By the time they finally spilled out of the lounge, the night had fully settled into something mean. The campus walkways stretched out under yellow lamps, and the cold hit her like a wall—sharp, immediate, cutting straight through the thin cotton of her crop top. Mina's arms wrapped around herself before she could stop it, her fingers digging into her own biceps as a shiver rolled through her.

"Fuck," she breathed, the word fogging in front of her face.

Beside her, Vlad made a sound—low, amused, Russian. "You say that every time."

"Because it's a betrayal every time." She hugged herself tighter, her nipples tightening into hard peaks beneath the fabric, visible and obvious and completely beyond her control. "How is it already winter. It was literally summer last week."

"It is almost November, malyshka." He said the word like it was nothing—like it didn't send a pulse of heat straight through her chest. "You live here. You know this."

"Knowing and accepting are different things."

He laughed again, that low rumble she felt in her ribs, and then he was already moving—shrugging off his jacket with one of those effortless motions that made her want to scream. The dark fabric came away from his shoulders, and underneath it his long-sleeve shirt stretched across his chest, clinging to the ridges of muscle she'd spent the last two hours trying not to stare at.

"Here." He stepped closer, and the cold air was replaced by his heat, his proximity, the clean sweat-and-fabric-softener smell of him. "You shake like a leaf. It's embarrassing to watch."

"I'm not shaking—"

The jacket came down over her shoulders, heavy and warm and saturated with him. His hands settled on the collar, pulling it closed at her throat, and his knuckles brushed her chin—barely a graze, barely anything at all, and her breath stopped.

Vlad didn't notice. He was focused on the jacket, tugging it straight, his brow furrowed in that way he got when he was concentrating. Like she was a problem he was solving. Like taking care of her was a task he'd assigned himself.

"There," he said, stepping back to look at her. His gray eyes swept over her, assessing. "Better."

The jacket swallowed her. It hung past her hips, the sleeves covering her hands, and she had to push the cuffs back just to free her fingers. It smelled like him—that mixture of fabric softener and salt and something underneath that was just Vlad, the thing she breathed in when he leaned close, the thing she caught on his pillow those rare nights she let herself imagine.

She wanted to press her face into the collar and die.

"Thanks," she managed, and her voice came out smaller than she meant. Softer. That thing it did around him, that helpless softening she couldn't control.

He smiled—just a small one, a quirk at the corner of his mouth—and dropped his arm around her shoulders. His hand found her far shoulder, his fingers curving over the jacket's fabric, and he pulled her into his side with an ease that said this is nothing, this is what friends do, this doesn't mean anything.

Her body went liquid.

The heat of him was immediate, overwhelming. His side pressed against hers, solid and warm, and she could feel every ridge of muscle through his sleeve, could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, could smell him more now, enveloped in his jacket and tucked against his body like she belonged there.

She didn't belong there. She knew it. He didn't know it. That was the whole tragedy.

"You okay?" His voice came from above her, and she tilted her head back to look at him. His jaw was right there, sharp and stubbled, the line of it cutting clean against the dark sky.

"Yeah." Liar. "Just cold."

"I told you to wear a real jacket."

"This is a real jacket. It's yours."

He huffed a laugh. "Smart girl."

Smart girl. Two words, tossed off like nothing. Like she wasn't losing her mind pressed against his body, her nipples hard against the fabric of her crop top and his jacket, her thong riding up as she walked in her low-rise jeans, the lace edge of it probably visible with every step. She was a disaster of exposed skin and visible underwear and a crush so obvious Dmitri had figured it out in five seconds.

And Vlad? Vlad was talking about the movie.

"—and the timeline makes no sense," he was saying, his voice rumbling through his chest, through her. "If the villain had access to that technology from the beginning, why wait? It's a plot hole. A big one."

"Mm." She had no idea what movie he was talking about. She'd been in the lounge for two hours and had absorbed exactly zero percent of the conversation. "Yeah, totally. Huge plot hole."

He glanced down at her, one eyebrow raised. "You weren't listening."

"I was listening."

"What was the movie called?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Heard the trap a second too late.

His laugh was warm, genuine, and he squeezed her shoulder. "You are a terrible liar, malyshka. It's actually impressive."

She buried her face against his shoulder, partly from embarrassment, partly because she couldn't help it, partly because his shoulder was right there and she wanted to be closer. "Shut up."

"I'm not making fun. It's cute."

Cute. Another word that meant nothing. Another word she'd replay for a week.

