46. Sofia
SOFIA
The machines had finally gone quiet enough that I could hear the rain against the window instead of my own heartbeat translated into beeps, and for the first time since I'd woken up in this bed, the room felt like a place for talking instead of a place for surviving.
Four days of hushed visits from nurses and careful check-ins from Kirill had blurred together into one long stretch of waiting, and this was the first evening that finally felt like something else.
Maxim sat in the chair he'd apparently claimed as his own, close enough that our hands could find each other without either of us reaching far, his sleeves still rolled up, unchanged since the terminal, like some part of him had decided that habit was staying for good.
"I keep thinking about the drawer," I said finally, breaking a silence that had gone comfortable in a way neither of us seemed to want to disturb first. "The night you found everything. I've replayed it so many times I could probably tell you exactly what you touched first."
"The phone." His voice stayed even, but something moved behind his eyes, old grief still finding its way to the surface even now. "Then the recorder. Then the paperback with the sonogram folded inside it."
"I should have told you before you had to find out that way."
"You should have. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't still sit wrong with me.
" He turned my hand over in his, tracing the IV bruise on the back of it with a gentleness that didn't match the words.
"But I owe you something too, and I've had four days in a hospital hallway to figure out exactly what it is. "
"You don't owe me anything, Maxim."
"I do. I owe you the chance I never gave you that night.
" He said it slowly, like he'd rehearsed it and still wasn't sure the words would hold their shape once they left him.
"I walked in, I found the badge, and I decided what it meant before you ever opened your mouth to explain it.
I let the anger get there first, and I let it stay so long I never once asked you why. "
"Would it have changed anything, if you'd asked?"
"I don't know. Perhaps not that night. But you deserved the chance to answer before I threw you out of your own life.
" His jaw tightened, the old guilt still raw enough to cost him something to say out loud.
"I'm sorry for that. Specifically for that, not just the kind of sorry people say to end a conversation. "
I felt my throat go tight, tears gathering fast the way they had all week, over almost anything, some leftover hormone or perhaps just four days of feeling everything at full volume.
"I'm sorry too. Not the vague kind either.
" I made myself hold his eyes instead of looking away, the way I'd been trained never to do with a mark and had somehow forgotten applied here too.
"I told myself I was protecting you by not telling you sooner.
That was a lie I fed myself so I wouldn't have to feel like the coward I actually was.
Every week I picked the safest version of the truth instead of the real one, and I let you fall in love with someone who was only half real. "
"Give me an example. A real one, not the general version."
"The morning you asked if I'd ever thought about kids someday, before either of us knew about the baby.
I said I hadn't decided yet, which was true in the smallest possible way and a lie in every way that mattered, because I'd already started imagining a version of us that had one.
" I picked at the edge of the blanket, needing somewhere to put my hands while I said it.
"I did that constantly. Answered the question you actually asked while burying the one underneath it. "
"I remember that morning. I thought you looked sad answering it, and I never asked why."
"I was sad. I wanted the version I was imagining and didn't think I was allowed to have it."
"You were never half anything to me."
"I was lying to you, Maxim. That's not nothing."
"No. It isn't." He didn't flinch from saying it, and something in me settled at that, grateful he wasn't going to smooth over the truth just to make the moment easier.
"But I've had time to understand the shape of what you were carrying too.
Four years of a job that asked you to become someone else every single day.
I don't know how a person does that and comes out the other side still knowing which parts were real. "
"Some days I didn't know either."
"I believe that." He brought my hand up and pressed it briefly against his mouth, the gesture doing more to steady me than any of the words had.
"I want to talk about the rest of it too, while we're being honest. The age between us.
I know it's sat there the whole time, even when neither of us said it out loud. "
"Sixteen years." I said the number plainly, no longer afraid of it now, not like I might have been months earlier. "I used to think about it more than you probably realized. Wondering if you saw a woman or just someone young enough to reshape."
"I saw a woman who scared me more than any rival I've ever had, because she wasn't afraid of me the way everyone else in my life has been since I was twenty-two years old.
" His thumb moved slowly over my knuckles.
"The years never worried me, Sofia. What worried me was whether you'd stay long enough to make them matter. "
"And now?"
"Now I know exactly how far you're willing to drive through a flood for me. Sixteen years feels like the least interesting thing about us."
