Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ryker
I’m the worst piece of shit on the planet.
I’ve told myself a million times not to catch an attack of conscience, but the worry in both Dimitri’s and Sasha’s voice is ripping me to shreds.
Okay, maybe it’s not Dimitri’s…
Fucking Sasha. From seeing that guard with his hands on her to hearing her tell Dimitri to save his daughter over her life, to her fear over Katarina, I’m starting to understand something I didn’t before.
She’s got a shit father. Maybe worse than mine. Probably worse than mine. And her sister up and left her to whatever fate I deemed appropriate.
I bitch about my brothers, but they’ve made me an equal financial partner. And yet I went behind their backs, while Sasha…
She is willing to put all of it, her very life, on the line for them. She’d give them every part of herself when she’s gotten almost nothing in return.
Her heart is so fucking big, her love so deep, she glows with it. It doesn’t matter what has happened, or what might happen. She’s making a choice to place herself between her family and danger.
What fucking choices have I made?
I don’t need to answer myself. Instead, I follow Sasha into Anna’s room where a large dollhouse sits in the corner.
Sasha moves toward it and then sits cross-legged next to her niece.
Anna hands her a doll that has shiny dark hair just like Sasha. “For you.”
“Thank you, milaya,” Sasha answers, kissing the little girl’s chubby cheek again. Anna kisses her back.
I have that same feeling I had the first time I saw them together. I’m not a guy who even dates.
But when I look at them, what I see is…a future. Scares the shit out of me.
Anna looks at me, her brow puckering into a frown. Does she see right through me? Can kids do that?
She turns back to the dollhouse, and I assume I’ve been dismissed by the smallest human I know, when she spins back around, holding a doll. “For you,” she says as she hands me a male doll.
“For me?” I gingerly take the doll.
“You be daddy,” she says, before she turns back to the doll house.
But I nearly choke on my own spit as I look down at the doll in my hand, a muscle in my jaw ticcing. “I’m not sure I’m father material,” I mutter, holding the doll like it’s something foul. Like it might leave a stain.
“It’s only for a few minutes,” Sasha says with a small smile. “I promise, you won’t catch any paternal disease.”
“How do you know?” I mutter, but I sit on the floor.
Her eyes go wide as they stare into mine. From the child-sized table in the other corner, Ava clears her throat and then stands. “I’ll let the three of you enjoy yourselves.”
I nod in her general direction as I am instructed to put the “daddy” doll in his office to do work.
I do as I’m commanded, because for one, working is a task I actually understand, and two, I’m pretty sure that means I don’t have to participate much in the pretend doll world.
But soon an entire dollhouse drama unfolds, where the mom and the daughter come knock on daddy’s door and demand he leave work to take them out for ice cream. A word Anna pronounces pema.
“Is pema Russian for ice cream?” I whisper to Sasha.
“No, just her mispronunciation,” Sasha says as she softly laughs.
I came in here to watch my wife with her niece and ask myself a few hard questions. But instead, I find myself playing for the first time in at least twenty years. The innocence of this moment is an answer of a different kind, but no less powerful.
Naturally, I have no choice but to concede, as doll daddy, I agree to the outing. What kind of ogre denies a child that cute ice cream?
But I’m a little shocked when Anna slips her hand in mine and starts pulling me up and out into the kitchen.
Sasha is quietly laughing behind me as she trails behind.
“Where are we going?” I ask Anna.
“Pema,” she chirps as we cross through the living room.
Dimitri sits at the table with his laptop. “Did you promise her ice cream?” he asks, giving me what I hope is a mock scowl.
“I thought I was only agreeing as daddy doll. I didn’t realize…”
“Rookie mistake,” he rumbles, but I see the smile pulling at his lips as Anna tugs at the freezer door, not strong enough to get it to open.
As if I’m acting with someone else’s body, I pull it open for her. “Chocolate,” she chirps, pointing at the shelf.
I grab the container, knowing I’ve been taken hostage by a little angel. But if Sasha had made me look at things differently, Anna…
“Only a little,” Dimitri warns as Sasha pulls out a bowl and a spoon. I scoop a single scoop into a bowl and hand it to Anna.
She crosses to the table and sets the bowl down, then waves me forward.
“Me?” I ask, looking at Sasha.
“Go,” she whispers with a wink as she puts the lid back on the ice cream. I do, not sure why, except that being with Anna feels like I’m seeing a completely different version of myself.
She points to the chair, and I slide in. Without ceremony, she climbs up into my lap and then pulls the bowl over.
And just like that, the four-year-old little angel eats ice cream from my lap.
This is family.
Soon my brothers are going to have children. And I’m not going to be there to see any of it because I am betraying them.
I can dress it up however I like, but this is the truth. I’ve gone behind their backs. Kept secrets. Told lies. Made deals without their knowledge or consent.
Whatever I think they’ve done wrong, however I think they’ve mistreated me, I’m the one who is cutting the ties.
I brush my hand down the silk of one of Anna’s ponytails.
It’s that moment that she twists around and holds up the spoon, filled with ice cream, to my lips. “You have.”
I hesitate for a second, ice cream dripping on the leg of my jeans, before I open my mouth and let her feed me.
“It good?” she asks with a big smile.
I touch one of her ponytails again, the moment making my chest ache. “Very good.”
The room has remained quiet, Ava now watching from the doorway, as Anna settles back in my lap to finish her ice cream.
Sasha comes to stand behind me, her hands flitting over my neck and shoulders in these soft little sweeps that have my heartrate ticking up.
“Thank you,” she whispers in my ear. Is Sasha’s touch a reward for my kindness to the child?
As if she’d need to thank me. As if this moment wasn’t a reward all its own. I close my eyes. Because I can feel everything inside me shifting.
It was already. I know that.
Sasha bends down and brushes a kiss just behind my ear, her soft sigh making my chest ache.
But this moment, a moment of familial intimacy, has made me realize a few truths. Now I need to decide what I do next.