Page 50 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"Can you sleep here with me?" she said.
"In here?"
"I used to sleep with my grandparents. Since they died I can't fall asleep on my own."
The word died is a short word. I felt my chest go down half an inch when she said it, and stay down. I did not let her see it on my face.
"I can stay."
I kicked off my shoes and they made two small thumps on the rug. I pulled the throw off the foot of the bed and folded myself onto the mattress on top of the blanket, on my side, facing her. There was room for both of us if I kept my knees in. I left the lamp on low. The owl threw its circle up onto the ceiling now, soft and round.
"Tell me about them," I said.
She was quiet a moment, deciding whether she wanted to. Then she did.
"Grandma made the best japchae in the world. She used three pans. One for the noodles. One for the beef. One for the vegetables. She never let them touch until the end." She paused. "Grandpa once nailed a swing to a tree and the swing held for ten years. I was on it last spring. It still held."
"That is a good swing."
"He used the right kind of nails. He told me about it every time we sat on it."
I smiled into the pillow. She turned her face toward me on hers.
"My mom wasn't good," she said. The sentence was flat and short and matter of fact and a little too old for her mouth. "She wasn't, like, hitting people. She was just gone. They raised me. Just them. For ten years. They only had each other and me."
"That is a lot of love in one little house."
"They never made me feel like I was the work they were making."
That landed in my throat and stayed there. I reached and put my hand flat on the top of her blanket where her shoulder was under it.
"I miss them so much, Chloe."
"I know, baby."
The word baby cost me something I did not mind paying. She closed her eyes a second and opened them again. The lamp made her lashes look longer.
"Is Daniil your real brother?" I asked.
She shook her head once on the pillow. The braid by her cheek moved with her.
"No. But he is like one."
"Tell me about when he first came."
She thought about it. She was good at thinking about things before she said them. It was one of the first things I had learned about her at the apartment, and it had not changed at the compound.
"He didn't know which door went where," she said. "For a week. He would go to the linen closet looking for the bathroom. He would open the oven looking for a drawer. He was confused. He was scared. I could tell because of his shoulders." She put her hand up briefly and lifted her own shoulders to show me. "But he wasn't mean. Not one time. Grandpa scared him in the bathroom once because Grandpa got up at night and Daniildidn't hear him coming. Daniil jumped. He had that look in his face like he might hit someone. Then he saw it was Grandpa and his whole face changed. He apologized for a long time."
"Yeah."
"And Grandma cried at breakfast one morning because she thought he was going to leave us. She said the word leaving and she just cried right into her toast. He got up and he went around the table and he pulled her into a hug right there standing up. He told her he was not going anywhere. He held her until she stopped."
"He held her."
"Even when he was that scared, he was never bad to us. He was kind. He always tried to fix things. He fixed the porch light. He fixed the squeak in my door. He didn't have to."
"He is really good," I said.
