"Me neither." I closed my eyes, tears soaking his hospital gown. "I'll love you forever too, Nikolai."
Outside the window, dawn light filtered in. Amid the monitors' soft beeping, I rested against his shoulder, and for the first time, the future felt clear.
All that scheming, betrayal, and bloodshed receded into the distance. In this moment, there was only our steady breathing, and the quiet trace of a new life beginning to grow.
Chapter Thirty
Vivienne
The cursor blinked once, then stopped. I hit save and closed the file labeled Ashes and Flamingos.
I'd started it in that gunpowder-stinking warehouse and spent six months finishing it. The upload bar crawled toward completion. When it hit one hundred percent, something that had been lodged in my chest for too long finally let go.
My inbox exploded. Literary agents, film producers, and—ironically—the publishing house that had kicked me to the curb last year, now waving a contract with triple the advance.
I leaned back. The validation I'd once craved tasted bland now. Less real than the morning light slicing through the blinds.
A knock.
Nikolai walked in with a tray. Charcoal loungewear, hair still damp from the shower. Left sleeve rolled to the elbow, exposing that pale scar where the bullet had grazed him. It still ached on rainy days, but it hadn't slowed him down in months.
"Six hours staring at that screen." He set the tray on the desk corner, next to a stack of thick Russian books. Broth, steamed vegetables,a small portion of salmon—his doctor's "pregnancy nutrition plan."
"I finished it." I stretched, my palm brushing my stomach. The curve was starting to show through the loose sweater.
He glanced at the screen. "Missing an ending."
"Isn't the last chapter the ending?"
"The real-life ending." He leaned down, breath warm against my ear. "The protagonist's real-life counterpart hasn't proposed yet."
I laughed and elbowed his side. "Who says I'm saying yes?"
"You will." His tone was certain. His fingers settled lightly on the curve of my belly. "Page three hundred twelve."
I rolled my eyes but took a sip of soup.
Perfect temperature.
While he handled emails on his tablet, I opened the backend analytics. Followers had blown past seven figures. A pinned discussion caught my eye.
"Okay, tell me I'm not alone—the Aleksei character is totally based on the author's real-life boyfriend, right?"
Over three thousand replies. Readers were doing frame-by-frame analysis. Someone had compiled screenshots of every detail describing Aleksei. The cold gray eyes narrowed around a cigarette, the old scar across his knuckles, the reddened fingertips wrapping a scarf around the heroine's neck on a snowy night... They were profiling him like the FBI.
I couldn't help but laugh. Then my eyes caught an older comment from two months back, recently upvoted to the top.
"Hope the author and Aleksei are happy. He deserves to be loved like that."
I stared at those words until the screen dimmed.
I'd spent months crafting Aleksei's coldness, his tenderness, his obsession. I thought I was creating fiction. I was wrong. What I'd been writing all along was the truth I was too afraid to admit—the man beside me deserved every bit of praise I'd written.
I quietly took a screenshot and saved it to my encrypted album.
"What are you looking at?" Nikolai asked without looking up.
"Nothing." I locked the screen and turned to him. Light cut across his profile, the line from brow to jaw sharp as sculpture, lashes casting tiny shadows below his eyes.
