“I swear on a stack of bibles, if I have to pull over this car!” Mama King threatened, turning down the back-seat volume.
We rushed into the chapel once we arrived at the hospital. I pretended I wasn’t searching for Adam while we walked through the halls. Hailey appeared before I could gather enough courage to ask.
Her dress was yellow and, thanks to her blond hair and glowing skin, enhanced her natural beauty. Hailey could be a bitch on a good day in my experience, but today, she spoke softly. “The nurse is bringing Peter down in a few minutes.”
Mrs. King held her daughter by the arms. “Darling, you look stunning.” She kissed her cheek.
Hailey smiled.
I kept Anya with me and directed the kids to the front of the chapel. “Come on, let’s light some candles.”
Sasha’s eyes bugged. “Really? You’re not worried we’ll set something on fire?”
I shrugged. “Might make things interesting.”
Anya giggled as I showed them how to light the candles without burning their arms off. Sasha was suspiciously good with my lighter. For a split-second, I craved the quick burn of a cigarette.
Hailey wrung her hands and began to pace. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”
“When is love ever sane?” Mrs. King replied.
“Brought the flowers!” Adam called as he pushed open the chapel doors. His arms were overflowing with bouquets with get-well cards attached.
Hailey laughed as she helped him sort through usable flowers. “Good job, baby brother. I hope this cost you a fortune.”
“Love you too, sis.”
“My sweet children,” Mrs. King said as she pinched Adam’s cheek.
Anya giggled and ran over to join them. “Ooh, Hailey, you look like a princess! Do you like my tutu? Can I have those flowers?”
Hailey scooped Anya up in her arms and tucked a lily in her hair. “Here, you can help me decorate.” They spread flowers around the altar, while Sasha and I finished lighting the rest of the prayer candles. I made an Orthodox cross over my chest as I thanked the man upstairs.
Mrs. King and Hailey disappeared quickly after.
The chaplain entered with the nurse pushing Peter’s wheelchair. I kept Anya’s shoulders under my hands, while Sasha stood next to Adam. I sucked in a breath as Peter was wheeled between us. His eyes were glued to the chapel doors. He looked so altered, I barely recognized my brother. But there was life and love in his eyes when Hailey and Mrs. King walked through the door.
Hailey’s smile was a bright contrast to Peter’s pale, weakened frame. He wore one of Papa’s old suits. The chaplain opened a small book and spoke the familiar words and then paused for their vows. They slipped plain wedding bands on each other’s fingers.
“I vow to love you forever.” Peter’s voice was stronger than he appeared. “Whatever that means and for however long. I will cherish every second.”
“I know I’m not the easiest person to live with,” Hailey began and choked on her words. “But I vow to love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
“You may now kiss the bride,” the chaplain said.
Hailey leaned over to reach Peter, but he held up a hand and gripped his chair with the other. The nurse rushed to help, but he shook his head. “I can do it.” His legs shook as he stood. Sweat broke out across his forehead, and he leaned against Hailey when she stepped into his arms.
“You silly bastard,” she whispered.
“I love you.” His face contorted at first, but he pushed past his pain and grinned as he kissed her.
I sucked in a breath, and for a moment, the world tilted on its axis. Seeing my brother use every ounce of strength he had to kiss the woman he loved was unbearable. It was beautiful and frightening, like lightning and thunder. Combined, their love was powerful, and for a moment, just a moment, I really believed Peter would survive this. I looked at Adam and found him already staring at me as though he too had been thunderstruck and with intrepid uncertainty.
Mrs. King was right about me using my mother to keep people at arm’s length. Hailey was right to love Peter enough to marry him for what precious time they had left. Adam was right too, about many things, but more importantly, I was wrong. The worst part was I had done the thing I’d tried to accomplish, and now it was too late—too late to take it back.
