The room felt smaller than it was.
Antonio smirked, his eyes flicking between them. “This,” he said, pointing, “is progress.”
Alex and Nikolai sat close—closer than they ever had before. Their hands were intertwined, fingers locked in a way that felt too natural, too easy. Their knees touched beneath the table, a simple point of contact that shouldn’t have meant anything. But it did.
Nikolai felt it.
He wasn’t sure how they ended up like this. The moment he sat down, he had instinctively moved toward her, and to his surprise, she had done the same. It was unconscious, effortless.
But now that Antonio had pointed it out, Nikolai was afraid to move. Afraid to look at her.
Because if he did, if he let himself acknowledge what was happening, he wasn’t sure what he would do.
Today had be
