“Where?”
“Classified.”
She takes a bite of toast and chews. “Did you have a girlfriend back then? Someone waiting for you?”
I stop chewing, and my eyes snap up to her face. “Why do you ask?”
“Just making conversation.” Her smile is innocent, but her eyes are anything but. “You know so much about me. My family, my work, my guilt about leaving London. I barely know anything about your personal life.”
“There’s not much to know.”
“I don’t believe that.” She sets down her toast. “A man doesn’t get to thirty-eight without some romantic history. Unless you’re a monk, which I seriously doubt.”
Something about the way she says my age makes me pause. There are twelve years between us. She’s young enough that my uncle would have called me a cradle robber. Old enough that it shouldn’t matter, but somehow does.
“I was engaged once,” I hear myself say, “about five years ago.”
Sasha’s eyebrows rise. “What happened?”
“She was also CIA. We met during training, started dating, and got serious faster than either of us expected. Then we were assigned to the same operation in Eastern Europe.”
“And?”
“And it turns out that spending fourteen hours a day with someone in high-stress situations is very different from dating them on weekends.” I almost smile at the memory. “We lasted three weeks before she threw a satellite phone at my head and told me I was the most insufferable man she’d ever met.”
Sasha laughs. The sound is genuine, surprised. “She threw a phone at you?”
“Missed by about two inches. Would have given me a concussion if her aim were better.” I shake my head. “We broke off the engagement that night. Finished the mission as professionals. Never spoke again after we got back to the States.”
“That’s tragic.”
“It was honestly a relief. We brought out the worst in each other. Some people are better as strangers.” I take a sip of coffee and add, “Her name was Rachel. Smart as hell. Could field-strip a weapon faster than anyone I’ve met. But she had a way of making everything into a competition. Who could run faster, shoot straighter, or stay awake longer. It was exhausting.”
“Sounds like she had something to prove.”
“We both did. That was the problem.” I set down my cup. “Two people with something to prove usually end up proving it to each other in the worst possible ways.”
“Do you believe that? That some people are just incompatible, no matter how much they want it to work?”
“I believe some people aren’t meant to be together. I also believe some people find each other at the wrong time, and that’s a different kind of tragedy.”
I swear I see water gather in her green eyes for a moment before she blinks them away and changes the subject back to safer, surface-level topics for the rest of the meal.
After breakfast, the walls of the hotel room start to close in. I suggest a walk, and Sasha agrees with relief in her voice. I think we both need air that doesn’t smell like secrets and suspicion.
St. Petersburg at night is different from Moscow. The architecture is more European, the streets are wider, and the Neva River reflects city lights like scattered diamonds. We walk along the embankment with our breath forming clouds in the cold air.
“My uncle used to say that walking helps you think,” I offer after a few minutes. “He’d take these long walks around his property when he needed to work through a problem. I went with him sometimes. We’d walk for hours without saying a word.”
“That sounds peaceful.”
“It was. One of the few peaceful things about living with him.” I shove my hands deeper into my coat pockets. “He wasn’t an easy man. He drank too much. Had nightmares that would wake the whole house. But he never raised his hand to me. Never made me feel like a burden, even though I definitely was one.”
“You weren’t a burden.”
“I was a ten-year-old kid who woke up screaming three times a week because I kept dreaming about my parents’ car accident.” Ikeep my eyes on the path ahead. “Trust me; I was a burden. He just never treated me like one.”
Sasha is quiet for a moment. “I used to have nightmares, too. After my parents died. Dmitri would come into my room and sit with me until I fell back asleep. He never complained or made me feel weak for being scared.”