The kids cheered as Hailey wheeled Peter out of the chapel. As they passed us by, I grabbed my brother’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He pulled me to him with surprising strength and, against my ear, whispered in Russian, “Let him love you, baby girl.” His lips brushed my cheek, and I pulled away to find Adam’s retreating back in my line of sight. He kept a hand on either child’s shoulder as they raced after Peter and Hailey. I glanced back at the altar with its scattered get-well flowers and candles and hesitated.
“All right, give them some space, children!” Mrs. King waved her handkerchief with a dismissive hand. I jumped when she thrust the kerchief in my face. “Wipe away those runs, hon. This is a day for smiles.”
I nodded as though I agreed, but inside, I thought quite the opposite.
Today is a day for goodbyes.
I chased Anya through the upstairs bedrooms as she insisted on sleeping in her tutu, and I insisted on a bath.
“Can’t make me, Aunt Dani!” She ducked under Sasha’s desk, where he currently sat working with his science kit.
Note to self: Pay better attention to his little experiments before he blows the house up.
“Anya, get the hell away from my desk!” Sasha gripped a bubbling glass beaker and twisted to avoid his sister.
I flicked his head. “Don’t make me wash your mouth out, kid.” I grinned when he rolled his eyes and focused on his notes. I ducked under to grab my niece by the leg and proceeded to drag her out of the room.
“Aunt Dani, you’ll rip my tutu!”
“Guess you should have thought of that before you started this.” She shrieked as I pulled her into the ready bath, tutu and all. After a few tears and a promise to wash it properly later, she settled in with her bubbles and superhero dolls. I sat on the floor against the porcelain tub and tried not to think about today.
“When are Papa and Hailey coming back?”
“Remember, they have to stay at the hospital a few more nights. They’ll be home soon.”
After a lengthy pause, wherein more bubbles dissolved with the water, she asked, “And when they come back, are you gonna go?”
I lifted my gaze to find a very serious look on her cherub face. I smiled and tried to summon the ready laughter, but there was something in her big baby blues that demanded truth. Children are a lot smarter than adults give them credit for. They see and feel things with sharper, unfiltered clarity. I know this because I remembered my past with unforgiving accuracy.
“I don’t know. Wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon, but now I’m not so sure.” I shrugged and tried to grin. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see what your Papa and Hailey think.”
“Okay, Aunt Dani,” Anya whispered. She didn’t fight me the rest of the evening as I ordered them to get ready for bed. Once she was snuggled in her covers, she looked up at me again with an almost adult expression. Instead of a Baba Yaga story, she asked for truth.
“Remember the pretty cards your mommy sent you?” she began and waited for me to acknowledge before she continued. “Do you think my mommy will ever send me presents again?”
I wanted to reach across the states and wring Peter’s ex with my fists. “I know one thing for sure, Anya Pavlova. I will always send you presents.”
Anya smiled. “Promise?”
I ran my fingers through her sweet-smelling curls and wondered if this fierce love was what mothers should feel for their children. I wondered if Hailey could feel like this too for my niece and nephew and if her love could make up for their mother’s mistakes. I kissed my niece on the forehead and replied, “I promise.”
I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom and stared at th
e open suitcase. There had never seemed to be a dull enough moment to unpack my clothes since I’d arrived. In truth, it had only been a few weeks. I had lived in more than one foreign country for that amount of time. But it was drawing dangerously near to the point of no return, that moment when I had to empty the suitcase and go back to living out of closets and drawers.
I grabbed a fistful of wrinkled shirts and looked over at my chest of drawers. My high school wardrobe was still in there, like the T-shirt I’d worn to after-prom with Adam and the shorts I’d ripped while climbing the fence to get to his house the night of his accident.
A faint knock sounded at my door.
“Just a second,” I called, picturing Anya frightened from another nightmare. Tonight, I didn’t think I would mind her crawling into bed with me. Before I could stand, the door opened, and a tall figure stepped from the shadows into the lamplight. I gasped, bracing my hands on the suitcase and open dresser drawer.
Adam still wore his wedding tux, though the suit jacket looked rumpled, as if he had slept in it. He hesitated as he took in my clothes and the green dress thrown haphazardly on the bed. “Going somewhere?” He arched an eyebrow and shut the door with a firm click behind him.
