Page 215 of Sexting the Pakhan

“I know.”

“You were not supposed to hear that.”

“I know.” His thumb moves once against my wrist, weak but deliberate. “I’m sorry.”

I lower my forehead almost to his, careful not to put any weight on him, careful not to touch the places where he’s torn open. “You idiot,” I whisper. “You climbed back up just to apologize?”

“No,” he says.

I close my eyes.

His voice drops lower, and I have to lean in to hear it over the rain. “And because I didn’t tell you either.”

My chest hurts so badly I can barely breathe.

He looks at me as if every word has to be dragged out of him by force, not because he doesn’t mean it, but because he has spent his whole life treating tenderness like a loaded weapon.

“I loved you six years ago,” he says. “I handled it badly. I thought sending you away kept you alive. I thought not looking back made it clean.” His mouth twists faintly, like he hates the word the second it leaves him. “It didn’t.”

My tears fall onto his face, and I try to wipe them away, but the rain makes everything wet anyway.

“Ruslan,” I say.

“I loved the woman in the messages before I knew it was you,” he continues, voice hoarse, eyes never leaving mine. “Then I found out and understood I had been missing you twice. Once in my life, once in my own phone.”

A sob climbs up my throat, but I force myself to keep listening because he’s bleeding and pale and speaking like each sentence might be the last one his body lets him finish.

“And I love them,” he says, eyes moving briefly toward the girls. “I don’t know how to be their father yet. I don’t know how to be safe enough for them. But I love them.”

Mila lets out a broken little cry behind me.

Nadia whispers, “Mama.”

I reach one hand back without looking, and both girls grab it together.

Ruslan watches that, and something in his face changes. It’s not softness exactly. It’s worse. It’s a man seeing the thing he almost lost and knowing there is no way to pretend he can live without it anymore.

I look back at him. “I loved you too,” I say, and this time the words don’t come out as grief. They come out shaking, terrified, alive. “I loved you when I left. I loved you while I was pregnant. I loved you when I was furious at you. I loved you every time the girls did something that looked like you and I wanted to scream because you were everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”

His eyes close for a second.

When they open again, they’re wet, though maybe it’s only the rain. With Ruslan, I will let him have that lie if he wants it.

“I should have told you,” I say.

“I should have made it possible.”

That stops me.

He doesn’t excuse himself. He doesn’t ask me to forgive the years away. He doesn’t make it soft or noble or easy. He just says the truest thing between us and leaves it there in the rain.

I bend closer, my hands framing his face. “You came for Mila,” I whisper.

“Yes.”

“You came knowing it was a trap.”

“Yes.”