"Leo is actually my sister's son," I say. "Elena. She died when he was young. Overdose." The old grief sits flat and familiar in my chest. "I took him in because there was no one else. He's carried my name since he was four years old."
Aurora stares at me.
"You've been raising your nephew," she says slowly. "This whole time. Everyone thinks—"
"Everyone thinks he's mine. Viktor knows. Sergei. Nobody else." I hold her eyes. "It was easier. Cleaner. A nephew inherits nothing in this world. A son inherits everything. I wanted him protected. He’s my family.”
She's quiet for a long moment, something shifting across her face. Then she exhales, a short disbelieving breath.
"That's why," she says, almost to herself.
"Why what?"
"Why he's nothing like you." She shakes her head slowly. "I kept looking at the two of you trying to find it. Some similarity. Something. There was nothing." Her eyes come back to mine. "He has none of your discipline. None of your control. I kept thinking, how does a man like Axel produce someone like Leo, and the answer is he didn't."
"No," I say. "He didn't."
"Were you close? To Elena?"
"When we were young. Before the drugs, yes." I stare at the ceiling. "She was funny. Reckless. The kind of person who made every room louder just by walking in." A beat. "She would have liked you."
Aurora is quiet, her eyes on my face.
"I'm sorry," she says softly. "That you lost her."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't mean—" She stops, catching herself. Tries again. "Grief doesn't have an expiry date."
I look at her. She's watching me with that particular expression she gets, direct and unguarded, the one that makes me feel seenin a way I spent most of my life making sure nobody could manage.
"No," I agree. "It doesn't."
She lays back down, her head returning to the hollow of my shoulder. Her hand finds my chest again, rests there.
After a while, she reaches down and takes my hand. Guides it gently to the small swell of her stomach. Presses my palm flat.
I feel it.
The slight, firm curve of her belly. Barely there. Something you'd miss if you weren't paying attention.
I don't say anything. Can't, immediately.
I just keep my hand there, in the dark, feeling the small evidence of something growing, something that is somehow half her and half me and entirely its own thing, entirely new, a person who hasn't happened yet.
Aurora's breathing slows beside me.
My thumb moves in a slow arc across the curve of her stomach.
Hi,I think the same way I thought it on the hillside.I don't know how to do this. I've never done anything like this.My thumbkeeps moving.But I'm going to figure it out. I promise I'm going to figure it out.
The fire settles. The lights outside drift, slow and green and indifferent.
Aurora falls asleep.
I stay awake a long time, my hand on her stomach, watching the sky.
30
