought it into the living room. My father had already settled into his usual chair, the one that creaked every time he sat in it.

“She went to Luda’s dress shop,” I said, holding up the note.

He snorted, the sound low and humorless. “Of course. Another private business. Perestroika—suddenly everyone wants to be a capitalist.”

He waved a hand as if brushing away a foul smell, then glanced at me with a different kind of weight in his gaze.

“Sit down, Dimka.”

I froze for a moment. Everything in me screamed to keep moving, to pace, to run, to crawl into my bed and pull the blankets over my head like I was a child again.

But I sat.

My hands were shaking, so I folded them tightly in my lap to hide it.

The silence hung again, stretching long enough for my brain to start spinning.

My eyes were glued to the carpet, worn thin in a trail between my father’s chair and the kitchen, and I thought about what I’d said outside.

I thought about Petyr’s hand against the small of my back.

I thought about the life I’d admitted out loud, and how there was no way to take it back.

My father leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“You don’t have to explain,” he said, his voice lower now. “Not to me.”

My throat tightened. I wasn’t sure I could explain. Not in words, anyway. Not without risking it all. Petyr’s safety, my own. The fear was back, coiling around my ribs.

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, voice hoarse.

A beat passed. Then another.

“But you want to.”

That got me. I met his eyes—really met them—and for a terrifying second I saw no judgment there. Just... recognition.

Like he’d lived this moment himself, once. Long ago. In a world just as gray, just as cold.

He sat back, resting his head against the chair. “You’re angry,” he said simply.

I blinked. “Of course I’m angry.”

“At me.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “You think I had choices? That I just didn’t take them?”

I didn’t know the answer.

He sighed. “Maybe I was a coward. But I know what it’s like to want something that no one says you’re allowed to have.”

The room spun a little. I felt dizzy, like I was leaning over the edge of a very steep, very sudden cliff.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me. Just stared at the far wall, where an old photo of Lenin still hung—faded, frame chipped. A relic from another time.

“I’m saying,” he murmured, “that you’re not the first in this family to feel trapped.”

My mouth went dry. My heart pounded so hard I could hear it echoing in my ears.

“Why didn’t you ever—” I started, then stopped. Because I already knew. The answer was etched into every wrinkle on his face, every silence at the dinner table, every night he’d slept on the couch.

Because it wasn’t safe.

Because it still wasn’t.

He looked at me again, and this time his eyes were shining with something I couldn’t name. Regret, maybe. Or a grief too old to hold.

“I don’t want that for you,” he said. “If there’s even a small door open—take it. Get out of this place before it slams shut again.”

I swallowed hard. “You mean... leave?”

He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no either.

We sat there in the quiet, surrounded by peeling wallpaper and the smell of cabbage soup, and for the first time in my life, I saw my father not as an obstacle, but as a man who’d been shaped—maybe broken—by all the same things I was trying to fight.

I studied his face. The cracks around his eyes, and the permanent set of his jaw. The way his hands, though large and strong, always looked like they were trying not to shake.

And I wondered.

What had he wanted to be, before the Party got its hooks in him? Had he once dreamed of something else—art, maybe, or science, or standing on a stage and saying something honest to a crowd? Did he ever imagine loving someone who made him feel alive, the way Petyr made me feel?

Or had he always known the price of safety?

Had he made peace with this life, or just learned how to live without ever letting himself want more?

I thought about Mama. About the way they orbited each other without touching.

Their carefully separate lives under one roof.

It hadn’t occurred to me until now how little affection I’d seen between them.

They didn’t fight, but they didn’t laugh together, either.

They moved like old coworkers, not lovers.

And now I knew why.

There was no love. Not the kind that mattered. Just a pact between two people who needed to be safe.

The words were stuck in my throat. Was Mama your choice, or just the right camouflage?

But I didn’t.

Because I knew what he’d say. Or worse, what he wouldn’t say.

And did I really want to know the truth?

Wasn’t it enough that I saw it now, all of it, with clear eyes?

“I’m going to lie down,” I said, standing.

He nodded once, like that answer made sense to him. Like maybe he was relieved.

In my room, I shut the door behind me and leaned against it for a second, and exhaustion settled into my bones.

I stripped off my clothes, folding them with a kind of automatic care, and slid beneath the blanket. The chill of the sheets made me shiver, but I didn’t bother with the extra quilt.

I turned off the light, letting the darkness settle over me like a second skin.

And then Petyr’s face filled the space behind my eyes.

His eyes, the flecks of gold in them. The curve of his smile. The warmth of his fingers brushing mine. His breath against my throat, his laughter in the quiet corners of the ancient bathhouse, the way he looked at me like I was more than just someone surviving.

Sleep pulled at me, slow and heavy. And as I drifted into it, I thought, will Petyr and I ever be free?