Ava
“I want to show you something,” Nikolai tells me when I step into the house after a very long day of classes.
I’m tired and my feet ache from shuffling between one lecture hall to the other in hopes of learning something relating to the path I chose to walk in life but am now violently cursing myself from doing.
Kira throws me a toothy grin from over her shoulder as she’s escorted back to her room by Lydia, her nanny, a grey-haired Russian woman with manners as stiff as a stick. She smiles at me politely as she ushers the little girl who’d tumbled into my legs the moment she saw me walk through the door, her tiny fists clutching the fabric of my skirt tightly like she couldn’t let go.
It took a while for her to notice me when I first came in, but when she did, she smiled at me so brightly from her father’s lap that my heart stopped right there in my chest. Is this what it feels like to be missed?
I lift a brow at Nikolai clearly confused at what he needs to show me. Today he’s dressed in something more kin to his usual wear, a pair of dark slacks and a fitted black button-down shirt.
The sleeves are rolled up to his forearms, giving me an ample view of his tattoos, and I can’t help but trace the designs with my eyes. When I finally drag my gaze back to his face, his eyes are already on me, watching me.
“Show me what?” I ask, finding his sudden enthusiasm… strange.
“It’s a surprise” is his only reply as he wraps one big calloused hand around my wrist and tugs me towards the entrance of the house. I follow him, my body a willing puppet to his movements as he pulls me behind him until we’re standing in front of the pool house.
“Oh, look, it’s a door”, I deadpan, sounding every bit as unimpressed as I feel.
He cracks a smile, and for a second, I think I’ve gone into cardiac arrest because the way my husband smiles at me sends my heart into a frenzy.
That can’t be good.
I force myself to look away, to focus on the very unimpressive door he seemed so eager to show me. “So? Are we just going to stand here and admire your impeccable taste in architecture, or is there an actual point to this?”
“There is” He toys with the words. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a key and unlocks the door.
I suck the inside of my cheek, tapping my feet lightly as the door falls open. He steps inside first and when I make no move to follow him, he turns around and gestures for me to do just that.
If this were two months ago, I would’ve had reservations about stepping into an abandoned pool house with my husband, mostly because I used to think he was a psychotic maniac who could hurt me at any moment but now…
Exhaling slowly, I take one step forward and then another, until I’m inside the pool house and standing beside Nikolai, who once again wraps his hand around my wrist and leads me deeper into the space.
I try to ignore how warm his hand feels wrapped around mine, how the roughness of his calloused fingertips contrasts with the softness of my skin. It’s distracting-annoyingly so-but I compel my mind to focus on the sight In front of me.
And when I do, I almost lose all capacity to breathe.
This isn’t the pool house anymore. The walls have been renovated, stripped bare from the inside out. A long wooden table sits in the center of the room The top is covered in brushes, palettes, and tubes of paint arranged from the lightest shade to the darkest.
The space is open-free and nothing like the studios in school. Large glass panels replace the walls on the other side of the room, allowing sunlight to flutter just along the wooden easel in the middle.
Everything about this place screams articulate care and precision which can only mean one thing.
“This…” My voice fails me. I swallow and try again. “You did this?”
I turn to face him, half expecting for him to still be at the entrance but he’s already inside, standing only a few inches away from me, his gaze focused.
The corner of his lips tilts upwards in that devastating way that does things to my lower abdomen, and he nods.
My heart doesn’t do a lot of skip but there is a lot of tripping involved. He watches me, looks at me like he’s fascinated by my very existence alone and like he can’t believe I’m real.
“Why?” The question is a single breath, one that has him closing what little distance remained between us until I have to crane my neck back to keep his gaze.
His fingers brush along my jaw, just barely, but the touch is enough to send my body breaking out in tingles. I hate how easily my body betrays me when I’m around him. I hate the way my heart pounds like I just finished running a marathon when all he does is touch me. My skin heats and I struggle to breathe when his gaze drops briefly to my lips.
