"What do you want to know?"
"Whatever you want to tell me. I'm not trying to interrogate you. I just..." He paused, searching for words. "I want to understand you. The parts you don't show anyone."
I took a long sip of wine, buying time. It was strange, being asked to share rather than deflect. Strange and uncomfortable and somehow also a relief.
"I had an aunt," I said finally. "My mother's sister. Hannah. She was the one good thing about my childhood after my mother died."
"Tell me about her."
"She lived in Vermont. Far away from my father's world, which was probably the only reason he tolerated her existence." I smiled at the memory. "She had this little farmhouse with chickens and a vegetable garden and shelves full of books. Every summer, she'd convince my father to let me visit for a few weeks. Those were the only times I felt like I could breathe."
"She sounds like a sanctuary."
"She was. She taught me how to bake—really bake, not just follow a recipe. We'd spend whole afternoons making bread, and she'd tell me stories about my mother when she was young. Before she met my father. Before everything went wrong." I felt the familiar ache that came whenever I thought about Aunt Hannah. "She's the reason I became a psychologist, actually."
"How so?"
"She was a social worker. Spent her whole career helping people—foster children, abuse survivors, families in crisis. She used to say that the most powerful thing you could do for someone was witness their pain without trying to fix it. Just be present with them." I traced the rim of my wine glass. "That's what I do now. What I try to do, anyway."
"Is she still alive?"
"No. She died when I was in graduate school. Cancer." The word still stuck in my throat, even after all these years. "She was the last connection I had to my mother. To anything good from my childhood. Losing her felt like losing my mother all over again."
Rodion reached across the table and took my hand. He didn't say anything—no empty condolences, no attempts to make it better. He just held my hand and let the silence hold.
"I think about her sometimes," I continued quietly. "What she would say about my life now. About the choices I've made. About ending up married to a man from the same world I spent my whole life running from."
"What do you think she'd say?"
I considered the question. Aunt Hannah had been practical above all else—a woman who dealt in realities rather than ideals.
"I think she'd ask if I was happy," I said finally. "And if I said yes, she'd tell me that was all that mattered."
"Are you? Happy?"
I looked at him across the table—this man who had killed for me, married me, upended my entire life in ways I was still trying to understand. A man from the world I'd fled, who somehow made me feel safer than I'd felt in years.
"I think I'm getting there," I said. "I think this might be the closest I've been in a long time."
His smile was like a sunrise. "That's enough for me."
After dinner, we moved to the living room. He put on music—jazz, something slow and moody—and we sat together on the couch, not talking, just existing in the same space. My head was on his shoulder, his arm around me, his fingers tracing absent patterns on my arm.
"The insomnia," I said after a while. "Has it been better?"
"Much better." He pressed a kiss to my hair. "I actually sleep now. Not perfectly, but more than I have in years."
"What changed?"
"You." He said it simply, like it was obvious. "Having someone next to me. Having a reason to let go of the day instead of replaying it over and over."
"That's a lot of pressure to put on another person."
"It's not pressure. It's just the truth." He shifted so he could look at me. "You asked once why I kept coming back to therapy, even though I didn't believe in it. The truth is, I came back because of you. Because being in that room with you was the only time my brain slowed down enough to feel like I might actually be okay."
I felt something tighten in my chest. "Rodion..."
"I'm not saying it to make you feel obligated. I'm saying it because you should know. Because you matter. Not just as my wife, or as someone I'm protecting, or as a strategic asset in this mess with the Petrovics." He cupped my face in his hands. "You matter because you're you. Because you make me want to be better than I've ever been."
