Page 16 of Protected By the BRATVA Grump

The rush lands at half nine and saves me for the better part of an hour. I steam milk and pull shots and call out names. My body keeps sending up small reports from last night that have me pausing every so often to try and recalibrate my brain. There's an ache low in my hips every time I crouch for a clean jug. A spot at the base of my throat that stings faintly under my collar. I catch myself smiling at the grinder like it's done something charming, and Cookie sits on the corner ofthe counter and watches me do it with an expression I don't appreciate.

I overfill the milk jug twice and hand a cortado to a woman who ordered chai, and at one point I stand with my palm flat on the warm side of the machine thinking about Jasper carrying me two steps toward my bedroom and giving up on the idea entirely. I only come back into the room because Rhodes is yowling at the fridge.

Kimmie comes over at eleven for the burnt end of the Victoria sponge she claimed by text this morning, which she eats standing at the counter, straight off the plate, with paint under three of her fingernails and a smear of something white along her jaw.

"It's the best part," she says, with her mouth full. "The rest is just cake."

"That's the nicest insult I've ever been given."

"It's a compliment. Everything I like tastes slightly of regret." She points the fork at me. "You look like somebody plugged you in."

I blink at her. "I don’t know what you mean."

She waits, and when I don't fill the gap she shrugs and goes back to the cake, and I love her a little more for it.

The afternoon thins out around two. Lilah wakes and gets passed between the four of us like a parcel, then Eduard collects her at half past with the pram folded over one arm and a look at Sammie that lasts a second longer than it needs to. He nods at me on his way out. I've spent fifteen months learning to read this man and I still couldn't tell you a single thing about that nod.

By three there are two people in the café and both of them are asleep.

Sammie makes two cups of tea without asking and sets them on the end of the counter.

"Sit down before you scrub a hole in that surface," she says.

"I'm working," I state. Though I have cleaned the entire counter space several more times than usual today.

"Come on Delilah," she presses. "Sit with me."

I sit, wrapping both hands around the mug and watching at the steam coming off it. Socks jumps up onto the stool beside me and puts her paws on my knee like a witness for the defense.

"I slept with Jasper," I whisper.

"I know."

My head comes up. "How do you know?"

"Because you've been lit up like a lamp since I first saw you this morning." She blows across the top of her tea. "And because he was here before opening, Delilah, and Jasper doesn't go anywhere before he needs to be there."

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out of it. Somewhere behind me the fridge changes note, and Lucifer knocks a teaspoon off the drainer then looks at it like it’s caused him a grievance.

"You're not upset?" I ask.

"Why on earth would I be upset?" Sammie throws her head back with a laugh, then stops and touches my knee when she realizes I was serious.

I give her the answer I've been carrying around, and it comes out faster and messier than I intend.

"Because it doesn't just go wrong for me if it goes wrong. It goes wrong at your kitchen table. It goes wrong at Christmas, and at Lilah's birthdays, and every day he comes in for coffee and I have to look at him. He's Eduard's cousin. He's in your house twice a week at family dinner. He held your daughter ather christening, and I make your coffee and I know your bank passwords and I live in an apartment you found for me." I put the mug down because my hands have started doing something I don't like. "If I break this, I don't just lose a boyfriend. I lose you."

Sammie is quiet for a moment.

"Is that what you've been sitting on?" she asks. "That whole thing? All this time?"

I shrug my brows. "It's a fairly complete thought. I've had months."

She laughs again.

"Delilah. I married the head of the Bratva." She's still laughing. "In a church. There were four men in the back row who I'm fairly sure were armed and one of them cried. You dating his cousin is not going to be the thing that complicates my life."

She reaches over and takes my wrist, the same way I take hers when Bill says something that lands too close to something sore. "You're not my employee. You're not a friend of the family. You're my person, and there is nothing you could do with Jasper Federov or anybody else that would put that at risk. Nothing. If the two of you crashed and burned tomorrow, I'd bring wine to your apartment and say something extremely rude about him, and then on Sunday I'd go to lunch at Valeria's and say something extremely rude about him there, too."