I want to say something helpful. I have no idea what that is.
So I settle for reaching across the seat and touching the back of his hand once.
He looks at it. Then at me. And for one second, something in his expression softens.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
That’s all. But it matters.
The flight back is a blur of dark sky, tense silences, and the low glow of screens. I doze for maybe twenty minutes with my head against the seat and wake up to the plane already descending.
The States below us are all lights again.
The second my phone reconnects to service, it buzzes with a message. Then another. I blink at the screen.
A bank credit alert. For an amount so large I genuinely think my eyes are crossing wrong.
“What the hell?”
Aleksei glances over, already standing to retrieve his jacket. “What?”
I hold up the screen. “I just got a credit.”
He looks once, not surprised in the slightest. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“This is the first installment of the bonus I promised.”
I stare at him. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
His attention flicks to the cabin door, then back to me. “You came.”
“That is not what we agreed.”
“No,” he says, stepping into my space with that same impossible certainty he always seems to have, even now, even with worry carved into every line of him. “But it’s what I’m paying for.”
“Aleksei—”
He cuts me off by kissing me. Not hard. Not like the bathroom, or the jet, or any of the times we’ve combusted into each other. Just one slow, deliberate kiss that says more than his timing allows words to.
Then he pulls back, checks my face once like he’s memorizing it, and heads for the stairs.
I follow him out into the early-morning gray of the tarmac.
Two black cars are waiting.
Men in dark suits move quickly but quietly, collecting bags, opening doors, scanning the perimeter. Everything feels larger and sharper here. More real. Less like a stolen escape and more like the life he tried to warn me about.
Aleksei is halfway to the first car when I realize he isn’t slowing down for me.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I ask.
He turns. For a second he looks almost surprised by the question. Then the surprise vanishes, replaced by the hard, tired focus I’m learning is his default under pressure.
“I have to go see my mother,” he says.
The words are obvious. Rational. Fine.
