I poked Kaandor with my finger and was about to spill everything that had been building up inside me lately, but there was a knock on the door—three short taps.
"Yes?"
"Can I come in?" Stas asked from the other side.
"One second, wait." Caught up in the chaos of the bathroom, I hadn't had time to get dressed. Now I was hastily pulling on the T-shirt and leggings I had brought with me. The fabric was already damp from cleaning, but there was no better option.
"Are you getting dressed?"
"Yeah." I frowned in confusion, wondering whether he was guessing or if vampire hearing was sharp enough to distinguish every sound through the door. If it was the latter, then he'd heard everything Kaandor and I had discussed. Well, maybe not everything—Stas didn't have magical abilities like Max, so he had probably only heard my side of the conversation.
A soft chuckle came from behind the door.
"Asya," he said, suspiciously gentle, "what haven't I seen yet?"
If there had been a wardrobe in the bathroom, I would've run to it, ripping the hangers off and throwing on anything I could find just to cover every inch of skin. I wasn't ready to joke about our closeness, but I forced myself to answer him the way I normally would. I wasn't Tatyana, and I wasn't going to fall at his feet at a snap of his fingers. Yes, what happened happened—but what if it meant far more to me than it did to him?
"Just don't tell me you remember everything clearly."
"Yeah…" he sighed, and I almost wished the floor would swallow me whole.
"Just come in already."
The door opened slowly. Stas's gaze slid over me first, then over the bathroom still in chaos. He whistled and leaned against the wall, looking damn pleased with the destruction.
"I didn't even notice how we got out of here. What a mess we left behind," he said.
"Not that you would've cleaned it up," I replied.
"Hell no." Stas snickered and reached his hand out to help me up.
I stared at his palm for a heartbeat, noticing the change in him. Stas was standing closer now—more confidently—and I no longer sensed any barrier between us. Could this really be how things would be from now on?Or was I simply seeing what I wanted to see?
I took his hand and got up, but at the last moment my foot slipped, and I fell into Stas's open arms. The familiar scent of rosemary, pine, and musk washed over me—the fragrance he always carried. I wondered again whether it was his natural scent or a cologne. My gaze dropped to the floor as I tried to breathe as little as possible, hoping not to let the smell overwhelm my senses again.
Stas's hands slid around my waist, and the touch sent shivers racing up my spine. His closeness drove me wild, trapping me in that endless moment and making me forget everything else.
"You can let go," I said uncertainly, giving him the chance to step back. "I'm steady now."
I felt his hands tense at my words. His tone shifted, becoming cold, like the November wind.
"As you wish," he replied.
The crunch of shattered glass. Just like that, the magic of the moment was gone. And it was all my fault.
Stas deliberately stepped back, raking his hands through the wild mess of his hair, sticking up after sleep. Even that careless chaos suited him unbearably well.
"Stas…" I began, but he silenced me with a sharp gesture.
"Don't. I get it." He turned away.
"What do you get?"
The words hung in the air, unanswered. Another silence, another brick laid atop the wall I had spent half a year building between us.
It was dangerous for him to be near me. And I was not the kind of girl who could ever fit into Stas's plans for eternity.
He took another step back and hissed, jerking his foot away as if stung. Something sharp had pricked him. He crouched to inspect the floor. From beneath the dresser jutted the betraying corner of his personal diary.
"How much did you read?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the cover.
"Nothing." I bent down, picked up the diary, and found myself standing so close to him that every nerve in me coiled tight. I was terrified that if I touched him again, the fragile calm I clung to would fracture. "I won't read it."
Stas shot me a quick look, his eyes flickering with something between disbelief and disappointment.
"But why?" His voice cracked with the anguish of someone on the edge of despair. "I gave it to you myself. You have every right to read it—every page, every line, to interpret it however you want. But to know. To know it was me who wrote those words."
He snatched the diary back, flipping frantically through the pages, eyes darting as though chasing a memory.
"Here—this is your first day at school." He turned a few more pages. "And here—when you lost your phone in the forest. Here—"
He rambled on, each recollection striking me like a hammer blow on an anvil, forcing me to relive days I most wanted to forget. Carefree days I once thought were hard, but looking back now, I realized how wrong I'd been. If only someone had told me how it would all turn out—what I would become, and why—I would never have set foot in this town. I'd have avoided Nick. I'd have guarded myself against those sudden shifts in mood that had been planted in me from outside. And I would have stayed far, far away from the Smirnov family.
