AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I shared plenty, right?” I ask after the waitress takes our order. “Now, you need to fess up.”
“Can we fool around in your car after dinner?”
“But we’re going to the Pigsty afterward, right?” I ask, thinking she’s weaseling out of spending the night. “We can fool around in bed.”
“The only wild times in my life were fooling around in Steve’s car. He wasn’t hot like you, so I kinda wanted to test if it was more fun with a sexy biker. But it’s probably best not to do it after a big dinner when we’re bloated.”
“We’ll eat light,” I blurt out, thinking of her riding my dick in the back seat. “We can change our orders to salads or some shit.”
Irina laughs at how I adjust my dick in my jeans. “There’s no hurry. I just have a bunch of fantasies built up from when I went so long without seeing you.”
Kissing her again, I want nothing more than to glue my body to hers. Fucking Irina has always been the easy part. We fit together perfect. Her body makes me crazy. I know no other man’s made her come apart like I have.
However, I need more now. Those weeks without Irina left me thinking we would never be together in a real way. Tonight, I feel her talking around issues. The only way to know if that’s her hangup or a reaction to me is to push her past what she wants to share.
“Tell me about Fiona,” I say as soon as our meals arrive.
Irina goes still before poking at her chicken and mushroom pasta.
“She fell off the third-floor stairwell. I’m unsure how she survived. Her skull was fractured. Her back and legs, too. It’s like she shattered. Before I met her, she spent months in the hospital and a year in an extended care facility. Fiona needed to learn to walk again. They taught her braille, so she could read.”
“She’s blind?”
“No, but she gets double vision a lot. Mostly, she’s afraid to open her eyes. Her brain doesn’t process bright lights correctly. She can get terrible headaches or even seizures. That’s why we keep the house dark. She still doesn’t want to open her eyes. I have to nag her to do her eye exercises, so she won’t lose her sight completely.”
“I still can’t picture what she’s like.”
Irina glances around before pulling out her phone and finding a video. In it, the little blonde woman plays a somewhat familiar song on the cello. She seems normal enough. Definitely more animated than when she was blitzed at Marky’s funeral.
“The cello is nearly as big as her.”
Irina smiles like a proud mama. “She loves that thing so much. Fiona claims not to remember a lot of things. She had to relearn geography. Just completely forgot where everything was in the world. She also struggles with identifying foods. Certain things don’t stick in her head.”
Irina pauses as if she’s sharing too much. Forcing a grin, she continues, “But Fiona remembers her songs. I think it’s muscle memory. Like the songs were played so often and are ingrained in a part of her mind that she can’t otherwise access. This is ‘Mad World.’ She can remember how to play it, but not what it’s called.”
The woman in the video keeps her eyes closed for the entire song. The room is so dimly lit that she’s barely viewable. Any darker and the phone’s night vision feature would likely have turned on.
“I can’t picture the life you have at the Rogers estate.”
“Have you seen the guesthouse?”
“In passing once, a long time ago.”
“It’s a beautiful house. Since the updates, it’s comfortable for Fiona.”
“Is it your style?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a chance to try out what I like. I lived in my parents’ house and then Steve’s. Our furniture was basic. We had no style. When I lived in an apartment, I worked so much that painting or buying wall décor felt pointless. After that, I lived with Fiona in the Victorian. Again, I never really felt like it was my home, so I didn’t change anything. Now, I feel that way with the Tudor guesthouse.”
“I have land,” I say after she rests her phone on the table. “A really pretty piece with a creek running through it. There’s a perfect spot for a house. I always figured I’d build one, but I never got around to leaving the Pigsty.”
“That’s where your family is,” Irina says. “And the Pigsty is a beautiful home.”
Her words win a grin from me. I like how Irina doesn’t view my life as weird or shady. Harper often claims I’m a loser for not having a place of my own. I remind her how she only has a house because her husband bought her one. She doesn’t earn shit.
“Being a homemaker is a job,” she spit out at me.
“You have a nanny and a cleaning service. Shit, you even hired someone to do your lawn. I’m not sure what you do with your time.”
