“I wasn’t judging you.” I look at the time. Nearly twenty minutes should do it. I just need the vegetables to be soft.
Sawyer folds his arms over his body, and I watch the way his stomach tightens as he breathes. “What are you making?” My eyes lift, and I catch amusement in the set of his lips.
Food. Right. “I’m making Italian Penicillin.” I stir the soup, letting it simmer.
“Your mom make this for you when you were sick?” He smirks, plugging in the blender for me.
I snort.Uh, no. “She wasn’t exactly the warm, fuzzy ‘take care of you when you’re sick and kiss your ouchies’ type.”
“Ouchies?” Sawyer laughs.
I glower. “Anyway...” I roll my eyes when he laughs. “No. She was more the ‘either you die or get better’ type of mother. Your choice.”
Sawyer’s brows pinch. “Wow.” He looks at me. “Was?”
I nod. “She died, I think about four years ago now.” While the relationship I had with my mother was complicated, part of me misses her. I want to be mad about the mess she left me in. The mess she put us in. The debt she left me with. The trouble and pain I suffer because of her choices.
She took the easy way out and left me with him.
Then I think about Katya, and I don’t care about any of it because I have her.
I don’t know how or why she got caught up with Ivan. He promised her safety, but safety is only as good as the asshole offering it.
Ivan loves nothing.
Cares about no one except possession and money.
Koda told me once upon a time that Ivan was in love with a woman, but that was decades ago, and the thought of it is laughable. Koda’s mother fell into the same fate as mine years before Ivan met my mother. “What was her name?”
I faintly hear him, pulling me from my thoughts. “Oksana.”
I glance over, his arms still folded over his sculpted chest.
“Pretty name.” He looks at the bubbling soup. “Where are you from?” Out of habit he picks up the wooden spoon and stirs it. You don’t need to do much with it. It’s what I like about making this. It’s easy and low maintenance. “My mother was from Ukraine. I don’t remember living there, though. We’ve lived all over the States.”
Traveling from motel to camping grounds to a shelter then briefly on the streets until she landed in Ivan’s lap.
“Do you speak more than one language?”
“Somewhat. My mother used to speak to me in Ukrainian.” It’s been a long time since I’ve even used my native language or heard someone else speak it. Ivan wouldn’t allow it. She learned that lesson fast.
“Sometimes I hear a slight accent.” He smiles. Do I still have one? “Very faint. It comes out the more flustered you get.”
“Then I guess you’ve never heard it because I don’t get flustered.”
He bites his bottom lip with his smile. “Like right there.Flustered.” He mimics.
I roll my eyes, grabbing the wooden spoon from him. “I’ve never really thought about it. Koda tells me he always knows how angry I get by how thick it becomes.” Which around him is often.
He laughs. “That kid you were with? With the gray hair?”
I nod. “Koda is...” I think of how to describe his relationship to me. “I guess stepbrother would be the best way to put it.” I know he’d be laughing his ass off right now hearing that.
“And you all live together?” I nod, ignoring that little twinge. Once my mother died, I was kicked out of the house. Ivan didn’t care where I went, just that I was available to him when he needed me. If I ran, he’d kill me, and the fucked-up part is I’d be fine with that.
Except there’s Katya, and Ivan knows I won’t go far without her. “We do.”
“You can go home if you want, after this.” I look at him. “I’m used to doing this alone. It’s okay, really. I’m sure you have better things to do.”
