Page 57 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"Tell me which guard?"
"I'm not telling you."
"Rhea. Which guard?"
Chloe's hand went up to her mouth. She was laughing. Not the careful laugh. The one she had not been allowed to use in front of me yet.
"Don't remember anything, but don't forget to be possessive."
"I am not possessive."
"Sure."
The corner of my mouth lifted on one side. I could not help it. The lift came up without my permission, the way the voice had gone down without it.
I went around behind the couch and sat on the arm. They went back to the screen. Rhea wanted the green dress with the white flowers. Chloe wanted the yellow one with the small collar. They argued about it without looking at each other, both of them tapping at the screen with the kind of focus a kid puts on a thing she has decided is the most important thing in the world for thenext four minutes. The light from the tablet was up on Chloe's face. It put a soft cool color along the side of her cheek and into the hollow under her eye.
Rhea reached back without looking and patted my knee twice with her small flat hand, the way a kid pats the wall on her way past a room she knows her brother is in.
I looked at the back of Chloe's head, and at the side of Rhea's small braid, and at the green dress on the screen.
I have this.
16
CHLOE
The tile was cool against the soles of my feet. I had not bothered with the slippers the wives had left folded in the dresser. I had not bothered with much. I had pulled on the long t-shirt that smelled of the cedar drawer and the soft sleep pants I had been living in since I had come back through the door of this house, and I had walked down the back stairs without turning on a single lamp.
The kitchen was dark except for the small undercabinet strip someone always left on at this hour. The little line of warm light ran along the marble like a vein. I crossed to the cabinet by the sink and reached up for a glass and that was when I saw him.
He sat at the long island in a black undershirt and dark sleep pants, one bare foot hooked on the bottom rung of the stool. His hair was wet at the ends from a late shower. A glass of red wine stood half done in front of him on the marble. The bottle was at his elbow with the cork laid loose on its side. He had been alone with himself for a while in the dark and I could see it in him, in the small bend of his shoulder over the glass and in the way his eyes lifted now at the small sound of the cabinet, surprised, as if he had forgotten the house held anyone else in it.
"Can't sleep?" I said.
He gave me a small nod. He did not speak.
I crossed to the sink. I turned the tap and filled the glass and the water ran cold over my fingers as it filled. I drank half of it standing there with my back to him because I needed something to do with my mouth that was not say his name into a kitchen with no light in it. The glass sweated against my palm.
I set the glass down on the rim of the sink. I did not turn around right away.
"Stay a minute," he said behind me. "It might sound strange. I rest easier when you're in a room."
I closed my eyes for a half breath. I let the line land where it wanted to land in me.
"It doesn't sound strange," I said. I turned. "It sounds like you, Daniil."
He looked at me a long beat. The kitchen light caught one side of his face and left the other in shadow and I could see the small adjustment in him at his own name, at the shape of the word in my mouth. He pushed the wineglass away from him an inch. He did not look at it. He looked at me.
I crossed the kitchen to him.
I did it slow on the cool tile. I let my body decide the thing my head had been arguing about for three months. My body decided easily. I came around the corner of the island and I stepped into the gap between his knees where he sat on the high stool, and he did not move back to make room and he did not lean in to take. He waited. His knees opened a little to let me stand inside them.
I wound my arms around the back of his neck. My face was on a level with his now, his eyes a foot from mine in the strip of warm light, the smallest line at the corner of his mouth where the bruise had gone yellow at the edge of his jaw.
He set the glass down on the marble. Both his hands came up to my waist over the t-shirt. The heat of his palms wentthrough the cotton in two flat shapes and I closed my eyes for a half breath because that warmth had been gone for ninety days and a small handful more, and my body had been keeping count without asking my permission.
I opened my eyes again. He was watching my face. The amnesia-soft eyes I had been calling Pete in my head for a week were watching me, and underneath them another set of eyes had started to come up to the surface, the older ones, the ones I knew.
