Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“I didn’t yell at you.” I wring the steering wheel while saying, “I also still would have been here this morning whether or not you had helped me.” The confusion on my face jumps onto hers when I mutter, “I learned my lesson once before. I won’t do it again.”
Her brows are furrowed, but since I’m signaling to turn right, she shifts her focus in another direction. “You need to take the i20 at this hour. Traffic will be gridlocked on the motorway.”
“We’re not going on the motorway. We’re going over it.”
“That’s still going to be bumper to bumper.” Forever stubborn, she leans over to change my signal to left while murmuring, “Just take a left here, and I’ll guide you the quickest route home.”
I switch the indicator back to right. “I’m not taking you home.” When I spot her erect nipples in the corner of my eye, it is the fight of my life to free my next set of words out of my clenched jaw. She is so fucking cold her nipples were stabbing into my chest when I silently goaded her to deny me. “I’m taking you to get a damn coat.”
“I’m not letting you buy me a coat.” She tests the locks before folding her arms over the very thing turning my mood manic.
She was using cardboard for a blanket the night I finally tracked her down. I didn’t give a fuck about my license or the measly bit of cash I had in my wallet. I wanted the only family photograph I had that didn’t include my father. It was a picture of my mom, Polina, and me when we thought we had finally escaped his wrath.
My mother was killed hours after the picture was taken.
I was supposed to get back the image then leave.
When my eyes landed on Anastasia, my feet refused to budge. I was left with no choice but to toss Anastasia over my shoulder and take her home with me. It was a piece-of-shit rundown studio apartment, but once I stopped plotting ways to spend the winter months locked up, I slowly transformed it into the home I never had as a kid.
Eventually, with Ghost’s help, I purchased every apartment in my building. Anastasia and I shared the top floor, and the rest were for people like us. The unwanted.
I haven’t been back there in years, but I know our apartment hasn’t been touched. I told anyone who’d listen if they touched it, I’d kill them.
“Alek…” Anastasia breathes out heavily when our surroundings become familiar. “You still live here?”
She is quick to shut down the disappointment that blazes through her eyes when I shake my head, but she isn’t fast enough for me to miss it. “But all your things still do. I’m sure you’ll have a coat or ten.”
“More like a hundred.” She crosses her legs over before twisting her torso to face me. “Remember that winter you bought me one for every day of that snowstorm? You didn’t want to wash.”
“I was more than happy to do the laundry.”
Her laughter twitches my cock. “Paying someone to do your laundry and doing it yourself are two completely different things.”
Anastasia laughs so hard she snorts when I mutter, “Says you.”
The real reason I wanted to pay someone was to stop Anastasia from carting our dirty clothes to the laundry room in the basement. The elevator only went to the foyer, so she would have had to carry the basket down a level of unsafe stairs. Considering her stomach was swollen with my child, I didn’t want her to do that.
With her memories pushing our earlier fight into the background of her mind, she unlatches her belt and follows me into the foyer of our old apartment building. “Still smells the same.”
“It’s the mold. After a while, you start believing it is aromatic.”
I fight not to bend in two when she socks me in the stomach before she enters the elevator I’m holding open for her. “If this place was moldy, you wouldn’t have let me stay here.”
She’s right. I wouldn’t have. Her safety was always my priority.
“Is Ms. Babanin still in 5A?”
Her lip drops into a pout when I shake my head. “She moved out a couple of years back. I think she’s in Moscow with her sister.”
Anastasia’s eyes pop. “The one she hates?”
I shrug. I wasn’t in the know as much as Anastasia.
We ride the elevator in silence for a couple of seconds before she finally breaks it. “I’m glad she eventually got back to Moscow. She’s been wanting to return there for decades. Even when it hurts, your hometown never stops calling you.”
Memories flood in hard and fast when the elevator dings open on the top level. The couch I took her against on her sixteenth birthday. The tub we both can’t fit in but still tried every single weekend. The refrigerator Yev and I dented when we carried it up several flights of stairs since it was too wide to fit in the elevator. And the overflowing walk-in closet since there are hundreds of coats stuffed into the space we were considering changing to a nursery.