Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
"Of course," I chirp, professional and composed and totally normal and not at all affected by the fact that he requested ME, specifically, when there are three other therapists on this ship with a decade more experience and presumably much lower face temperatures in his presence.
Artem doesn't glance at me during this exchange. He's focused on the water wall behind the reception desk with the concentrated attention of a man who finds cascading water absolutely riveting and is definitely not avoiding eye contact with anyone. But when Mr. Green walks away and I say, "I'll have the room ready in ten minutes, Mr. Almazov," he turns his head. Just enough. His eyes find mine and hold.
"Artem," he corrects.
"Sorry?"
"My name. It's Artem."
I know his name. He knows I know his name. He told me last Thursday and I repeated it back to him exactly zero times because saying his name to his face would require a level of emotional fortitude I haven't achieved yet and frankly might never achieve, and he's standing there with those iron eyes and that unsettling patience, like he's perfectly willing to wait however long it takes for me to say the five letters he just handed me, and Mr. Green is three metres away pretending to check a schedule and my cheeks are doing the thing, the THING, the thing that is rapidly becoming the bane of my professional existence and also my personal existence and also every other kind of existence I have.
"I'll have the room ready in ten minutes," I repeat, which isn't his name, which is a cowardly sidestep and we both know it, and something crosses his face, something that might be amusement or might be frustration or might be the expression of a man who's just realised that the girl he's asking to call him by his first name is physically incapable of doing so without spontaneously combusting.
He nods. Sits down in the reception chair. Waits.
He has never waited for anything in his life. I'd bet money on it, and I don't have money to bet. But he sits in that chair for ten minutes while I set up the room, and when I come out to get him he stands and follows me and doesn't comment on the fact that my ears are pink.
Small mercies. Very small. I'll take them.
THE EXTRA SESSIONS become regular. Tuesdays and Thursdays now instead of just Thursdays, which means my planner, my poor battered planner, which was already struggling with one weekly Artem entry, now has to accommodate two, and then three, because he adds a Friday morning, early, before the spa opens to other clients, which means I'm touching this man's scars on a nearly every-other-day basis and my professional detachment isn't so much eroding as it is crumbling into the sea like a cliff face in a storm.
Friday. I arrive at six-thirty to prep, coffee-less, because the staff mess doesn't open until seven and I don't own a kettle and my cabin is the size of a generous cupboard and has no power outlet near the bed, which means I'm functioning on four hours of sleep and raw determination and the lingering, mortifying memory of him saying "you were laughing at dinner" into a face cradle like it was information he'd been collecting.
He's already in the corridor outside the treatment room. Leaning against the wall. Two coffees in his hands.
He holds one out to me.
"I don't know how you take it," he admits, and this is the longest sentence he's spoken to me that isn't about sessions or schedules or the fact that I hadn't laughed on this ship, and his voice at six-thirty in the morning is lower than usual, rougher, as if even his vocal cords haven't fully woken up yet, and my brain files that information immediately under "Things I Did Not Need to Know But Cannot Unknow" and my hand reaches for the coffee before the rest of me has approved the transaction.
"Black. One sugar," I tell him.
Something crosses his face. Not a smile, not even the ghost of one, more like the architectural blueprint for a smile, the foundation being poured before the structure goes up. A movement at the corner of his mouth that appears and disappears so fast that if I blinked I'd have missed it, and I didn't blink, because I've started collecting these. Almost-smiles. I'm keeping a mental gallery of them, each one catalogued by date and context and the exact degree of mouth-corner involvement, and I know how insane that sounds and I don't care.
Almost-smile #1: when I told him my name. Almost-smile #2: right now, over incorrectly sugared coffee.
"I guessed black," he says. "No sugar." A pause. "I'll get it right next time."
Next time. There's going to be a next time. He's already decided, same as he decided about the extra sessions, same as he decides about everything, without hedging, without asking permission, a man used to the world rearranging itself around his decisions, and I should find that presumptuous. I should find it arrogant and overstepping and all the things that Madame Gilles warned me about when she warned me some clients will try to make the relationship personal, Étoile, and your job is to keep it professional.