Page 15 of Her BRATVA Protector
I make a small, strangled sound.
Adam does not turn his head. He keeps looking up at Jasmine with that warm, polite face, but Iswearthe corner of his mouth twitches like he freaking heard me.
“I’ll be staying for a while,” he tells her. “If ye need anything, you come find me, aye?”
She nods again.
“Use your words, baby,” I murmur.
“Aye,” Jasmine replies with a mischievous smile.
Aye.She just saidayeto him.Lord, take me now.
Adam chuckles. “Goodnight, Jasmine.”
She grins wide. “Goodnight, Mr. Maksimov.”
She does not move from the banister. When she finally tears her eyes off him and looks at me, my girl has the look of someone who has just won the lottery and is trying not to scream. She silently mouths,MAMA.And I shake my head at her. She nodsyes. I shake my head harder. She presses both hands to her mouth, turns on her feet, and runs down the hallway toward her bedroom. I hear her door shut, then her muffled scream into what is almost certainly a pillow.
Adam waits one beat. Two. Listening for the door to close. Then he turns his head…slow…and brings his eyes back to me, and the polite, warm man from ten seconds ago isgone. Theother one is back. The one with the blown-out pupils and ticking jaw.
The switch is so fast I feel my knees buckle.
I cross my arms.Eleven hundred and one.
He picks up his duffel bag.
“The room, Lisa.”
“…right. Yes. This way.”
I hear his boots two steps behind me. And I do not look back. I don’t look back because I know what I’ll see if I do. I will see Adam Maksimov climbing my staircase behind me with his eyes on the back of my dress, and if I see that, I will trip on the steps.
We walk past my bedroom…the small guest room I’ve been sleeping in for years…all the way down the hall to the door at the end. The big one.
I put my hand on the handle and breathe.
God, You andIare going to have a long conversation about all of this later. For now, please just get me through it.
The master bedroom smells of furniture polish and clean sheets. I came in here earlier and stripped the bed, wiped down every surface, and aired the place.
The bed is made with crisp white sheets and the heavy navy comforter I bought the week after the funeral. It was the first thing in this house I ever picked without Ray’s orders. Fresh wildflowers from the garden in a mason jar on the dresser. The curtains, drawn back, the window cracked an inch. The lamp on the nightstand glowing softly against the light blue walls.
It’s a beautiful room. The kind of room I would have wanted to wake up in for ten years if anyone had asked me what I wanted.
Adam stops in the doorway behind me. His bag going down with a soft thud at his feet.
I do not turn around.
“This was your room.”
“No.”
“You and Ray…”
“…hadn’t shared a room in years.”
A long beat.
