Chapter 16: The Wrong Bed
The door to Jennie’s room clicked shut behind him with a finality that echoed in his bones. The hallway was dark, lit only by the pale moonlight filtering through a tall window at the end. It painted the Persian runner in stripes of silver and deep blue.
Leonid leaned against the doorframe, his head thumping back against the wood. He could still feel her. The weight of her in his arms, the way she’d gone limp with trust as he laid her on the massive bed. She hadn’t asked him to stay, not with words. She’d just held his wrist, her fingers a cool bracelet, and stared at him until the silence became a language of its own. He’d waited until her eyelids fluttered, heavy, and only then had he pried her fingers loose, one by one. She made a small, wounded noise in her sleep.
His shirt was damp where her tears had soaked through.
He pushed off the wall and walked, his boots soundless on the thick carpet. The mansion was a tomb at this hour, all its daytime grandeur reduced to shadows and sleeping dust. He didn’t have a destination until he found himself outside Mina’s door.
A sliver of light glowed underneath it.
He stood there for a long minute, his hand raised, hovering near the polished brass knob. He could turn, go to the guest room, avoid this. Let the fracture sit until morning, until polite conversation could paper over the chasm. He dropped his hand. He turned the knob and went in.
Mina’s room smelled of lavender and the faint, sweet vanilla of her perfume. It was violently orderly. The dolls on the vanity were perfectly aligned. The textbooks on her desk formed a neat, right-angled stack. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, still in the cream-colored dress. She wasn’t crying now. She was just sitting, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the pattern on the rug.
She looked up when he entered. Her face was pale, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed. The sight was a physical blow.
“Hey,” he said, his voice rough.
“Hey.” Her voice was scraped raw.
He shut the door behind him, the click loud in the quiet. He didn’t move further into the room. The space between them felt charged, like a field after a lightning strike.
“Is she asleep?” Mina asked, her gaze dropping back to the rug.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” She swallowed. A long, quiet moment stretched, brittle and thin. Then she looked up again, her eyes finding his with a directness that made his chest tight. “Is it true?”
He knew what she meant. The question hung in the lavender-scented air. Did you choose her?
He opened his mouth. The denial was there, ready, automatic. It’s not like that. She’s unwell. She needed comfort. The words were ash before they left his tongue. He couldn’t give them to her. Not to Mina, who saw everything.
His silence was the answer.
A tremor went through her. She stood up, slowly, as if her bones ached. She crossed the room toward him, each step measured. She stopped so close he could see the individual flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the tiny fracture lines in her lower lip where she’d bitten it.
“You did,” she whispered. Not a question. A verdict.
She lifted her hand and pressed her palm flat against his chest, right over his heart. Her hand was cold. He knew she could feel the frantic, guilty hammering beneath his ribs.
“You always were a wild thing, Leonid,” she said, her voice soft with a terrible sadness. “I knew that. I liked it. It was exciting. A fuck boy with a good heart.” A weak, broken imitation of a smile touched her lips and vanished. “I just didn’t think your heart would lead you to her. Over me.”
Her fingers curled, bunching the fabric of his shirt—the same shirt Jennie had buried her face in. Her knuckles were white.
Then she pulled.
It was a desperate, clumsy motion. She pulled him down and pressed her mouth to his. The kiss tasted of salt and loss. It was not sweet. It was a claim, a battle fought with lips and teeth and trembling hands. Her hands fumbled at his waist, fingers fighting with the buckle of his belt.
He caught her wrists, gentle but firm, breaking the kiss. She was breathing hard, tears streaming down her cheeks silently now.
“Mina,” he said, her name a plea.
“Don’t,” she choked out. “Don’t say my name like that. Not when you smell like her.” She wrenched her hands free, but she didn’t step back. She leaned her forehead against his collarbone, her body shuddering with suppressed sobs. “What did you do with her? In that room?”
“Nothing. I put her to sleep.”
“Before. At the hospital. What did you do?” She looked up, her eyes searching his. “She looked at you like… like you’d given her the moon. I’ve never seen her look at anything like that.”
He couldn’t lie. Not with Mina’s heart breaking against him. “I was just there,” he murmured, the confession dragged from somewhere dark and true. “I just… was there.”
Mina understood. She always understood. Being there for Jennie wasn’t a casual act; it was a profound event, a seismic shift in her barren landscape. It was everything.
She nodded, a slow, devastating acceptance. Her hands came up again, but this time they just rested on his shoulders, holding on as if to a ledge. “I love her too, you know. She’s my sister. I’ve spent my life trying to help her, trying to be the bridge.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “I didn’t know I was building a bridge for you to cross over to her.”
She stepped back, out of his space. The cold air rushed in where her warmth had been.
“You should go,” she said, turning her back to him, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Mina—”
“Go back to her room, Leonid. Or go to the guest room. I don’t care.” Her voice was flat, emptied. “Just don’t be here with me smelling like her, feeling like a consolation prize. I’m not that girl.”
He stood, paralyzed, the truth of her words carving him hollow. He had chosen. The wild thing in him had followed a scent more compelling than stability, more magnetic than warm, sane love. He had chosen the quiet, twisting stairs over the sunlit foyer.
He left without another word. The hallway swallowed him, darker now. As he passed Jennie’s door, he paused. He thought he heard a faint, sighing breath from within. A contented sound.
He didn’t go in. He walked past, down the hall to the empty guest room, where he sat on the edge of a cold, perfect bed in the dark, the ghosts of two sisters clinging to his skin.