But it comes out anyway—quieter than I intended, with less edge and more exhaustion.
“If Aslanov had never found out you were alive—” I start carefully. “Were you planning to stay in the shadows forever?”
Nikolai’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t answer right away, and the silence is its own kind of answer.
“Hannah needed a father.” My voice is steady, but only just. “And you weren’t there. Do you understand what that was like? Watching her grow and not being able to give her that?”
“I can only imagine—”
“You can’t.” I turn to look at him then, and I’m not angry—I’m just tired, and honest, and the words come out raw. “You weren’t there to imagine it. You were somewhere else, being dead.”
The hurt that crosses his face is immediate and unguarded. He looks down. The guilt hits me almost before I finish speaking.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That was—”
“No.” He raises a hand, not dismissing me—dismissing the apology. “Don’t. You needed to say it.”
I turn back to the railing, gripping the edge to keep myself anchored. In my peripheral vision I can see the tension in his shoulders, the weight he carries in his silence. Four years ago, I would have read him as unfeeling. I know better now. He hides everything, but he can’t hide it from me. He never could.
This has cost him too. I know it did.
I exhale and let the wind pull at my hair. Above us, the blinking lights of a plane arc slowly across the dark sky, the low drone of the engine fading in and out. I watch it until it disappears behind a building.
After this is over, I think.We could go somewhere.
The thought dissolves almost immediately. Because after this is over—if Nikolai has his way—he won’t be here. He’ll have put himself between us and Ronan Aslanov and whatever comes after that will come without him.
He’s already decided.
I’ve known it without him saying it directly. It’s in the way he watches Hannah when he thinks no one’s looking. The way he talks about Aslanov like it’s a problem he intends to close permanently, regardless of the cost.
How am I supposed to go back to normal after that?
The answer is that I won’t be able to. I know how I’m built—how my mind works against me in grief. I survived his death once by half-convincing myself it wasn’t real, that somewhere, somehow, he’d survived. And I was right. So, if it happens again—if he dies for real this time—some part of me will never believe it. I’ll spend the rest of my life waiting for a door to open.
I can’t do that again.
I can’t let him die again.
My breath catches. Hannah has his eyes—the same devastating blue that used to look at me like I was the only person in any room. Every time I looked at her in those first months, I saw him. The resemblance used to hollow me out. I’d get her to sleep and then sit with the grief in the dark, going through the same memories on a loop until exhaustion shut me down.
And now he’s here, standing two feet away from me, real and solid and impossible.
I grip the railing harder.
This is a nightmare. Has to be.
But underneath that—buried somewhere I don’t have the energy to excavate right now—it’s also the only thing I’ve wanted for four years.
I turn to look at him, and the question I can’t stop asking surfaces again—was it this hard for him too?
It’s there in his face. He’s not a man who shows it; he never has been. But I know what to look for. The slight tension around his eyes. The way he goes very still when something costs him. For just a moment, before he blinks it away, his eyes are glassy.
Four years.
The same four years, carrying the same weight, just from opposite sides of a lie neither of us chose.
The wind picks up between us. I feel it in my chest—a physical ache, like something pulled too tight. He’s standing close enough that I could reach out and touch him, and the distance feels absurd. Unnecessary. We are grieving the same thing. We are the only two people in the world who understand exactly what was lost.
