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Thump-thump, thump-thump.
“What?” she asked when she got to her room.
He glared at her. “‘What?’” He pointed to the wet spot on the bed. “This iswhat. You wet the bed?”
“I didn’t know.” It was a lie and she knew lies were bad but she also knew her dad was mean when he was mad.
Like, super mean.
He stomped toward her and grabbed her arm, then dragged her toward the bed.
“Ow!” His big hand was hard and tight around her arm. “That hurts!”
“I don’t care,” he said, dragging her to a stop next to the bed. “You’re lying, Olivia. There’s no way you didn’t know about this. You were trying to hide it.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, even though she’d definitely been trying to hide it.
He gripped her arm harder and glared down at her. “Stop lying to me.”
“I’m not.” Tears came out of her eyes because he really did seem mad and because it was embarrassing and because Mommy wouldn’t have yelled at her if she’d had an accident.
He spun her around fast and she felt the sharp sting of his hand on her bottom.
“Ow!”
“Are you a baby?” He was so mad a fleck of spit flew out of his mouth but Olivia was too scared to think it was gross. “Because only babies wet the bed and only bad girls lie.”
“I’m not bad!” She was crying harder now and it was hard to breathe, like when she had hiccups, except when she had hiccups her mom laughed and Olivia didn’t cry.
He spanked her a lot of times, his face red while he said, “Goddammit, Olivia, look what you made me do.”
By the time he stopped her bottom was stinging and she didn’t even care that they didn’t have a swear jar because she didn’t want to get ice cream anyway.
She just wanted her mom.
16
Ruby
Ruby sat on the reading chair in her room and tried to focus on the words in her book. She’d read the same passage three times while trying to tune out the muffled sound of the TV from the living room.
Roman was watching a movie, something with a lot of shooting from the sound of it.
She’d been surprised the first time she’d stumbled on him watching a movie in the living room. Up to that point, he’d seemed almost inhuman. A god-man who did nothing but work, walking into the loft after a long day and out of it in the morning, occasionally hosting the men who’d rescued her for strategy meetings.
Then one night she’d gotten up for water and had found him sitting on the sofa, some kind of action movie flickering across his strong features in the dark.
She’d gotten her water and returned to her room, feeling like she’d dodged yet another bullet with the man who occupied way too many of her thoughts.
Way too many of her dreams.
It wasn’t like she wanted to want him. God no.
But they’d been occupying the same space for almost two weeks and she was horrified to find that after a few nights of rest and several days of Vera’s cooking, another kind of appetite had reared its ugly head.
She would never act on it of course. That would just be dumb.
But she was only human, and traversing her days in the loft with Roman Kalashnik was like living in an ice cream parlor with a dairy allergy.
