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Chapter Twenty-Four

Dimitri

I was on my hands and knees with a scrub brush, hunched over the wooden floor.

The scent of vodka, sweat, and ash clung to the dacha like it had soaked into the wood grain itself.

No matter how many times I sloshed soapy water over it, it didn’t come clean.

The stink of the weekend was stubborn. Just like me.

I couldn’t stop scrubbing. Couldn’t stop seeing him, Petyr, pinned beneath me, his voice cracking.

The sounds that had come out of me this morning weren’t human.

And what I’d done was worse than anything I’d brought back from the war.

But the way he’d looked at me afterward, like he didn’t know if I was going to hit him or beg for forgiveness. It was killing me.

I scrubbed harder. Soap suds turned pink, then red. I didn’t even feel it at first, the sting in my palm. My knuckles had split open again, probably from earlier when I’d punched that birch tree so hard it rattled.

What was I doing? What were we even trying to build, him and me? We weren’t free. We’d never be free. He had Vera, and her neat little lies and Party connections. I had my ghosts, my father, the goddamn country, and a constant fear that any moment we had together would be the last.

Stolen moments. That’s all we got. Basement corners and alleys and locked rooms like this one, where every kiss felt like a secret. It wasn’t enough. Not anymore. We could buy a cabin in the middle of Siberia and I swear to God, someone would still knock on the door and ruin it.

Behind me, footsteps creaked on the floorboards. Then his voice, soft but steady, “You’ve been scrubbing that same spot for an hour, Dima.” A pause. “It’s good enough. Your hand’s bleeding again.”

I didn’t look up right away. I was afraid of what might be on his face—anger, pity, fear. But when I finally glanced at him, he didn’t look like any of those things. Just tired. Tired and still too beautiful for the world we were stuck in.

He held out his hand. Without thinking, I took it. His fingers closed around mine, firm but gentle. He pulled me up with that quiet strength of his, like I wasn’t a wreck of a man who’d tried to destroy him this morning. Like I was still worth saving.

He didn’t let go of my hand. Just led me to the kitchen sink and turned on the cold tap.

I watched the blood swirl pink into the basin, then fade.

He held my wrist steady under the water, and I stared at the way the veins stood out on his arm, the way the tendons flexed when he moved.

I used to know that body like it was my own.

Now I couldn’t even bring myself to touch him.

When the water ran clear, he shut it off, still holding my hand.

“We need to go if we want to catch the last bus back to Leningrad,” he murmured. “It’s a five-kilometer walk.”

I nodded, still not meeting his eyes. I didn’t deserve to.

“I’ll get the bucket,” I muttered.

I stepped outside, the screen door slapping shut behind me.

The sky was slate-gray, heavy with clouds that hadn’t yet made up their minds.

The garden was still wild from the weekend, trampled grass and empty bottles tucked like landmines in the underbrush.

I flung the water out across the dirt, and the suds landed in a splash at the base of the birch I’d bloodied my fist on.

It didn’t look any different. Nothing did.

When I came back inside, Petyr had the bags by the door. He’d packed both—of course he had.

“Got everything,” he said. “We need to leave now if we’re going to make it.”

I just nodded. Picked up my bag. Didn’t say a word as I locked the front door, sealing away whatever had happened between us this weekend. As if a bolt on rotting wood could keep it all in.

We walked side by side down the narrow dirt lane. The air was sharp with the smell of pine and smoke. Little dachas lined the road like crooked teeth, their shutters flapping in the wind, and their chimneys slouching. Everything felt too quiet.

The road crunched under our boots, the birch trees sighing in the wind like they were tired of watching us.

Ahead, the sky stretched pale and bruised, leaking strips of orange where the sun had already started to set.

The light was going fast, and the shadows between the trees reached like fingers across the lane.

I didn’t mean to speak. The words just fell out of me, raw and trembling.

“What happens next?”

Petyr glanced sideways but didn’t answer right away.

I swallowed hard, and my voice cracked as I pushed the rest out. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

That hung in the air like smoke. I expected him to keep walking, maybe pretend he hadn’t heard. But he slowed a little, enough to let my words land.

“I want more than this,” I said, and my voice got sharper, faster, like I’d finally kicked open a door that’d been rotting in its frame.

“More than stolen hours and locked doors and pretending. I’m tired of pretending, Petyr.

All the lies, fake dating Mira, of pretending I don’t want to touch you every damn second of the day.

It’s—it’s exhausting. And you should know, nothing happened with me and Larisa last night.

She was drunk and tried to seduce me. After taking her clothes off, I put one of my shirts on her and she passed out. That’s it.”

He still didn’t speak, so I kept going. “The way I feel about you—it’s not something I can hide. Not forever. It’s too big. It scares the hell out of me.”

The wind picked up again, pushing the scent of wood smoke and moss across the road. Somewhere deeper in the trees, a dog barked once and went quiet.

Petyr didn’t say a word. Just slipped his arm across my shoulders.

I stiffened like he’d poured ice down my spine. My entire body locked up, heartbeat loud and hard in my ears. I looked around like a soldier expecting a sniper.

“Calm down,” he breathed, his hand curling around the back of my neck. “It’s just me. Other guys do this all the time. Nobody’s out here. They’ve all gone back to town already. Work starts early tomorrow for everyone.”

I forced a breath through my nose and nodded. Let my shoulders drop. His thumb brushed my skin, and I leaned into it, just barely.

We kept walking. Our boots scuffed through fallen leaves and loose gravel.

The dachas thinned out the farther we got.

Most of them were shuttered and empty now.

Behind one faded fence, a rusted bike leaned against a wall like it’d been forgotten years ago.

I wanted to believe we could be forgotten too, just long enough to breathe.

Petyr exhaled slowly, like the weight of everything I’d said had finally settled on him.

“Dima, I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried to give us what we needed, but I didn’t know they’d show up. I thought—just this once—we’d get the weekend. No interruptions. Just you and me.”

I looked at him then. Really looked. His face was drawn, his mouth pinched the way it always got when he was holding something back.

He stopped walking.

I stopped too, half a step behind.

“I love you, Dimitri,” he murmured. “More than anything. More than anyone. But we have to face the truth. This thing we have, it exists in the cracks. In the dark. That’s the reality.”

His eyes flicked toward the road ahead. “If we don’t want to end up in a Siberian gulag, then yes, it has to stay this way. Fleeting. Hidden. We can’t change that, no matter how much we want to. If you can’t live with it, if this is too much, then maybe…” He swallowed. “Maybe we should end it.”

For a long second, the only sound was the rustle of leaves above us.

I looked around. Nothing but trees, silence, the last sliver of sun dragging behind the hills. No one was in sight. Not a soul.

So I kissed him.

There, in the middle of the dirt lane, under that pale, bruised sky, I kissed him like I meant it. Like I’d never get to do it again.

When I pulled away, he looked stunned. And then soft. And then something deeper, something that hurt to look at.

“I’ll make this work,” I said, my voice rough. “Somehow. I promise.”