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Chapter twenty
“Do you want to talk about what happened earlier today?” Aurelia asked me as we sat on the back porch of Pack Stone’s mansion after our weekly family dinner.
We used to have it at the dads’ place, but as our family continued to grow it became too crowded to cram nearly twenty people into that little house.
Sometimes it was hard to wrap my mind around how big it had gotten, and if my hunch was correct, it would soon be growing some more.
“Do you want to talk about why you weren’t drinking any wine at dinner?” I countered, lifting a brow and nodding at Aurelia’s stomach. She was an avid wine drinker, and I hadn’t seen her not drink a glass of Pinot Grigio at family dinner in years.
Aurelia sighed and scooted in a little bit closer to me on the pool lounger we were sharing, putting her arm around my shoulders.
“You are far too observant for your own good, Ceer, did you know that?”
I grinned. “I’ve been told that, mostly by you, though. So how far along are you?”
“A little over ten weeks.” Aurelia’s smile widened as she answered. “We were going to wait a couple more weeks before telling everyone since it’s not going to be the easiest pregnancy.”
Excitement filled me for her. She was the best mom to Tobey, and well, me and Brynn too. This little baby was going to be the most protected, spoiled thing ever.
“Does Brynn know yet?” I asked, giving into the urge to touch Aurelia’s still relatively flat tummy before wrapping her in a hug.
“She’s got an inkling, but unlike you she’s not as nosy,” Aurelia said with no malice as she gave me a return squeeze. “But I am glad someone outside of the pack knows. I swear Christa’s been driving me up the wall with her special prenatal smoothies. Those things are diabolical.”
I laughed at that. At some point or another we’d all fallen victim to Christa Stone and her cure-all smoothies. The last one she’d managed to get me to drink tasted like I’d licked a bale of hay.
“But don’t think this gets you out of explaining why I caught you making out with Enzo Santoro in the broadcast closet earlier.”
Leave it to Aurelia to steer a conversation right back to where we started. She’d never let me get away with distracting her, not today and certainly not fifteen years ago when she’d taken on the role of big sister, and basically, mother to a girl with a bad attitude and a propensity for pissing off grown adults.
Fourteen years ago…
“You have to go to figure skating practice, Ceer,” Aurelia said as she gently brushed my hair into a neat bun at the base of my neck, her eyes on the YouTube video that was teaching her how to do it. “You love figure skating practice.”
She’d already done Brynn’s hair and the little girl was currently in the kitchen singing at the top of her lungs in her usual tone deaf voice. She was only a year younger than me, but sometimes it made me feel absolutely ancient to watch her skip around without a care in the world.
I couldn’t understand how she was so free. Her mam had died, same as mine, but it sometimes felt like I was the only one still stuck on it.
“Maybe figure skating isn’t for me,” I lied, wincing a bit as Aurelia tugged a little too tightly on one of my curls, trying to tame it into place. “Everyone says I talk funny and Madame Orlin hates me.”
Madame Orlin was the figure skating teacher for all the little kids. A class that I still wasn’t happy about being in.
Figure skating had been the one bright spot in moving all the way to Minnesota where it felt like it never stopped snowing and everyone looked at me like an orphan.
I wasn’t an orphan. Da was still alive, though the single phone call he’d given me in the hospital had been full of slurred sobbing and blaming me for Mam’s death.
Shaking off the horrible memory, I tilted my head back so that I could look Aurelia in the eyes.
She was four years older than me, but seemed to be so much older than even that. She always made sure that everyone in the house had what they needed—including me.
Alexei and Maxim were in and out most of the day, running the ice rink that seemed to be the center of this tiny town. So most things fell on the teenager to get done.
“Madame Orlin doesn’t hate you,” Aurelia argued as she took styling gel and smoothed it over my hair, locking it in place. “She’s like that with everyone. Her sister is the same way.”
The two old women both ran the ballet studio and the figure skating classes respectively and spent most of their time terrorizing the children of the town with their harsh teaching methods.
“But she treats me like the rest of those babies,” I grumbled, leaning against her legs. I hated being in the same class as seven-year-olds, especially since Brynn was with the girls older than us.
A prodigy was what people called her and when I watched her skate it was obvious that was true.
