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I want to tell her everything. Instead, I brush her hair off the pillow and kiss her slowly, giving her time to answer. She does, drawing me closer until I stop holding so much of myself away.

We take our time together. When she laughs softly at our tangled clothes, I find myself smiling against her mouth. I have missed that sound all day.

Then she touches my cheek, and the smile fades. “Don’t look so sad,” she says.

I kiss her palm because I cannot promise her that.

I kiss her like I have time, even though I don’t. I kiss her mouth, her cheek, the corner of her eye where another tear slips free, and when she turns her face into me, I feel something in my chest give way.

“Elara,” I whisper.

She shakes her head. “Don’t.”

So I don’t say it. I show her the only way I can.

I undress her slowly, watching her face more than her body, stopping every time her breath catches for the wrong reason. She helps me with my shirt, her fingers clumsy on the buttons, and when her palm touches the blood dried near my collar, her mouth tightens.

“That isn’t yours?”

“No.”

She closes her eyes for a second, then pulls me back to her.

I get into bed with her and cover her body with mine. She opens for me without a word, her arms around my neck, her face pressed into my shoulder as I move inside her. I keep it slow. I want her to feel every second of it, every place where I hold back, every place where I choose care over need.

Her breathing breaks against my skin.

I kiss her hair, her temple, her mouth when she turns toward me. She holds on tighter, and I understand then that she feels it too.

There is only her.

There is only the fact that I love her and am still letting her think I am leaving her behind.

When she comes apart beneath me, it is quiet. Her fingers dig into my back, and her lips press against my throat as if she is trying to keep the sound inside. I follow her soon after, holding her so tightly I know I should loosen my grip, but I cannot make myself do it.

Afterward, she stays under me for a moment, warm and shaking, her face turned into my neck.

I don’t move until she does.

When I finally lie beside her, she doesn’t curl into me right away. She looks up at the ceiling, her lashes wet, one hand resting on her stomach as if she is holding herself together from the inside.

“Elara.”

“I’m okay,” she says.

She’s lying.

I know it, and she knows I know it.

I pull her close anyway, and this time she lets me. Her cheek rests against my chest. Her hand stays between us. It feels like goodbye.

30

ELARA

I kneel in front of Anya and tie her shoelace for the second time.

She keeps shifting from one foot to the other, too restless to stand still, her small suitcase beside her and her rabbit tucked under one arm. The house is loud around us. Men move through the hall with luggage. Someone speaks in Russian near the front door. Galina is upstairs checking rooms. Nikolai is somewhere with Sergei, making decisions no one explains to me.