Chapter Thirty-Six: Enter Softly, Leave Nothing Disturbed
Nikolai – First Person POV
She said I could come back.
Not with a smile.
Not as a gift.
Not with a kiss hidden inside the sentence.
Just those four words—You can come back tomorrow.
They landed in my chest like something both fragile and holy.
A door opening that I knew better than to push.
A “yes” whispered from a woman who had once built whole walls to survive me.
And now, she was asking me to enter without asking to stay.
So I prepared.
Not as a lover.
As a student.
Of her.
Of the silence.
Of the sacredness I never used to notice between her movements.
**
Sleep didn’t find me that night.
It never does when I’m waiting for something I’m terrified I might not deserve.
But it wasn’t the old panic this time.
It
