AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"It’s okay," she replied. "Trust me, I know how hard it is not to believe all the shit your family tells you about yourself. When I first got pregnant with Kyra, I was so convinced that nobody would ever see me as anything more than what my parents told me I was – you know, some useless whore, a single mother who couldn’t keep a man around..."
"Fuck, I wish I could kick their asses for that," I muttered, and she laughed slightly.
"I appreciate the offer," she replied. "But you don’t need to. I’m long past that now. And you can be, too. You don’t have to carry all that shit with you. What they expect from you, it doesn’t matter anymore. You have to decide what you want for yourself."
"How did you manage it?" I asked her. "Leaving all that shit behind, I mean?"
"It helps, having a little girl," she replied, smiling fondly as she thought of Kyra. "You look at them, and you think – what would I put up with for them? What am I letting into my life when I allow people to speak to me like this, treat me like this? And then, it just gets easier. You see how shitty it is, because you’d never do it yourself."
I nodded slowly, taking it in. She had a point. Even though I had only recently come into Kyra’s life, I already felt so protective of her – I knew there was no way in hell I would have allowed anyone to make her feel as though she was less-than, make her feel like she had to apologize for who she was, whatever that might have looked like.
"Thanks, Jo," I murmured to her. It didn’t feel like enough, just saying thank you, but it was all I had right now, as I processed the enormity of this conversation.
"That’s okay," she assured me. "Just one more thing, alright?"
"Anything," I promised her.
"Talk to Sasha."
I grimaced. I knew she was probably right, and I probably needed to clear the air with him, but right now, that was the last thing I wanted.
"I know why you’re reluctant," she told me. "But he deserves an explanation. Just to clear the air. And, shit, you might find out you have more in common than you thought, right?"
I managed to smile as I looked back at her. Yeah, I was pretty sure we did have something in common.
How much we cared for her.
Chapter Seventeen – Sasha
As soon as I saw him standing over by the bar, I froze. Shit, this was the first time I had seen Avda since that kiss, and I still didn’t know exactly where we stood.
He seemed to have been outright avoiding me these last few days, and I couldn’t blame him. That kiss? That kiss had been electric, but it had opened up doors I knew he wasn’t ready to even think about.
He lifted his chin in greeting, and then jerked his head, indicating that I should come over and join him. Slowly, tentatively, I did as I was told. I didn’t know where this was going. Best case scenario, he told me to forget about the whole thing and pretend it had never happened. And worst case...
It was clear he was carrying a whole lot of hatred, aimed squarely inward at himself, because of his desires. But I knew it was all too easy for that hatred to turn around and shoot outward if the situation arose. If I tried to talk to him about this, straight-up, he might just shut me down, chew me out, even get physical with me.
And not in the way I wanted.
I slid over to join him at the bar, and he reached across to grab me a beer. It was still quiet, a couple of hours before opening, and the place was nearly empty; Jo hadn’t even gotten here to start her shift yet, and not having her as a buffer was going to make things even more complicated.
"What’s up?" I greeted him carefully. His eyes seemed hard, difficult to read, but he handed me the beer. Our fingertips touched for the briefest moment, and I drew my hand back quickly, not wanting him to think I was trying to get into anything here.
"We need to talk," he told me.
"Yeah, I figured," I replied. "About..."
"About what happened the other day," he replied.
"The kiss?" I asked, and he glanced around, his jaw tensing. But then, he nodded.
"Yeah, that," he replied.
"What about it?" I pressed. I was going to give him the chance to lead here. Whatever he wanted to say about it, I was ready to hear it. I still didn’t entirely get what had happened there, but damn, if it hadn’t been hot. Feeling his emotion rise up and take control of him for the moment it took to plant my lips on his, it had made so much fall into place – so much about the way we had been with one another made sense. It hadn’t just been irritation, there had been frustration there too, a frustration neither of us had been quite able to put into words until then.
"I’m sorry I sprang it on you like that," he explained, voice low, eyes pinned to the wood of the bar in front of him, like he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact.
"Yeah, shit, it wasn’t exactly what I expected," I remarked. "You’ve been an asshole to me since I started working here."