They walked like that—him talking, her pretending to listen, the cold air biting at her bare legs while the rest of her stayed wrapped in his heat. The campus was quiet, most students already tucked into their dorms or apartments, and the path stretched ahead of them under the yellow lamps. Her apartment was a ten-minute walk from the student union, and she'd made it a hundred times. She'd never made it like this.

His thumb traced a slow, absent circle on her shoulder. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it. It was just him, just the way Vlad touched her—casually, constantly, completely unaware that every brush of his fingers left a trail of fire on her skin.

"—and then at the end," he was saying, "he chooses the girl. But it's the wrong girl. The setup clearly implies the other one was the real connection, but the writers chickened out."

"That's annoying."

"It's lazy." He said it with genuine outrage, like bad writing was a personal insult. "They built the whole arc and then abandoned it for a happy ending that didn't make sense."

"What would you have done?"

He considered it, his brow furrowed again. She watched his face—the way his lips pressed together, the way his jaw tightened—and felt something crack open in her chest. She wanted to reach up and touch his cheek. She wanted to trace the line of his jaw with her finger. She wanted him to look at her the way he looked at movie plot holes: focused, intense, like she mattered enough to get wrong.

"I would have let him lose," he said finally. "The painful choice is the honest one. He doesn't always get the girl. Sometimes he has to live with the consequence of his own mistakes."

She blinked. "That's dark for you."

He shrugged, and the motion shifted her against his side. "Dark doesn't mean wrong. Happy endings are nice. Earned endings are better."

The words settled in her chest, heavy and strange. She wondered what kind of ending he thought they were in. Whether he could see the arc she was living—the girl who wanted, the friend who didn't see, the distance between them that she kept trying to close.

They reached her building too fast. The walk that should have taken ten minutes felt like thirty seconds, and she wasn't ready. She'd never be ready.

Vlad stopped at the bottom of the steps, his arm still around her. He looked up at the building, then down at her. "This is you?"

"Yeah." She didn't move. Didn't want to break the seal of his arm, the warmth of his body, the way she fit against his side like she'd been made for it.

He nodded. Then, slowly, he let his arm drop.

The cold rushed in immediately, filling the space where he'd been, and she had to stop herself from reaching out to pull him back.

"Goodnight, malyshka." His hand came up to her shoulder—just her shoulder, bare skin above the jacket's collar—and his fingers pressed in, warm and heavy. He held there a moment, looking at her, his gray eyes catching the yellow light from the streetlamp above them.

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only stand there, wrecked and hopeful and terrified, feeling his hand on her shoulder like it was the only real thing in the world.

The moment stretched. One second. Two. His thumb moved, a slow stroke across her collarbone, barely a whisper of pressure.

Her lips parted. The words sat on her tongue, waiting—Vlad, I need to tell you something—and she could see it, the way the air would change, the way his face would shift, the way everything would break open.

And then his hand squeezed gently, and he let go.

"Get inside before you freeze." He was already stepping back, already turning, his hands going into his pockets. "Text me when you're in."

"Okay." Her voice came out barely a whisper. "Yeah."

He jogged back down the walkway, two strides and then a sprint, his silhouette cutting through the campus lights. At the corner, he raised one hand—a wave, a goodbye, a see you later—and then he was gone.

She stood there, frozen, the cold air biting at her exposed legs, his jacket heavy on her shoulders. Her shoulder where his hand had been still burned, a phantom warmth she didn't want to fade.

The ache in her chest was so massive she didn't know how her ribs held it.

She climbed the steps slowly, her legs heavy, and unlocked the door to her building. The hallway was quiet, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, and she leaned against the inside of her apartment door for a long moment, her eyes closed, his smell rising from the jacket every time she breathed.

Her phone buzzed.

She pulled it out. Her heart stopped.

Daddy: You get in okay? Forgot to say it. Night malyshka. Sleep well.

She read it three times. Then a fourth. Then she pressed the phone to her chest, like she could hold the words there, like she could keep them.

Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. She wanted to say something—something that meant something, something that crossed the line she kept dancing on. I wish you were here. I wish you'd held on longer. I wish you knew.

Instead, she typed: Made it. Night night 🖤

Three dots appeared immediately.

Daddy: Good girl.

She dropped the phone on her bed and pressed her hands to her face. The jacket slipped off one shoulder, and she pulled it back up, hugging it around herself like it was him, like she could live inside this moment forever.

She couldn't. She knew she couldn't. But she could live inside it tonight.