I froze and stared at my mess. “No. Yes. I mean, I—don’t know yet.” I shrugged and tried to smile up at him.
“You can’t leave,” he insisted.
“Is that so?” I felt my natural inclination rise, that fight-or-flight instinct that got the better of me every time. The same instinct that had ruined my mother’s life and would forever haunt mine. That damned wandering gypsy syndrome. I hated that he thought the worst of me.
You only have yourself to blame, Zvezda.
I stood, determined to be on equal footing with Adam. “I’m a grown-ass woman now, Adam. I can make my own decisions.”
“No.” His beautiful eyes seemed to burn like blue fire.
“No?” I laughed and glanced down at the loose thin shirt and my breasts poking through the cotton.
“You may be grown up, but you don’t get to make these kinds of decisions on your own. Not since you decided to come back into our lives.”
“The kids will be fine, Adam.”
He shook his head. “You won’t be.”
“They have Hailey now, your mom, you.”
“We can’t replace you, Dani.” He stepped into my personal space, and I could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the way his pupils dilated as he took me in. My pulse rose to match his, and I craned my neck, refusing to back down and quite conscious of the fact that he was too close.
His voice deepened as he added, “No one can ever replace you.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Adam…” My words became tangled when his fingers slipped around my neck and threaded through my hair.
Firmly and somehow gently at the same time, he said, “You were wrong before.”
“Adam,” I interrupted.
He shook his head. “I know you may think the kids don’t need you, but you’re wrong. They need you to stay. I need you to stay. You were wrong before, to push me away. I shouldn’t have let you, but I was scared if I pushed too hard, you’d run.”
“I know, Adam,” I said and tried to pull his hand down.
He took hold of my face with both hands and continued, almost desperate. “Do you?” His eyes searched mine, while his fingers traced patterns down my neck, my back. With each second, he took possession of me with each touch.
I reached up to take his face between my hands and smiled at my stupid, gorgeous best friend. “Yes, dumb ass, I knew at the wedding. I’m not moving back to Petersburg. I’m trying to decide on whether to get my own place or not, now that Peter and Hailey are married.”
The worry lines about his face smoothed, and his mouth fell open in brief surprise. “Your own place?” he clarified.
I nodded and watched as his disbelief transformed into something rare and wonderful. Adam smiled, and I could see both then—the boy I had loved and the man I couldn’t live without.
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I tried to shrug him off, but his grip on my waist tightened, and he loomed over me with a shit-eating grin.
“You’re coming to live with me.”
“When pigs fly, King.”
“You’re moving in.”
I laughed, but it was becoming difficult to hide my joy beneath sarcasm. “Don’t you think we’re rushing things a little? I haven’t been back two months yet. How do you know—”
He kissed me, not on the lips, but at the juncture between my neck and shoulder and traced a line to my pulse with his tongue. He stole my breath away, and I cursed in Russian. I had not been able to say no to him since the day he grabbed my hand in third grade and said we were going to be best friends.
Against my ear, he whispered, “I wanna hear you say it.” He pulled on my earlobe with his teeth, and I shivered.
“Damn you, Adam King.”
“I’m not wasting one more second of our lives, Morning Star.” His arms tensed about my waist. He lifted me until our foreheads touched and our gazes were level.
“I love you, Adam King.” I said it, and I didn’t see fireworks. The world did not end, and I didn’t feel the telltale urge to run far and fast away from him. I felt relief, and the only thing I saw was my reflection in Adam’s eyes. For the first time, I knew belonging. I kissed him hard, deeply, until I forgot myself.
His hands were clumsy at my shirt, and I felt the tug, then tear, as he pulled it over my head and ripped part of the arm in his effort. He whispered between kisses, reminding me the kids were across the hall, “You wore the green dress…”
“You remembered?” I gasped as he took a nipple into his mouth and tugged my underwear down my thigh.
