Chapter 12 #2
“What did I tell you?” Oksana shouted. “You will not damage him or the father of my future children in any way. Do you hear me?”
“They can hear you in the next county, Oksie. I think I understand.”
“Good. Now, let’s move on to how a mere mortal woman like you can seduce a god like him.” Oksana made a choking sound before she said, “Oh, God! It’ll probably be easier than I thought. His standards clearly aren’t that high, considering he slept with Regina.”
“I’m trying very hard to forget that and the disgust in your voice isn’t helping.”
“Make sure you seduce him in the shower, at least the first time. That way you can scrub him clean before anything happens.”
I burst out laughing. “Oksana, every time I talk to you you say something that surprises me.”
“I’m just trying to teach you to expect the unexpected. It’s a service I provide.”
“Well, you’re very good at it.”
“I know. You’re welcome.”
Oksana and I talked for a few more minutes, but when someone interrupted her, she had to say goodbye with the promise that she’d call again soon.
I felt much better after we hung up. Talking to a good friend could do that for a person, but talking to Oksana was a treat no matter what my mood happened to be.
Since it was already dawn, I decided there was no reason to try to go back to sleep.
Instead, I showered and got ready for the day before I left my room and peeked into Ivy’s.
She was snoring softly and curled up in a ball, the way she’d slept since she was an infant.
Just as I did every time I saw her still and sleeping, I thought about how much she’d grown since Ivan died and wondered how different our lives would be if my brother had made it out of the house that night.
Of course, if he had lived, I wouldn’t be standing in Memphis’s home right now, and Ivy would be asleep in her bed with my twin somewhere in the house getting ready to start his day.
For some reason, I never thought about what Regina might be doing–probably because a little part of me blamed her for what had happened.
My brother had hired a contractor to work on the heater in their new home, but Regina threw a fit about how much it would cost to have him do the work and insisted that servicing the heater was something Ivan could easily learn how to do by watching videos or reading articles online.
She had heard me tease him about being a “weak man” so many times that she put it in her arsenal and used it against him, complaining that a real man knew how to use tools and fix things around the house.
I’d seen my brother dig a well deeper than two grown men in the hopes of finding water and witnessed him putting up a medical tent all alone during a blistering sandstorm, but Regina thought that fixing a heater showed more strength than either of those things.
Rather than argue with her, Ivan canceled the appointment with the technician and started researching how to service the equipment himself.
The last happy contact I had with my brother was when I passed him in the hall on my way to the living room, where I’d called dibs on the living room couch rather than sleep on a pallet on the floor of Ivy’s nursery where Iliana and Erisa would be sleeping.
He was standing in front of the thermostat with the instruction manual in his hand when I bumped him with my shoulder and asked what he was doing.
In Croatian, the language of our childhood before our parents adopted us into the Belushi family, Ivan explained that it was supposed to get cold that night, so he was going to turn on the heater for the first time that season.
That was normal even though it was almost Christmas.
He lived in the south where the temperature rarely got low enough to need a heater at all.
When we heard the unit click on, Ivan stretched his arm up toward the vent and then grinned at me before he said, “This just proves there’s nothing I can’t do, sweet sister of mine. I made heat to warm my home and keep my family comfortable.”
“You and your umpteen YouTube videos that walked you through it,” I teased. “Even the cavemen created heat, Ivan.”
“I can always count on you to keep me humble,” Ivan said with an eye roll.
“I do it because I love you. I’d hate for your head to get so big you can’t walk through the door.”
“Are you going to sleep now?” Ivan asked.
“Yes. I’m sure we’ll have a full day tomorrow, and I need my beauty sleep.”
“It’s going to take more than one night of rest to help improve your looks.”
“Says the man who looks like a more feminine version of me,” I retorted with a grin, reaching up to flick a dark curl from his forehead. “Are you staying up?”
“I’m going to check on Ivy and bother your sisters for a while before I go to bed.”
“They’re my sisters today?”
“Right now, I don’t like any of you because you’re mean to me. You’ve been picking on me since we were children, and when they came to us, you pulled them over to the dark side to help you.”
“I pick on you to make you strong.”
Ivan wrapped his arms around me and picked me up in a bear hug before he spun us in a circle. I squirmed to get out of his arms, and he dropped me to my feet so suddenly I lost my balance and had to grab his arm to stay upright.
Ivan laughed before he said, “Obviously I’m strong enough now, don’t you think?”
“Big, strong man speak in short sentences!” I joked in the deepest voice I could muster.
“I love you, Cassia,” Ivan said, suddenly serious. “You know that, right?”
“I love you, too, brother,” I said, stepping into his arms for a tight hug. “Teasing you is my love language.”
“If that’s the case, then you must love me a lot.”
Ivan kissed me on the forehead for the very last time, then winked at me over his shoulder before he walked into his daughter’s room where our sisters were camped out for the night.
I reached up and touched the spot on my forehead where he’d kissed me, then wiped the tears from my eyes before they had a chance to fall.
It had been two years since I lost him, but I still felt like a part of me was missing and wondered if it would ever be filled again.
I shook off that morbid thought, softly shut Ivy’s bedroom door, and turned around to start my day.
I needed a big mug of very strong tea and a few quiet moments to think about what Oksana had suggested. As outlandish as it sounded, she might have come up with the solution I needed to ensure my place in Ivy’s life.
Now, I just needed to make a plan to secure it.