Something gives way.
I’m not sure which of us moves first. I think it’s me. And then his arm comes around me, exactly the way it always did, and I stop thinking entirely.
He cups my face. Kisses me back.
It’s tender at first—careful, almost disbelieving—and then the familiarity of it overwhelms me.
Four years collapse into nothing.
I remember this. The particular warmth of him, the way he holds me like I’m both precious and completely his.
My fingers curl into the front of his shirt and I press closer, chasing the feeling before I can talk myself out of it.
Every nerve ending I have comes alive.
The memories surface without permission—the stolen moments in my office, the urgency of our first night together, the way he used to look at me after.
Heat floods through me, a hunger I’ve kept buried so long I’d half-convinced myself it was gone.
It isn’t gone.
The kiss deepens, and I feel myself losing ground fast. His mouth is too familiar. My body remembers too much.
And that’s exactly what stops me.
I pull back.
He lets me. He always let me.
I press my fingers briefly to my lips, steadying myself. My heart is hammering. Every instinct I have is telling me to close the distance again, and I have to override each one deliberately, consciously, like talking myself down from a ledge.
I can’t do this.
Not because I don’t want to—God, I want to—but because I know exactly where this leads.
I’ve already lost him once. I rebuilt myself from nothing after that, and it nearly broke me. If I let myself fall back into this and then lose him again, I won’t come back from it the same way. I’m not sure I’d come back from it at all. And I’m a mother now. What I want doesn’t get to be the first question anymore.
I look at him—really look, for just a moment—and then I slip past him and go inside.
I don’t let myself turn around until I’m through the door. When I do, he’s moved to the edge of the balcony, forearms on the railing, facing the city. The wind moves through his hair. He’s let it grow longer than he used to wear it.
He looks like a man who has learned how to carry loss quietly.
I look away and go upstairs, wondering how much longer can I keep doing this.
Chapter Thirteen
Nikolai
I watch her over the rim of my mug.
She’s avoiding me. She’s been doing it all morning—arranging herself on the floor beside Hannah, head bent over a Barbie puzzle with exaggerated focus, as though the placement of each piece requires her complete concentration.
She hasn’t looked up once.
I know this pattern. I knew it four years ago too. After any moment between us that came too close to the truth, she’d pull back and rebuild her walls with ordinary things. Routine. Practicality. Hannah, now. It’s not coldness. It’s self-protection. I understand it better than she probably realizes.
Last night happened, and today, it’s not happening.