But time couldn't be rewound. And the last thing I wanted was to relive mistakes already woven tightly into my daily life—threaded with ash, mystery, and death.
"Enough!"
My palm slammed down on the open diary, fingers sliding against the paper as I knocked it from Stas's hands. The spine smacked the floor with a sharp crack.
"You have to read it!" Stas bent quickly to retrieve it, and I cursed under my breath, thinking how much he reminded me of Kaandor in that moment.
"No. If it really mattered to you, you would have given it to me yourself—not through Arthur, like a coward."
"You mean to say you would have taken it then?"
"No," I shot back, my voice brimming with indignation, arms folded tight against my chest so I wouldn't strike the cursed book from his hands again.
Exasperated, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling, just as frustrated as I was, and finally spread his arms helplessly.
"And what difference would that have made?"
"Everything!"
"Stop lying. At least to yourself."
"I'm not lying. You should have given it to me yourself."
Stas rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily, searching for logic where no one else would have found it either. But it mattered to me. It really did. In his gesture with the diary, I felt no trust. If anything, the opposite.
"What would be the point, if you wouldn't have taken it?!" For the first time, his voice rose in a shout.
"Because I'm not your Tatyana!" The words slipped out before I could stop them. My eyes stung as tears welled, born from the countless fragments of things he had once said about love.
"So that's it," he said bitterly, lips twisting into a crooked, pained smile.
"I won't trail after you like some loyal dog."
"I never asked you to," he murmured, gaze sliding away. "If only you'd agreed to read the diary, you would have understood everything long ago."
"Then tell me. Tell me what it is I don't understand!"
"Oh no." He gestured vaguely, his hand sweeping over me, as my vision blurred with tears. "Not like this. Not under these circumstances."
He let out a heavy sigh, running his hand over the back of his head.
"This isn't how I imagined it."
I wanted to tell Stas how tired I was of the half-truths and the games he preferred to play instead of simply speaking "with actual words." I drew in a sharp breath, ready to spill everything that had been stuck in my throat like a lump, when Stas suddenly turned toward the door and motioned for silence.
The look on his face was so tense, so wary, that my defiance instantly faltered, and I listened. The sound of rhythmic footsteps echoed down the corridor, growing more confident, more forceful, as if the person was about to break into a run.
"Someone's coming."
"So what? It's not even night yet."
Stas's jaw tightened. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with a weary gesture, as if he already knew just how much trouble he was in.
"I know exactly whose stride that is."
The moment his gaze flicked toward the door, a heavy pounding shook it—loud, relentless, as though whoever was on the other side would keep at it until it finally opened. Stas reached for the handle, but I caught his hand.
"Are you insane? You're practically naked. You're only wearing trunks."
"So what?" He frowned. "They're swim trunks, not underwear."
"Cover yourself with something. Anything."
"With what?" He spread his arms. "The robe's still wet."
"Wait." I rushed back into the room, rummaging through my things for something—anything—that might work. "Just don't open the door."
"All right, all right," he answered, irritated, folding his arms across his chest. The pounding went on, relentless. Whoever was out there had the stamina of a machine—how hadn't their hand fallen off yet?
Finally, I pulled out a loose gray hoodie from beneath a pile of clothes, crumpled it up, and tossed it at him. Stas caught it midair and quickly pulled it on while I racked my brain for what to do about the rest. The towels, like the robe, were soaked, and the only bottoms I had—aside from my leggings—were my skinny jeans.
"Can you fit into these?"
I held up the jeans, but Stas only gestured toward his thighs. Of course. They were muscular, athletic, defined—nothing like my own slim legs. I never thought of myself as thin, more simply slender, but next to him I felt fragile, like a matchstick.
"I need something that stretches."
Leggings it would have to be. The image of him in my skin-tight leggings nearly made me laugh, but Stas, unbothered, began pulling them on one leg at a time. I could see the effort it cost him, each tug deliberate, forceful. When he finally managed, I gave a quick tug at the hem of the hoodie, trying to make him look at least somewhat decent. But there was no fixing it: the gap between hoodie and leggings left a strip of bare skin at his waist. Suddenly, I wasn't laughing anymore.
Impossible as it seemed, even in clothes that so obviously didn't fit, I still felt drawn to him. That treacherous illusion—that there could be something real, something genuine between us—crept back into my chest, the blade already poised to pierce.
But I knew Stas. And I knew he wasn't looking for anything serious.