“You haven’t been around much these last few days and when you are, you’re tired. You come back home late most days and nights. I just wanted to do something that will take a little bit of your stress away. I know how difficult it must be for you to always have to go to school to finish your painting, so I thought by turning this place into a painting studio, I could help make your feet feel a little less sore.”
“My feet aren’t always so…” I try to inject, but he cuts me off with a look that screams I’ve seen you rubbing your feet on baby oil at least four times this week, so there’s no need for you to even try and deny it.
I bite down on my bottom lip as he continues.
“I thought that creating a place that was closer for you to paint in would help take some of the burden off your shoulders. You don’t have to run across the city or stay up late in your school studio anymore. You can do that here, in the space I’ve created just for you.”
My mouth feels like sandpaper, and an odd emotion clogs my throat. “I don’t know what to say.”
He shrugs like it’s no big deal, “You can start with a thank you, Solnyshko”
My throat tightens, and I struggle to swallow past the overwhelming range of emotions rising inside me. No one has ever done anything like this for me before. Not my father, not anyone. But Nikolai, the man I’ve spent weeks trying to convince myself I hated, did and he’d done it because he hated seeing me suffer.
Where did he even find the time to prepare all of this? Now that he’s fully healed, Nikolai has spent every waking minute cooped up in his office trying to meet up with whatever work he hadn’t done when he was gone.
When did he even find the time to turn this place into… well… this?
“You make me feel so confused” I don’t mean to say it out loud but I do because it’s true. Nikolai confuses me.
The pad of his fingertips skims lower until he’s gripping my chin. “It wasn’t my intention”, he says, but something about the way he says it tells me that he doesn’t mean it. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this is just the beginning, and he intends to jumble my feelings even more, and strangely, I’m okay with that.
Nikolai still hasn’t moved and I probably should say something, maybe pull away and inform him that the way he’s looking at me makes this feel more than a simple kind gesture, But I don’t.
Instead, I reach up and cradle his jaw in my palm. He leans into my touch and I allow myself to relish in the warm sensation of his skin against my palm. The rough stubble on his jaw prickles my fingers, grounding me in this moment-this impossible, fragile moment.
“Thank you,” I murmur. The corner of his nose wrinkles slightly and I add, “For all of this.”
I rise on my toes, pressing a soft kiss right on his cheek.
When I come back down, a slow smile spreads across his lips, the kind that’s both cocky and pleased and I can easily tell that he enjoyed my little show of gratitude.
“I’m glad you like it,” he murmurs, his voice softer than I expected.
His thumb brushes over my chin before trailing down to my lips, lingering there as if testing to see my reaction. My breathing shallows, but I don’t pull away. I should, but I don’t.
I don’t know how long we stand there for but when Nikolai’s hand slips behind my neck and into my hair, my lips part.
This feels…
We haven’t kissed since the night of our date, and right now, it’s what I want more than anything. To feel his lips on mine, have his taste on my tongue. Something shifts in the air between us, and as I tilt my head towards him, desperate to close what little the distance separates our lips, he tightens his hold around the nape of my neck, keeping me in place.
My pulse dips when he leans his forehead against mine and inhales.
He smells good. Like cinnamon and pinecones and everything wrong and right in this world.
He’s so close, our lips barely have any space between them. Our breaths mingle in the charged air between us and my heart is pounding so loudly, I swear he can hear it.
Thump thump thump.
I close my eyes, preparing myself for the contact I know is about to come, when…
It never does.
His grip on my nape tightens for the briefest second before he exhales slowly, a shuddering breath that fans across my lips.
The sound that leaves me is almost too whiny but Nikolai doesn’t seem at all affected by it. If anything, he doesn’t care. He pulls away, dropping his hand from my hair and steps back.
“Do you want to check it out?” He asks, his voice lighter like his lips weren’t just inches away from mine a second ago.
“Yeah” I reply ignoring the wild flutter in my chest
His mouth curves in an understanding tilt. “I’ll leave you to it then”, he says.
I nod stiffly, unsure of what to say.
Then, without another word, he turns and walks away, leaving me standing alone in the studio he built for me with my body still tingling where it longed to be pressed to his.