“It was a setup,” Luka said. “She never came back. And no one was stupid enough to ask what happened to her.”
I opened my mouth—what I meant to say, I’ll never know—but Luka’s hand found the base of my throat. Not choking, just enough pressure to stop me.
“Don’t,” he said. His eyes went bright and glassy.
I fell silent, my pulse tripping under his palm.
He let go—not with a jerk but a slow, measured flex.
“I learned to take care of myself. Fast.” He rolled onto his back, bringing me with him until my cheek rested over his heart. “I looked older than I was, so no one questioned it. I learned how to lighten pockets on the trams. Learned even faster that people talk when they think no one is listening. Information is worth more than cash.” A small shrug under my hand. “The rest was easy.”
I wanted to say I understood, but I didn’t—not even close. My suburban traumas were safe by comparison—the kind they made cheesy Lifetime movies about. This loss was a different species altogether.
He exhaled hard through parted lips, the sound low and derisive. “And then I turned eighteen.”
“What happened at eighteen?”
“Mandatory military service.”
“Get caught pickpocketing?”
He shook his head. “I told you,mila. All men in Croatia were required to serve. At least back then.”
“Did you fight?”
Another shake. “No. That was the early 2000s. The war was already over. The country was still limping, but the shooting had stopped. It was mostly drills, border patrols, and cleaning up what was left.” He glided his palm down my back. “But…it’s where I discovered computers.”
I propped my chin on his sternum, watching the slow drag of breath expand and hollow his chest.
His eyes flicked past me, focused somewhere in the past. “We had two options—fix trucks or fix computers. I was shit at mechanics.” He gave a faint huff. “I ended up repairing network cables, then writing code. When they realized I could get around firewalls, they moved me to counterintelligence—monitoring message boards, scraping email servers, that sort of thing.”
I pictured a teenage Luka hunched over a dying desktop, blue-lit by CRT glow, fingers flying while the barracks slept behind him.
“So you were a government hacker.”
He shrugged. “It was more boredom than espionage. But it got me out of latrine duty.” He traced slow orbits on my lower back. “They kept me in an extra year. After that, I was dischargedand came to London for university.” A beat. “I’ve never been back.”
There was a lull—like vibration left in the air after a bell had rung itself out.
Rain pelted the window, the glass trembling with each gust of wind.
I pressed closer, sliding my palm up to the hollow at the base of his throat.
I wasn’t sure what to say that wouldn’t sound like therapy or pity. So I kept it simple.
“Thank you for trusting me with that.”
He didn’t move. Just breathed in—a fill so deep it must have stung.
Then he rolled us, pinning me to the mattress with his body and the full weight of his attention. His hands—usually so sure, so precise—hovered for a moment before settling at my jaw, palms warm and careful against my face.
He looked at me—not through me, not at the idea of me.
At me.
The blue of his eyes—normally glacial, impenetrable—had gone almost liquid with the unguarded exposure of finally being seen.
He bent his head and kissed me. Just a brush at first. Careful. Testing. Lips that had spoken violence and ruin hours before. I felt the hunger, held in abeyance, an undertow beneath the surface. But he didn’t take.