I took Mira gently from her arms, cradling our daughter against my chest. Zoella let me. Her hands dropped to her lap like she didn’t know what to do with them anymore.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” I told her. “You never did.”
Resigned, she leaned against me and was out like a light.
***
A few hours later, I was trying to cool the fire inside me with a glass of water, but it wasn’t working.
I stood in the kitchen, shirtless, with my legs crossed over the tiled floor. I tried thinking about work, and what to do about Yuri’s report.
But all plans flew out the window at the soft pad of her steps down the hallway.
I didn’t move when she entered the kitchen without a word. Her hair was tied up, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Mira was still asleep.
Zoella stopped the moment our eyes met for half a second, but it was enough to read the tension in her shoulders, and the flicker of hesitation in her eyes.
She looked like she had something to say, but then changed her mind and turned around at the last second.
She walked to the fridge like she’d come down for a drink, but I knew suspicious moves when I saw one.
“You couldn’t sleep till dawn.”
She didn’t answer at first. She opened the fridge door, letting the cold light pour over her bare legs, her oversized T-shirt—mine, again, I realized.
Seeing it on her did something dangerous to me.
“No,” she finally said. Her voice was clipped.
That thread between us, pulled taut for so long…it was fraying, and ready to break. Or bind, maybe.
“I’ve got to ask: Did I do something in particular? Are you mad at me?” I asked quietly.
Her back was to me. “I’m tired.”
“So, it’s Mira.”
“Don’t do that, Matvey. Just don’t.” She shut the door of the fridge and crossed the floor, eliminating the space between us.
“So, if it isn’t Mira, then it’s me. I’m the problem.”
“Yes, it is you. You’re the problem.”
Her sudden outburst barely shocked me, but it left her rattled, and she was spilling more and more from her heart before she could stop herself.
“I don’t…” she stuttered, and combed her fingers through her hair, frustrated. “I don’t know how to…putthisout there, but I’ve been silently hoping that you—”
“That I would what?”
She paused. My voice seemed to reel her back to the fact that I stood right in front of her, and wasn’t just some figment of her imagination that she could freely yell at.
“Don’t you want this too?”
My fingers curled tighter around the glass in my hand, knuckles white against the crystal. The water inside trembled. I stared at her, at the curve of her mouth, the fire in her eyes masked beneath all that uncertainty.
Taking my time, I set the glass down, like I was disarming myself. Then I stepped close enough that her breath caught, and I could taste it in the air between us.
My hands slid around her waist, carefully testing if she’d let me. She didn’t stop me. My lips brushed her shoulder.
