29. Sasha
29
SASHA
The cracked sundial in the villa’s garden is off by exactly eighteen minutes. I’ve been timing it against my watch since dawn.
I’ve been timing other things, too.
Three hours since I left her bed.
Seven weeks until the babies come.
Time used to move like bullets—straight, precise, predictable. Now, it’s all chaos, stretching and compressing around Ariel’s smile, her laugh, the soft sigh as she comes in my arms, while the villa, full of life, does a sigh of its own all around us.
Just sex , we keep saying.
It’s getting harder and harder to believe.
The tap of Zoya’s cane against stone announces her arrival. She’s dressed for war in gardening clothes, her silver hair tied back with what looks suspiciously like one of Kosti’s old bandanas. Oh, fucking Christ. If she and him start shacking up, I’ll nuke the planet and tell God to start over.
“These silly girls,” she mutters in Russian, jabbing her cane at various spots in the turned earth. “No sense of proper spacing. No understanding of drainage. Who taught them to plant like this—wolves?”
“They seemed enthusiastic.”
“Enthusiasm without knowledge is how you get root rot.” She prods a particularly suspicious patch of soil. “Speaking of rot…”
“Zoya—”
“Don’t ‘Zoya’ me. You look awful. Come here and take off that shirt so I can get a proper look at you.”
There’s no point arguing. I submit to her examination, wincing as her fingers find tender spots along my ribs. She clicks her tongue at each flinch, each half-healed bruise.
“You’re not sleeping,” she accuses.
“I sleep fine.”
“Liar.” Her hands are gentle despite her sharp tone. “You think I don’t recognize restless eyes when I see them? I raised you, solnyshko .”
I grunt noncommittally, but she’s already launching into a story about her rooftop garden in Brighton Beach, how she spent years coaxing stubborn plants to life in that salt-stained soil.
“Everything worth having takes time,” she concludes, finally stepping back from her inspection. “I learned that watching my first tomatoes grow. Such fragile things at first. But with patience, with care…” She trails off, squinting at me. “That’s not what I really meant, though.”
“Then please,” I drawl, “enlighten us on what you really meant.”
“Don’t be smart with me.” She smacks me in the back of the head with her cane, then gestures in a sweeping arc across the half-started garden, taking in the uneven rows, the ambitious scope of it. “Some things need roots to grow.” The knowing look she gives me could pierce armor. “Like families.”
“We’re not?—”
“If you try to tell me this isn’t a family,” she cuts me off, “I will hit you again, and this time, I won’t be gentle about it.”
The scent of coffee saves me from having to respond. Belle emerges from the villa, carrying three steaming mugs with practiced grace.
“I thought I heard voices,” she says, distributing the coffee. Her smile wrinkles when she surveys the garden. “Oh, dear. Why do I get the feeling one of my girls was responsible for this?”
Zoya accepts one of the mugs with a nod. “I was just telling Sasha how these girls need proper instruction. In my day, every woman knew how to tend a proper garden.”
“Oh, I tried teaching them. But ask me if those little hellions ever wanted to listen.” Belle settles onto a stone bench, tucking her feet beneath her. “I had the tiniest herb garden on our fire escape in New York. Just a few terracotta pots, but the basil…” She inhales, like she can still smell it. “Leander used to say he could follow the scent home from three blocks away.”
Something in her voice—a soft, bruised note—brings a memory of my own mother’s window box flooding back. Six geraniums in chipped pots. Defiant spots of red against the city’s gray. The only beautiful thing Yakov never managed to destroy, though not for lack of trying. My mother would sing to those flowers in the morning, her voice as bright as their petals.
I catch Zoya watching me, her eyes knowing. She remembers those flowers, too—she’s the one who helped my mother plant them.
Belle and Zoya fall into easy chatter about compost ratios, and just like that, the ghosts retreat. But the memory of those geraniums lingers, red as hope against concrete.
Then the villa’s back door creaks open.
And my throat goes dry.
Ariel stands in the doorway wearing one of my shirts, the white cotton gone nearly translucent in the morning light. Her hair tumbles wild over one shoulder, still mussed from my fingers three hours ago. From this distance, I can see the shadow of a mark I left on her collarbone, barely hidden by the collar.
