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“Would you like to watch?” Roman said. “TV in the dark always makes me sleepy.”
She hesitated, every brain cell screaming at her not to be stupid.
“Okay.” She moved toward the sofa, sat at the other end of it, keeping as much distance between them as possible.
Luckily for her, the couch wasn’t very comfortable despite its obviously high price tag. It wasn’t a fall-asleep-watching-a-movie couch and that meant it would be easier not to let her guard down.
She took a sip of her tea and set the cup on the coffee table, then leaned back, her eyes on the screen. Roman’s cologne, expensive and spicy, drifted her way along with the subtle tang of masculine sweat.
Desire flooded her core and her face heated along with the rest of her.
“What are they doing?” she asked about the men taking up position outside a terra-cotta house.
She was glad it was dark, that there was almost four feet between them on the sofa.
“Hostage rescue,” he said.
She nodded and watched as the men stormed the clay house.
A couple minutes later, Roman reached for the popcorn and took a handful, then passed it to Ruby.
She took it in silence and sank deeper into the sofa.
What was the harm?
17
Roman
Coney Island was cold and deserted, just the way he liked it. A biting wind blew in off the water and he stuffed his gloved hands into the pockets of his wool coat, aware of the fact that Max was behind him.
Normally it would have been an unnecessary precaution, but these were not normal times.
He looked out over the water and thought of his mother as he made his way to the carousel in the distance. He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d begun his takeover of the bratva, a necessary distance given her proximity to Roman’s father.
Roman didn’t miss her. Not the person she’d become, drunk and numb to his father’s coldness and abuse, but there was another version of her that he did miss, the woman who’d taken him and Erik to the beach in the summer, who’d worn red sunglasses and laughed when the wind whipped her hat off her head.
As an adult, coming here in the summer was too painful. Then he would see the children with their laughing mothers. He would watch as they ate hot dogs and dripping ice cream and wonder how many of them would look back on the memories fondly and how many with pain.
He’d blamed his mother for many years. Had blamed her for being too weak to leave, for letting Igor torment Erik and Roman (mostly Roman), for withdrawing into a bottle, leaving them to fend for themselves against the boogeyman to end all boogeymen.
Now he saw that she just wasn’t strong enough to do anything else, that she wasn’t built that way.
Not like Ruby, who fought for Olivia. Who’d left her abuser, then fought to raise her daughter with joy and love in his shadow. Who’d fought to stay alive even when she’d been held prisoner by Igor’s men and who even now wouldn’t reach out to Olivia (he heard her crying in her bed at night, great sobs she tried to stifle with a pillow) for fear of doing her emotional harm if she’d been told Ruby was dead.
She was the most wonderful woman he’d ever known. Living with her had relegated him to a kind of fandom, a groupie in his own home, always hoping for a glimpse of her, a chance to say a few words.
She’d taken to watching movies with him at night at least, a development that left him feeling foolishly victorious even as they hardly spoke, the distance — physical and otherwise — carefully maintained by Ruby.
He lifted his head, saw the carousel drawing closer, the dark figure sitting on a bench near it that overlooked the water.
Focus, he ordered himself.
He couldn’t afford to act like a lovestruck schoolboy.
Not now.
He stepped up to the bench and sat next to the man wrapped in a thick black coat, a red scarf wound around his neck. His thick gray hair didn’t move in the wind, a testament to whatever product he used to keep its whorls in place, but his cheeks were ruddy from cold.