He nodded and lifted his heavy-lidded gaze with a lazy grin. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t praying and hoping we’d do this after that stupid dance.”
I slapped him on his lightly freckled shoulder. “You pervert!”
He trailed kisses along my naval and murmured, “Guilty. We were sixteen, Dani. What did you expect?”
“I was sixteen. You were only fifteen.” He spread my thighs apart, and I bit my lip while grabbing hold of his hair and the suitcase beside us. I lost my shit when he hummed his agreement against my inner thigh.
After that, there was no more room for talk or much thought. I made love to him and managed to forget my past guilt and shame and let us simply be. Sex had always been some form of control for me in a lifetime of mistakes. For ten years, I counted Adam King on that list. That night he helped me forget the fact that I was not my mother, that I always had a choice. He showed me with actions and words that it really was all right to forgive not only each other but ourselves.
22
I & Love & You
The Kings’ farmhouse was filled with Anya’s squeals as the Brewers’ kids chased her. I nearly tripped over my niece as she ran for the back door. “Pomedlenneye!” I called after her.
“Prosti!” Anya apologized.
As the Brewers’ kids followed, I ran to reach the house phone ringing in the kitchen.
“Hello?” I asked, breathless from running down the stairs. I was starting to regret my offer to babysit both families’ offspring.
“Dobroye utro! How are you, baby girl?”
I smiled. He sounded better than the last time he’d called. “Surviving. How about you? Hailey hasn’t put you back in the hospital yet, has she?”
Peter chuckled. “You are wicked.”
“Which is why you love me,” I sang and crossed to the kitchen window to look out over the Kings’ yard. The kids were climbing the same tree Adam used to fall out of every summer.
“How are the kids?” he asked after a pause.
“They’re little demons, but I have the advantage. I used to be worse than all of them.”
I smiled again hearing my brother’s laugh. Once, I would have done anythi
ng to make him laugh. Now I thanked God he was still here and had enough life to spend a brief honeymoon with Hailey at the local bed and breakfast.
“Adam still helping you?”
“Is this your way of keeping tabs on our relationship? Because if it is, you suck at subtlety, Pete.”
“What kind of brother would I be if I didn’t threaten him now and again?”
“Sure, sure. Well, for your information, the sex is great. Adam is at the shop and should be home in an hour.”
Peter groaned. “Too much…”
“You asked,” I replied. “Ah, shit! Anya fell out of that damned tree.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this, Petey. Love you, bye!” I hung up before he could protest and darted out the door.
Caleb Brewer dropped Adam off at the Kings’ farmhouse two hours later. Turned out the men took advantage of their freedom and smoked a couple of cigars.
“Had to celebrate King finally winning you over, Pavlova!” Caleb crowed at me while his two girls squealed and jumped into the back seat of his SUV.
“Tell Andi we’re having ladies’ night out next Friday, will you, asshat?” I waved my fingers after him.
Caleb winked and waved at Adam, who was fending off attacks from Sasha and Anya.
“Okay, munchkins, time to eat supper,” I said. Adam grinned up at me, while the kids groaned.
Sasha wrinkled his nose. “Are you cooking tonight?”
“What? Don’t think I can deliver chicken and rice? The recipe seemed easy enough.”
Anya giggled. “You don’t cook, Aunt Dani!”
“Who says?”
“Adam said so,” she replied in a singsong voice back to me. The kids raced up the front steps of the King farmhouse.
I placed a firm hand on Adam’s chest, stopping him on the bottom step, and looked down my nose at him. “Just a minute, King. What lies are you spreading to these poor children?”
He covered my hand with his and smiled that damned gorgeous smile of his. His teeth were white enough, though not perfectly straight. His jaw was full of a beard he had begun the day I agreed to be his girl for good. His nose was slightly long but perfectly divided his face. Yet those eyes were what haunted me, the eyes that first promised me forever, which drew me in. I used to tease him by calling them purple when we were little. He hated the fact that any part of him was considered “beautiful.”
She Walks In Moonlight Page 16
