“I’m here.” I turn my face into her palm. “Ya zdes’.”
I feel her exhale—deep, full, the last of something releasing—and then her arms come around me, and we stop talking entirely.
She gasps into the pillow, and I run my palm over the curve of her, watching the color rise in her skin. When she turns back to face me, her eyes are dark and her composure is entirely gone. Four years of careful distance, and this is what remains underneath it. This has always been what remained underneath it.
I take my time.
I want to know her again—the particular way she responds, what makes her breath catch, what makes her saymy name like that. I’ve carried an approximation of this for four years. The real thing is better than I remembered, and I remembered it clearly.
When I finally push inside her, we both go still.
The sound she makes—and the sound I make—say everything neither of us has been able to say out loud.
I rest my forehead against her temple. Her walls are tight around me, her hands gripping my shoulders, and for a moment neither of us moves. I’m aware of every point of contact between us. The heat of her skin against mine. Her heartbeat, fast and close.
“Lapochka moya.”
“Don’t stop,” she breathes.
I begin to move—slow at first, deliberate, watching her face. Her head tips back. I feel the restraint is costing me but I don’t care. I have four years to make up for and I intend to take my time.
“Faster,” she manages.
“Not yet.”
She makes a sound of frustration that almost undoes me entirely. I press my mouth to her jaw, her throat, feeling her pulse against my lips.
This is what I held onto. Not the empire, not the power, not any of it. This—her—the specific gravity of her, the way the world reorganizes itself around her presence. I understood it for four years, sitting in an empty apartment across from her lit window. I understand it differently now, with her arms around me and nothing between us.
I go deeper and feel her gasp.
It occurs to me, somewhere in the heat of it, that surviving what’s coming isn’t just an obligation anymore. It’s something I want with the full weight of myself. I want to be here tomorrow. I want to still be here when Hannah is old enough to understandwho I am. I want to lie next to this woman when we are both old and have nothing left to prove to anyone.
That’s new.
For a long time, staying alive was instrumental—a means to protect them from a distance. Now it’s personal.
Lauren’s hands pull me closer as I go, the thought dissolves into sensation, and there is nothing left but this room, this woman, and everything we are finally, after four long years, letting ourselves have.
I feel her getting close before she says anything. The change in her breathing, the way she holds onto me tighter, like she’s afraid of what’s coming and wants it at the same time.
I slow down deliberately.
“Niko—”
“I know.” I press my mouth to her temple. “I have you.”
I’ve been patient for four years. I can be patient for this.
She makes a sound against my shoulder—frustration and want and passion at the same time—and I keep my rhythm steady, watching her face, learning her again. This is what I held onto. Not an idea of her.Her.Specific and real and finally here.
When she breaks, she turns her face into my neck, and I feel everything at once—her whole body shuddering against mine, her hands gripping me like an anchor. I follow her over the edge and the world goes white at the edges, my pulse hammering in my throat, every muscle locking and releasing in a wave I feel down to my bones. Little stars burst at the corners of my vision. Four years of distance, four years of absence, four years of surviving on memory alone—all of it collapses into this single suspended moment, her arms around me, my name breaking apart on her lips and the profound, unraveling relief of being exactly where I was always supposed to be.
We stay tangled together, neither of us moving. Her heartbeat slows against mine. I press my lips to her hair and close my eyes and simply exist here, in this room, with her.
Eventually she shifts, tilting her face up to look at me. Her expression is open in a way I haven’t seen since I came back—no walls, no calculations, just Lauren. Looking at me like she used to.
Neither of us speaks.
