His mouth softens, almost smiling.
“We can go somewhere else,” he offers immediately, half-rising as if ready to tell the helicopter to start back up.
“No,” I say, catching his sleeve. “This is perfect. It’s just…very us.”
We sit together while the waves murmur and the lanterns flicker. Our hands finding each other under the table as we chat about our days. Kaz actually seems interested in what I did, and I try to wrap my head around a contract he’s negotiating. Nothing dramatic happens, no grand declarations, but the quiet that eventually settles between us feels thick, warm, and certain.
Like we’re already falling, and neither of us has any idea how to stop.
We linger long after the plates have been cleared, our chairs angled toward the water as the sun sinks slowly into the horizon, turning the sky into streaks of molten gold and pink. The staffkeeps their distance, polite and discreet, leaving us alone with the hush of the tide.
“I’ve been told,” he says quietly, his large hand engulfing mine, “that the enemy, the man who threatened to come after you, has gone back to his home country.”
My shoulders drop with relief, but then it hits me: if the threat is gone, there’s no more need for the façade.
My eyes meet Kaz’s. I can see the thought mirrored there in shadow, the question neither of us wants to ask. What happens now? When we don’t have to pretend, but there’s still something—the sliver of a future—tying us together?
Neither of us are brave enough to broach the subject.
Kaz’s arm rests along the back of my chair, his fingers absently tracing slow, lazy patterns along my shoulder. Every time he leans in to kiss me it feels unhurried and warm, like he has nowhere else he needs to be. The world narrows to the press of his mouth, the steady strength of his hand at my waist, the quiet breath we share between touches.
It feels dangerously close to peace.
Then something prickles along my skin.
Electric.
Like the air right before a power outage.
I glance up and see it gathering far out over the water, a dark smear along the horizon that wasn’t there a moment ago, clouds stacking thick and heavy like a closing fist. My stomach twists.
“Kaz,” I murmur, rubbing my arms. “We should go.”
He studies the sky once, then me, and whatever he reads on my face makes him nod immediately. No argument or hesitation.
The staff moves quickly. The lanterns dim. The helicopter spins to life.
As we lift off, I keep looking back at the dark line swallowing the sunset, unable to shake the quiet, crawling certainty that it isn’t just a storm chasing us home.
It feels like something worse.
Like something is coming.
Chapter 30
Alyona
The sedan eases to the curb in front of the clinic, its engine humming softly as if reluctant to disturb the quiet of the street. I sit there for a moment longer than necessary, fingers resting against my lower stomach, feeling the faint, steady flutter of anticipation that has followed me all morning.
Twelve weeks.
Today we’re supposed to find out if it’s a boy or a girl.
The thought sends a warm rush through my chest, a ridiculous, buoyant excitement that makes everything else feel distant and small. For a second, I consider calling Kaz again, even though I know he’s already in that meeting in Connecticut. He’s probably seated at the head of some glossy conference table while men in suits pretend they aren’t terrified of him.
He sounded apologetic at dawn, voice thick with sleep and frustration.
“If I could be there, I would be.”
