Page 30 of Nikolay

Didn’t spin fast. Didn’t flinch. I just stopped walking, turned in the ugly white light, and lifted one hand between us, palm out.

“Don’t.”

He had been close enough I saw the word hit him. His mouth had already started to open. His face was set too tight, the scar by his eye pulled thin, his whole body carrying that rigid, contained strain he seemed to mistake for composure.

“Maddie—”

“Seriously, don’t.”

My voice came out low and even, exactly the way I wanted it. No shake in it. No tears. No strain. If he wanted a scene, he was going to have to perform both parts himself.

He stopped a few feet away.

Under the fluorescent lights, he looked wrong somehow. Too formal for the corridor. Too big. Too beautiful, if I were being honest enough to hate myself for it. His dark shirt fit him like sin with a tailor, and his hair was still perfectly neat, as if that hand hadn’t been buried in another woman’s ponytail five minutes ago. The orderliness of him made me want to break something.

He took one step forward. “You saw—”

“I did.” I shifted. “And I should probably thank you.”

That checked him harder than the raised palm had.

I smiled without warmth. “No, really. Thank you. Because for a little while today, after you came to my room and stood there looking like maybe you’d finally realized I was a human being, I started to think I had you wrong.”

His jaw flexed.

I kept going before he could interrupt, because if I gave him room he would fill it with some careful sentence I did not want, and I was too close to wounded to survive courtesy from him.

“That was my mistake. I understand now.” I tipped my head a little. “Fully. No ambiguity left. Which is honestly a relief.”

“Maddie, listen to me.”

“No.”

That one came out flat as a blade. I saw him feel it anyway.

“You do not need to explain yourself to me,” I said. “And you sure as hell do not need to spare my feelings. I don’t have any feelings about this.”

A lie, obviously. A bad one. But I said it clean, and sometimes that counted for enough.

Something moved in his expression then. Not belief. Not exactly. More like pain that had missed its proper door and shown up in the wrong place. I did not trust it. Not after what I had just seen. Not after weeks of him making his own discomfort my problem and then staring at me like I was the one who’d created the mess.

“I mean it,” I said. “You clearly want anyone but me. Message received. Loud and clear. So thank you for removing every last shred of doubt.”

“That is not what—”

I laughed once. It sounded terrible in the corridor. “Please don’t insult both of us.”

His mouth shut.

Good.

I looked at him and saw exactly what I expected to see: a man caught. A man who had not expected me to be there. A man who would’ve preferred his little demonstration remain unseen and was now standing under fluorescent lights being forced to account for it. That hard set in his shoulders, that muscle working at his jaw, the tightness around his eyes—I knew embarrassment when I saw it. I knew inconvenience. Men had a way of turning them into offense when you witnessed something they wanted hidden.

The hurt in me got very calm.

“Whatever this thing is,” I said, making a small gesture between us with my hand, “consider it finished.”

His eyes sharpened. “There is nothing finished.”