I laughed, surprising myself with how easily it came, some of the old tightness in my chest finally loosening enough to let it through.
"There's the other thing too," I said, sobering again.
"The loyalty. You have to know I spent four years genuinely believing I was one of the good guys, chasing men like you because I thought the badge made that true.
And then I fell for you anyway, and I didn't know how to hold both of those at once without one of them breaking. "
"Which one won?"
"You did. Somewhere between the docks and the compound and every quiet dinner where you rolled your sleeves before saying something hard, you won without me ever consciously choosing it. I just didn't let myself admit it until I was standing outside that gate with nothing left to lose."
"For what it's worth, the badge never should have scared me the way it did that first night.
" He said it carefully, like he was working out something new even as he spoke it.
"It's the same thing that put you between me and a bullet without a single second of hesitation.
The instinct that made you chase danger instead of running from it.
I spent weeks treating it like the enemy when it was always just proof of exactly who you are. "
"I'm not that person anymore, though. Not officially."
"You're still exactly that person. You just don't have a badge attached to it now."
"That's a generous way to put four years of lying to you."
"It's an accurate way to put it. There's a difference.
" He shifted forward, elbows on his knees, close enough that I could see the exhaustion still living under his eyes despite everything.
"You lied about a job. You never once lied about who you actually are underneath it, and it took me most of this week to finally understand the difference between those two things. "
"I wish I'd understood it sooner. Would have saved us both a lot of nights."
"We're not exactly a couple that does things the easy way. I've made my peace with that."
I thought about that for a moment, turning it over in my head, testing it with the same skepticism I'd once been trained to bring to any claim, and found I couldn't argue with it even if I'd wanted to.
"What happens to us now, Maxim? Practically, I mean. I don't have a job. I don't have a badge. I don't even have a plan past getting out of this bed."
"You have a family that already treats you like one of us, whether either of us admits it out loud or not.
" He said it simply, like the answer had been obvious to him for a long time even if it hadn't been to me.
"You have a compound with a room that's already yours, whether it has your name on the door or not.
You have time to figure out the rest, because nobody's counting down against you anymore. "
"No more ninety-day clocks."
"No more clocks of any kind, unless you want one. That part's entirely up to you now."
"Do you remember the diner? Our first real conversation, before any of this became what it became."
"I remember every word of it." His thumb moved once over my knuckles. "You told me about your father. About the exits."
"I've counted them in every room since he died.
Eleven years of doing it without ever once deciding to, restaurants, doctor's offices, your own dining room the first night we met.
" I looked toward the door out of old reflex, then back at him.
"I did it at my first prenatal appointment, sitting in that little exam room memorizing the fastest way out before I'd even taken my coat off. "
"That sounds exhausting, Sofia."
"It is. It always has been." I exhaled slowly, something unclenching in my chest that had been tight for so long I'd stopped noticing it was there.
"But lying here the last four days, I realized I haven't done it once since I woke up in this room.
I didn't even notice until just now, when you asked. "
"Why do you think that is?"
"Because for the first time in my adult life, I don't want an exit.
I'm done counting the ways out of a room when you're standing in it.
" Saying it out loud made it feel more real than it had a second ago.
"I want to stay, Maxim. Not because I'm trapped, not because of the baby, not because I have nowhere else to go.
Because for once I actually want to be exactly where I am. "
He didn't say anything right away. When I looked up, his eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with hospital lighting, something raw and unguarded moving across his face that I'd only seen a handful of times since the night I met him, back when I still had to guess at what was going on behind them.
"Say that again."
"I want to stay."
"I heard you the first time. I just wanted to hear it twice, to make sure I wasn't imagining it out of four days of hoping.
" His voice had gone rough, low enough that I had to lean in slightly to catch all of it.
"I've spent every hour since that call trying to figure out how to say what I actually feel without it sounding smaller than it is. "
"Try anyway."
He reached past me to the nightstand, where my father's watch sat waiting, the crystal replaced, the crack gone entirely, the band still wrapped in its familiar strip of tape because some things weren't meant to be fixed all the way.
He set it gently into my palm and closed my fingers around it before he spoke again.
"I'm not done with you, Sofia Reyes." He said it half a laugh, half a vow, his forehead dropping to rest against mine, close enough that I felt the words as much as heard them. "Not even close."