These were the things I would remember. These small, ordinary moments. Not the fear or the violence or the uncertainty, but this. Two people doing dishes together at the end of a long day.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"That I like this. Being here with you. Doing normal things."
"Is that surprising?"
"A little. I've spent so long being alone. I'd forgotten what it felt like to share a space with someone." I set down the dish I was drying. "I'd forgotten it could feel good."
He turned off the water and faced me, his expression serious. "You're not alone anymore."
"I know."
"I mean it. Whatever happens tomorrow—whatever happens after—you're not alone. You have me. You have my family. You have people who will protect you, take care of you, make sure you and the baby are safe."
"That's not why I'm with you."
"I know. But it's still true." He took my hands, holding them between his own. "You spent twelve years running. Hiding. Surviving on your own. You don't have to do that anymore."
I felt tears prick at my eyes again. I'd cried more in the past few weeks than I had in years. Something about him—about us—had cracked open a door I'd kept locked for so long.
"Come to bed," I said. "Please."
***
Later, after the lights were off and the city glittered beyond the windows, we lay together in the darkness. His body was warm against mine, his arm heavy across my waist. I could feel his breath stirring my hair, his heartbeat slow and steady beneath my palm.
"Rodion," I said into the darkness.
"Yes?"
"Come back to me tomorrow."
He pulled me closer, his lips brushing my hair. "I will."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that tomorrow would end with him walking back through the door, alive and whole and mine.
But I'd learned long ago that promises didn't stop bullets. That the people you cared about could be ripped away in an instant, leaving nothing but silence and grief.
So I held onto him instead. Memorized the feel of his body against mine, the sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart beneath my palm.
Tomorrow he would go to war.
But tonight, there was this. His warmth. His presence. The fragile, precious weight of being held by someone who wanted me to stay.
If this was our last night, I wanted to remember every moment of it.
And if it wasn't—if he came back, if we survived, if we somehow built the life we'd been dancing around—I wanted to remember this too. The moment before everything changed. The last night of not knowing what we might become.
I closed my eyes and pressed closer to him, and eventually, despite everything, I slept.
Chapter 23 - Rodion
The bar looked like nothing special from the outside.
