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“I heard you spent the day with my sister.”
There it is. The familiar hot-and-cold teeter-totter. Melt my skin with naughty words one second. Interrogate me about your sister the next.
I arch a brow. “How do you know that? You said I wasn’t being watched.”
“You’re always being watched, but never looked at. There’s a difference.” Yakov illustrates that difference by taking his eyes on a slow, thorough tour of my body. If he likes what he sees, he shows no sign of it.
I wrap my arms around myself self-consciously. “Mariya and I didn’t get off on the best foot this morning and I wanted to fix things. I kind of latched onto her when she got back from the mall. I guess it worked. She asked me to sit by the pool with her.”
“You wore that to sit with my sister by the pool?” He blows out a ragged breath.
I decide right here and now to never tell Yakov that his sister originally bought the bikini for herself. He’s been through too much trauma as it is.
“She thought it was very cool. Body positivity is all the rage with the teens.” I shrug. “But she opened up to me a bit. About… everything.”
“Nik talked to her for half an hour this morning and she didn’t say a word, but she opened up to you. Un-fucking-real.”
I chew on my lower lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to overstep, but?—”
He waves me off. “What did she say?”
“I think it all boils down to her being lonely. She missed you and Nikandr when she was away. She’s happy to be back and she wants to feel welcome here.”
“That would be a lot easier if I’d had a single goddamn clue she was coming.” Yakov drags a hand down his jaw. “She showed up out of nowhere and expects life to stand still for her. Nik and I have shit to do.”
“She knows that.”
Yakov gives me a sharp look.
“I’m not picking sides,” I tell him hurriedly. “I’m just saying… Mariya wants to know you and Nik. She wants this place to be her home. Can you blame her?”
“Hardly.”
“I see the confidence streak runs in the family.”
Yakov smiles and then stands up with a sigh. “Well, keep talking to her. Right now, you’re the only person Mariya even remotely likes. If she’s going to talk, I’d rather it be with someone I trust.”
Yakov trusts me.
Ka-boom. There goes another bombshell.
I bite back a smile and nod. “Absolutely. Whatever you want.”
43
LUNA
“This movie is kind of cool.” Mariya twirls a short licorice rope in the air like a lasso.
After a couple days of lounging by the pool and hanging around the house together, I finally convinced her she wouldn’t die of boredom if we did one thing that I like.
“I told you. This movie is amazing.”
She tears off a bite of licorice. “It’s hot in, like, an old-timey kind of way.”
No one has ever described Roman Holiday more succinctly. Leave it to teenagers to distill their wisdom down into easily-consumable, TikTok-friendly bites.
“Gregory Peck is sexy.”
