I tuck the sonogram photo in my back pocket. “Can I come in?” I ask, suddenly meek.

“Looks to me like you’re already in.”

He doesn’t actually sound angry, though. He doesn't look angry, either. More like he’s lost somewhere far away and it’s taking all his concentration to drag himself back to the here and now.

I edge nervously toward him. “Is everything alright?”

“No.”

He doesn’t smell like vanilla anymore. I put my hand on his arm, and he flinches like he’d already forgotten I’m there. That tiny, distant little frown is a knife to my chest.

“Kolya,” I whisper, “I didn’t give away our location. I swear I didn’t. Yes, I probably should have told you that he was sending me messages. But I thought the fact that I wasn’t responding was enough.”

He looks like he’s paying attention now. At least one tiny part of him—one cell, one neuron, one sliver of his heart—is in the room with me again.

“I don’t want him dead, and I’m not going to pretend I do. But that doesn’t mean I would ever betray you to him. I wouldn’t do that. I promise you.”

He’s silent for a long time.

“Do you believe me?” I ask desperately.

“Adrian knew,” he says at last.

“Knew? About what?”

“About our mother,” Kolya continues. “I let him believe that she went off to France to live her life away from our father, away from us. But he knew that wasn’t the truth. I don’t know for how long he knew, but he did. He found out the truth—and… he found her.”

He strokes his side absentmindedly. Then, out of nowhere, he turns the full force of those blue eyes on me.

“She was too good for this world,” he says fervently. “You are, too.”

“Kolya…” I breathe.

“I let her fall through the cracks. I abandoned my own mother—my own fucking mother—to the hellscape my father banished her to.”

I grasp his hand tightly. “That’s not what you did. You didn’t abandon her.”

“I may as well have,” he murmurs. “There are some people that are worth fighting for, even after hope is gone.”

That stays with me. I feel the truth of it in my soul.

I place my hand against his cheek, forcing him to meet my gaze. “Hey, stay with me.”

I’m not sure what I mean exactly when I say that. I just don’t want him to spiral so far that he becomes unreachable. The thought of losing him to regret—it’s more than I can take. Because… because…

“I need you, Kolya,” I hear myself say. “I need you.”

He blinks, and I can see that my words hit home. He leans down and places his forehead against mine. “I can’t stop thinking about her,” he admits.

“I’m not asking you to stop thinking about her. I just want you to think about something else.”

Then I pull out the sonogram picture I’ve been hiding in my pants pocket and hold it up to him.