Things have gone too far now. The foundation we built has been shattered by violence, betrayal, and fear. We’re both fractured, jagged-edged versions of who we once were. We don’t fit together anymore. Not without cutting each other and bleeding over innocent lives like our son’s in the process.
I press on, even as the weight of reality nearly crushes me. “I can’t live the life you do, Maksim. Always waiting for the next threat to show up and use someone you love against you. You have too many enemies. Too many people who would hurt you to take what you have. I can’t… Iwon’tlet Leo grow up in that world. I can’t raise him to always be afraid.”
“I would protect you both,” he says quietly.
This time, my voice is firm. “No. You can’t.”
Maksim’s mouth parts slightly, but no words come. The truth of it all hangs over us like a guillotine. His eyes close for the briefest moment. When they open again, they’re glassy with tears he won’t let fall.
“I know you love him, Maksim. I know you’d die for him. You’d give up anything. That’s the problem. Because someone else out there will eventually know that, too. And they’ll use that weakness again and again until there’s nothing left of us.”
His mouth twists like he wants to argue, to remind me of that promise I once gave him that we were in this together.
But that was before Mikhail.
Before the kidnapping.
Before the gun to our child’s head.
He looks down at the floor for a moment, the muscles in his jaw clenching so tightly, I’m afraid he might crack a tooth. When he looks back up at me, the man standing there is stripped raw, barely holding on to the storm raging inside him.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he says.
I press a hand to the wall behind me, steadying myself because I don’t know how to answer that. I don’twantto answer that. I never wanted to be this woman, the one who says goodbye to the father of her son and to the man she almost built a life with.
But I have to. For Leo.
“Go home,” I say gently. “Go back to Russia.”
“Ivy,” he says hoarsely, reaching for me again. His fingers tremble visibly, even in the dark.
Seeing him so vulnerable, so broken, nearly convinces me to take it all back.
“Don’t. Please…” I whisper.
His hand hovers in the space between us for a moment, fingers curling slightly—like they are desperate to remember the shape of me, the feel of my skin on his as our bodies mold together. But slowly, inch by inch, it lowers to his side.
It takes him a long time to move, to truly accept what I’ve said.
When he finally pushes away from me, the distance feels unbearable. He steps back, slow and careful, walking backward like a man leaving a battlefield, refusing to show his back even as he retreats. I don’t breathe until he crosses the short distance to the front door and his hand finds the knob.
I see the war in him, his temptation to give in to his own impulses and come back to me. To my surprise, he doesn’t. He twists the knob, creaking open the door and letting the moonlight spill into the foyer. His silhouette is framed against it, darkening his features and making him look even more sorrowful than before.
He bows his head to me and then finally turns and slips out into the cool night. The door is quiet when it’s pulled shut behind him, but in the silence of this house, it sounds thunderous.
Even though every part of me is shaking with the urge to scream his name and chase after him, I stay exactly where Iam. I force myself to push away from the wall and head back upstairs to my bedroom where my child is still curled up in my blankets fast asleep.
I refuse to look out the window and check to see if his car has pulled away from the curb or if it idles there, hoping I’ll change my mind and come running out.
Because loving him has never been the problem. Surviving his world is.
I hope for my, and our son’s, sake that he never comes back.
21
MAKSIM
The drive back to the safehouse is a blur.
