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“Next time,” I say, and I feel strangely weightless and helpless in the face of how earnest he is being about all of it.
“I will remember,” he says, and the maddening thing is that I believe him, because whatever else Lev is, he doesn’t forget anything he decides to keep, and maybe he is the man who never stops loving once he starts.
The competition only intensifies after that. Maksim books dinners and movies, and every time, Lev’s invitations have already filled my schedule first, usurping every free hour.
On Monday, Lev asks for my professional opinion on a wedding venue, a sprawling estate an hour outside the city, and then he listens to me talk about sightlines and floral load and guest flow for two straight hours without once interrupting me. Nobody has ever wanted two hours of my opinion on anything before, and the elation of it undoes me more than the flowers did.
On Wednesday, he takes me to a small, ordinary restaurant on a side street. There is no clearing the place out, no ring of bodyguards, no seconds-in-command, just a corner table and a laminated menu with the prices printed right on it. He orders badly and lets me tease him for it, and for one whole hour he is only a large, careful man having dinner with me like some clumsy meet-cute, and I catch myself forgetting to be angry.
On Friday, he invites me to a play, and the tickets are front-row seats that should have been impossible to find on any budget, and all through the second act I feel the heat of him through the chiffon of my dress.
On Sunday, a message from Lev makes me laugh out loud.
Lev
Family time for three.
Who are the three?
Lev
You, me, and Milo. The baby doesn’t need a seat yet.
I laugh until my stomach truly aches.
We take Milo to the aquarium while Lev’s injuries keep healing. Milo holds both of our hands and marches us between the tanks like a small general directing his troops.
“Seahorse dads are the ones who give birth,” Milo announces at the seahorse tank. “Did you know that?”
“I know that now,” Lev says calmly, his lips curving up in a smile. Then he adds, dry as bone, “Although the seahorse father at least got asked about it first.”
“Then why can’t you give birth for Delaney?” Milo asks.
Lev goes silent, and I laugh so hard I have to lean my forehead against the cool glass.
“I didn’t make contingency arrangements in advance,” Lev says finally, clearing his throat.
“What about next time?” Milo asks.
“There’s not going to be a next time,” I say firmly.
Lev’s hand settles lightly on the small of my waist, warm through my shirt. “We can discuss that part later,” he says with a low, gravelly hint of a laugh, unhurried, as though the matter is already half decided.
I glare at him, and he is entirely unbothered by it, and Milo is already tugging us both toward the next tank before I can argue.
When Milo darts off to the shark tunnel, I turn to check Lev’s wound, shucking open the top of his coat to see the dressing. I sway forward, too close, and his cedar scent, warm and inviting, folds all the way around me.
“One more button,” he says, so low I feel it more than hear it from his chest, and his hand comes up to cover mine over the buttons, not stopping me, only resting there. “One more, and I cannot promise to keep my composure with a child watching the sharks thirty feet away.”
The sound of him swallowing is audible in the quiet, and my own arousal is so apparent that I have to look away.
I button the coat back up and step away, and my ears burn hot. “Behave,” I say, and it comes out as a whispery request. His easy joking, a lazy threat to debauch me in public, catches me off guard, because I never once expected it from him.
My life fills up completely with work, Milo, checkups, and whatever Lev has planned next. Maksim’s messages pile up on my phone, and most days I’m too exhausted to answer a single one of them.
One afternoon, after a checkup, Maksim storms into Lev’s office ahead of me. “Explain your fair competition to me,” he snarls.
Yuri comes in behind him without a word of apology. “I didn’t try to stop him,” he says, and leaves the two brothers their battlefield.
