Page 77 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

Praying they couldn’t read our love on our faces.

That’s what the Party wanted, wasn’t it?Uniformity.Erasure.No edges, no shadows, no love unless it fit inside a wedding ring and a birth certificate.Any spark of individuality had to be stamped out before it could catch flame.

What were we?

A risk.

A glitch in the system.

A fire burning beneath the frost.

And there was no future for that.Not here.Not now.

I sipped my vodka and smiled when someone made a joke, and the laughter roared back like a wave, drowning out the silence between me and Dimitri.But in that silence, I heard the thing I feared most.

Dimitri was slipping away.

ChapterTwenty-Three

Petyr

Arooster crowed, as if the damn thing knew I was trying to pretend everything was fine.It wasn’t ours.The bird was probably at one of the neighbor’s dacha.If I had a knife, I’d race out into the morning darkness and silence the bastard.

My eyes cracked open and my head throbbed like someone had slammed a pipe against it.The dry taste of last night’s vodka lingered on my tongue, bitter and clinging.I was on the floor—Jesus, the floor—with a towel wadded under my head like a sad excuse for a pillow.

Someone was snoring, deep and wet, like their lungs were full of soup.Oleg, probably.A woman muttered something unintelligible in her sleep.I sat up slowly, careful not to knock over the forest of empty bottles on the coffee table.Ashtrays overflowed like miniature volcanoes, cigarette butts crammed in like fallen soldiers.The entire room stank of smoke, sweat, and vodka.

A narrow shaft of gray light slipped between the curtains, barely illuminating the wreckage of last night’s party.A blonde—Svetlana?No, her name had started with a K.Katerina.She was curled up on the sofa next to Oleg.Her face was pressed into his arm, lipstick smudged down to her chin.Which meant Larisa wasn’t here.

Shit.

The bedroom door had been shut all night.Dimitri had gone in early, said he had a headache, but I knew better.It wasn’t his head that hurt.

God, had Larisa gone in there?

I ran a hand over my face.I didn’t want to finish that thought.

The other guys were flopped over chairs, slumped against walls, passed out wherever their bodies had given up on them.One of them, I think it was Pavel, let out a grunt and rolled over, dragging a blanket half off the armchair.

The rooster crowed again.Mocking bastard.

I wanted to rewind time.Just a single day.Make the visitors vanish, erase the laughter, the music, the mindless gossip.Let it just be us.Dimitri and me.Like it should’ve been from the start.

But I’d done nothing to stop it.I’d smiled and offered drinks.I’d played the perfect host.Like a good little comrade.

Was I really that much of a coward?

Maybe.Or maybe I’d just learned too well how to survive.Learned the hard way that men like me don’t get to have choices.We smile and play along, burying the truth so deep inside that even we forget it’s there.

But Dimitri hadn’t buried anything.He was still burning.Still aching with it.And I’d handed him a weekend full of noise and strangers and lies.

I rubbed my hands over my face again, digging my palms into my eyes like I could push the memories back into darkness.All I’d ever wanted was for him to be happy.Safe.But I’d made him anything but.

And still, I wanted to make it right.

Heavy footsteps creaked across the wood floor, slow and deliberate, like thunder wrapped in boots.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

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