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She pokes her head into the room, looking around as if she expects to see someone other than me.
“Char, were you having sex last night?” she asks, closing the door after she enters.
Oops.
“Yes, I was. Sorry about the noise,” I say, trying to keep things completely normal while I pull on my sock and sneakers.
Her eyes widen like she caught me at something and I wait for a smart-ass remark or two.
“Was it fun?” she teases, sauntering around my room, touching this and that like I’m really going to share details with her.
Not.
“Yes, it was fun, Evie. It was great. I loved it. Is there anything else you want to know?”
She’s trying not to smile, like she’s all grown up and stuff, but she giggles, either out of embarrassment or nervousness, or both.
“What about you, Evie. Have you had sex yet?” I ask.
God, I hope she didn’t do anything with that creep relative of Dimitris’s.
Her gaze whips in my direction, and she looks like she’d rather die than have this conversation with me.
But hell, she brought it up.
“Come here, Evie,” I say, patting the bed next to me. “Have a seat.”
She does, staring at her hands and picking at her chipped black nail polish.
“Have you? You can tell me,” I say.
She takes a deep breath. “No. I was going to. With that guy Arseny. He was really bugging me for it. But I wanted to wait for the right time and place. Thank God I didn’t,” she says, her voice breaking a little.
I stroke her hair, then start to braid it like our mother used to. “I’m sorry how all that turned out. I’m glad you found out the kind of person he was before it was too late.”
She sniffles and nods. “How could I have been so stupid?”
I take her chin and turn her toward me. “You liked him because he was nice to you. Until he wasn’t. He’s a bad guy from a family of bad guys. You had no way of knowing.”
She nods and her sad face reminds me of when she was six and our mother was gone. I had to try so hard to get her to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When she did, just to please me, she nearly choked, that’s how badly she didn’t want it, and ten years later I still feel horrible for trying to force her.
“You know what, honey? You’re going to be okay. Our lives are crazy right now, but they won’t always be. And with the guys looking out for us, there will be no more Arsenys to get within a hundred yards of you before they tell him to take a hike.”
She laughs a little. “Char?”
“Yeah?”
“I… I won’t make that mistake again,” she says, like she’s so old and wise.
If only I believed her.
“One other thing, Char.”
“Yeah?”
She swallows hard. “Well, um, Char, I want to move back home. With Pops. I miss my old life.”
Holy shit, I did not see that coming.