The collar slips off one shoulder as she stretches, fabric riding up. That fucking swell of belly peeking through when she twists to tie her hair back…
She freezes mid-yawn, caught. Our eyes lock.
Just sex.
Just lies.
Zoya clears her throat pointedly. Only then do I realize I’ve been staring.
Belle, oblivious to the XXX-rated path my thoughts just took, smiles at her youngest daughter. “Good morning, sweetheart! Come join us. We were just admiring your… handiwork.”
Ariel blushes as she pads over to us. She stoops down to pluck a weed from the dirt and scowls at it lying limply in her hand. When her shirt inches higher, I catch the dark lace of panties peeking above her sweatpants waistband. My cock stirs.
I drain my coffee, even though it’s hot enough to scald my throat raw.
“Well,” I cough, “I need to go check on?—”
“Nonsense,” Belle interrupts. “You can’t let two old ladies and a pregnant woman tend to this garden all alone! We need a big, strong man like you to help us with the heavy lifting. Isn’t that right, girls?”
Zoya nods. Ariel blushes. Belle just smiles brightly.
Emotional terrorists, the lot of them.
I sigh. “No, of course not. How may I be of service?”
That’s how I end up toiling away in the hot sun. As hours pass, I cuff my pants above the ankle and strip my sweat-drenched shirt off to cast it aside. Where is a storm when you need it? For three weeks now, it’s rained and knocked out the power damn near every day. But when it’s time for me to dig miles of neat rows while Zoya barks orders at me like a drill sergeant, suddenly, the sun wants to hang out.
Zoya meanders by every few minutes to criticize my technique. “Deeper,” she instructs, jabbing at the soil. “The roots need room to spread.”
Men used to piss themselves in fear when I walked into a room. Now, I’m kneeling in a garden bed, taking orders from two grandmothers, while doing my damndest to avoid gawking at the woman I fucked into oblivion last night.
The whole time, that woman is crouched at my side. I tried to tell her early on to go easy, to rest often for the babies’ sakes, but she told me that there was a sharp-edged hoe in the shed that I could go fuck myself with, and I decided it was best to not offer any additional advice.
There’s enough danger percolating between us anyhow. Our fingers touch as she passes me another seedling. “Is that good enough?” she asks, poking at the hole she’s been digging.
I have to clear my throat before I can answer. “Deeper.”
She looks at me. I look at her. We both then shift our gazes elsewhere.
It’s best that way.
Gravel crunches behind us. “Well, isn’t this domestic?” Kosti’s voice carries more amusement than any man should be capable of before noon. He settles onto a stone bench, lighting a cigarette with theatrical slowness. “Never thought I’d see the day—Sasha Ozerov, getting his hands dirty with actual dirt instead of blood.”
“Shut up and help,” I growl.
“Can’t, I’m afraid. Doctor’s orders. Bad back.” He grins around his cigarette. “I’m here in a strictly advisory capacity.”
Jasmine follows him out and joins us, and little by little, the rest of the day passes in a blaze of Italian sun. The earth is raw and black as we turn it over, as little green things take up residence.
In a year, it’ll be green.
In a decade, it’ll be greener still.
Part of me wants to remind these women that none of us will be here to see it. There’s a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up this happy little bubble we’re planting. An expiration date that’s coming sooner rather than later.
But I won’t be the one to bring it up. Hell, I’m doing my best to forget it myself.
Because, as I stand and dust my hands, I’m smacked sideways by a feeling that this is how it ought to be. Zoya is lecturing Jasmine on fertilizing methods while Kosti teaches Belle how to roll a cigarette. At my feet, Ariel is kneeling as she tucks the last of our seedlings into its new bed.
She belongs here. She belongs in this garden, in these clothes— my clothes—and in this makeshift family we’re piecing together out of broken parts and borrowed time.
When Ariel struggles to rise, I steady her with both hands. She’s left a perfect handprint in the dirt—five fingers pressed into the soil. Without thinking, I stoop down to press my own hand beside hers. Her print is smaller, but somehow, it makes mine look less threatening. Less like the marks I usually leave behind.
She notices. Her eyes meet mine, and this time, neither of us looks away.