Chapter 9: Don't Come Near Me

BRABRA

The two days after the meeting room pass in a strange, careful quiet.

He doesn't call. He doesn't show up at the office. For a while, I let myself believe that means he's decided to let it go, that whatever he saw in my face that day wasn't enough to hold onto once he had time to think it over. I almost convince myself of it by Wednesday evening, tired enough from another long day that hoping feels easier than worrying.

I should know better by now. Hope has never once made things easier for me.

He doesn't wait long.

Two days after the meeting room, he shows up at the small café near my apartment, the one I've walked past a hundred times but never actually visited until tonight, when exhaustion and hunger finally win out over my determination to go straight home.

I'm halfway through ordering when I feel it — that same shift in the air I've learned to recognize now, the quiet that follows him into any room he enters.

"Brabra."

I turn slowly, my order forgotten on my lips. He's standing just inside the door, out of place again in his dark coat among the mismatched chairs and chalkboard menu, watching me like he's been waiting for exactly this moment to find me somewhere I can't easily walk away from.

"Are you following me?" The words come out sharper than I intend, fear dressed up as anger because anger is easier to hold onto.

"I had a meeting three blocks from here." His voice is steady, but there's an edge underneath it now, something worn thin by two days of silence he clearly didn't want. "I saw you through the window."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he admits. "It isn't."

The barista calls my name for a drink I don't remember finishing ordering, and I take it with hands that aren't quite steady, using the small task to buy myself a few seconds I desperately need.

"We need to talk," he says, once I've stepped aside from the counter, once there's no more excuse left to hide behind.

"I don't have anything else to say."

"You didn't have anything to say two days ago either. That hasn't stopped being a lie just because you've had time to practice it."

The accusation lands harder than I expect, mostly because it's true, and I hate him a little for saying it out loud in the middle of a crowded café where I can't fall apart the way I want to.

"Please," I say, quieter now, glancing at the people around us, at the curious glance from the woman two tables over. "Not here."

"Then where, Brabra? Because you won't answer my calls. You have your coworker run interference every time I come by your office. And the one time I finally get close enough to ask you directly, you disappear behind a lie so thin I could see through it before you finished saying it."

"You don't get to demand answers from me." My voice shakes, but I don't back down, some old, stubborn part of me refusing to fold no matter how badly the rest of me wants to. "You don't get to just decide you're owed the truth because you're used to people telling you whatever you want to hear."

Something flashes across his face, quick and sharp. "This isn't about what I'm used to."

"Isn't it?" I step back as he steps closer, putting the small table between us like it might actually protect me from anything. "You show up at my office. You show up here. You corner me in hallways and meeting rooms until I have nowhere left to run, and you call that concern, but it feels like control, Andriy. It feels exactly like every reason I didn't tell you in the first place."

His jaw tightens. For a moment, something that looks almost like hurt moves behind his eyes, quickly smoothed back into that careful, controlled mask he wears so well.

"I'm not trying to control you," he says, quieter now. "I'm trying to understand what's happening to a woman who won't stop flinching every time I get within ten feet of her."

"Maybe I flinch because every time you get close, I lose a little more ground in a fight I'm not ready to have yet."

"Then let's have it. Right now. Whatever it is—"

"Don't." The word comes out louder than I mean it to, sharp enough that the woman two tables over glances up again. I lower my voice, but I don't soften it. "Don't come near me, Andriy. Not until I'm ready. You don't get to force this out of me just because you're impatient and used to getting your way."

He goes very still.

"Is that really what you think this is?" His voice has dropped low, rough at the edges in a way I haven't heard from him before. "Impatience?"

"What else would it be?"

"I don't know." He runs a hand through his hair, the first genuinely unguarded gesture I've ever seen from him, frustration breaking through the careful control for just a moment before he catches himself. "Maybe I actually care what happens to you. Did that possibility ever cross your mind?"

The words hit somewhere soft and unprotected, somewhere I don't have an answer ready for, and for one dangerous second I feel my resolve wobble.

I steady it anyway.

"You don't know me well enough to care, Andriy. Not really. You know one night, and one hallway, and one meeting room where I fell apart in front of you because I didn't have a choice."

"Then let me know more."

"I can't." My voice breaks on the second word, and I hate how visible the crack is, how little I have left to hide it with. "I need space. I need you to actually respect that instead of showing up wherever I go until I have no choice but to answer you."

He studies me for a long, silent moment, something working behind his eyes that I can't read anymore, too tired and too raw to try.

"Fine," he says finally, and the word costs him something, I can hear it. "Space. For now."

"Thank you."

"But this isn't over, Brabra." He says it quietly, without anger, which somehow makes it land harder than if he'd shouted it. "Whatever you're protecting yourself from — I'm not going away. I'm just going to stop chasing you through hallways to prove it."

He leaves before I can answer, the bell above the door ringing behind him the same way it did the night I walked into that pharmacy weeks ago, small and bright and entirely unaware of how much it's just marked the end of something.

I sit down hard in the nearest chair, my drink forgotten, both hands finally free to press against my stomach the way they've wanted to since the moment he walked through that door.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, to no one, to everyone. "I'm sorry it has to be like this."

I don't know if I'm apologizing to him, or to the two small lives I'm still trying so hard to protect, or to the version of myself who used to believe she'd never have to choose between her own safety and someone else's right to the truth.

Maybe I'm apologizing to all three.

• • •

I walk home slowly that night, my arms wrapped around myself against the cold, replaying every word of that conversation until it wears smooth from repetition, the way worry always does.

Did that possibility ever cross your mind?

It has now. That's the problem. Somewhere between the meeting room and the café, some careful, protected part of me let itself wonder what it might feel like to stop fighting him, to let someone else carry even a fraction of what I've been carrying alone for weeks.

I climb the twenty-two stairs to my apartment slower than usual, my legs heavy with an exhaustion that has nothing to do with the walk.

Inside, I go straight to the planner tucked in my bag, flipping to the back pages where the small black-and-white printout still waits between grocery lists and half-finished notes. I trace the two small shapes with the tip of my finger the way I have every night since the appointment.

"He wants to know you," I whisper. "I saw it in his face today. He wasn't lying about that, even if I don't know what to do with it yet."

The shapes don't answer. They never do. But for the first time since this all began, the silence in my apartment doesn't feel quite as lonely as it used to.

I fold the printout carefully back into place and sit at my kitchen table a while longer, both hands resting over my stomach, turning his words over one more time before I finally let myself go to bed.

Maybe I actually care what happens to you.

I don't know yet what to do with a sentence like that. But I know I'm going to be thinking about it long after tonight, whether I want to or not.