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I stared at the red stain on his lips.“Didn’t that cut your tongue up?”
He stared at me for a moment and shrugged.
Okay, then.“I can’t believe you’re here,” I muttered as I taped his cut closed with a bandage.
“Believe it. I’ve been in New York a long time.” His eyes never quite met mine.
Did he feel awkward? Was he uncomfortable? Was he married? Involved with someone? What was his life like now? Why did he lie to me? The questions rushing through my brain wouldn’t quiet.
“I haven’t. We only moved back a few months ago.” I wondered how honest I should be with him. He was different from before, but it made sense. Years had passed, long, painful years. I was different too.
“Where were you before?”
“Upstate New York, New England for a while. Boston briefly. We moved around a lot,” I confessed. “I looked for you after it all went down and when I could get away from Henry.”
“Ah, Henry. How is he?” Kirill asked, ignoring my confession.
“He’s still alive if that’s what you mean. Other than that, he’s still the same, and I still hate him.”
Kirill nodded but didn’t comment.
“What happened that night—”
“I’d rather not speak about it,” Kirill said bluntly.
His quiet words knocked me. How could we not speak about it? How could we pretend none of it happened?
“I don’t like looking back. Sometimes the past needs to die. It’s better that way,” he stated.
I nodded slowly, unsure how to respond. All Kirill and I had was the past.
I glanced down at his leg when I finished taping up his cut. “What happened to track?”
He froze. He didn’t fidget or move much as a rule, but right now, he had a deadly stillness. “I got injured and had to give it up,” he said after a long pause.
I brought my eyes to his face. It was so incredibly dear to me. I couldn’t process how handsome he was now. His awkwardness melted away into striking features, ruggedly male and thoroughly unforgettable.
“I’m so sorry. I know how much it meant to you.”
“We all lose things that mean a lot to us,” he said cryptically.
I nodded, those damn tears that hadn’t threatened me in years suddenly pressing against my eyelids. I was an emotional mess around this guy.“That’s true. I lost you,” I said, breaking the unspoken rule between us that we wouldn’t delve into the past.
Kirill tensed again, and his eyes were dark and unreadable.
A tear slipped down my cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . that night was the worst of my life—” I stopped as Kirill tugged me closer and cupped my cheek. His bandage felt scratchy against my skin.
“Don’t look back, Mallory. It doesn’t matter. Nothing that happened before matters anymore.” His words were strange and hardly comforting, but the sensation of his skin against mine was strengthening. It was everything I had waited for so long.
I looked up at his face. All those pieces of his mismatched features had come together perfectly as a man. He was striking yet serious, and I wanted to see him smile.
Impulsively, I leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. His muscles tensed beneath my touch. He didn’t move, but he didn’t push me away. I pressed my mouth more firmly against his and tentatively stroked my tongue along the seam of his lips.
I hesitated as Kirill remained still. The optimistic balloon inside my chest punctured, and hope rushed out. I’d waited so long for him, wanted him, thought about him, pinned all my lonely, desperate hopes on one day seeing him again, and he wasn’t into it.
He didn’t feel the same for me. He’d moved on.
“I’m sorry. That was random.” I pulled back, but Kirill’s hand grabbed the back of my neck and held me close.
