Page 136 of Ruthless Sin
And the crying comes.
Hard and ugly and I cannot stop it and I hate that I cannot stop it, and then Cassia’s arms come around me and I fall into her and what comes out of me is a sound I have never made in front of anyone. My whole body shakes with it. She holds on. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tell me to breathe. She just holds on and waits me out and I cry until there is nothing left.
I haven’t been held like this since before Alexei.
The thought hits and the crying gets worse. I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. She just tightens her arms and waits me out.
When the last of it has moved through me I pull back, pressing the heel of my hand hard against my eyes. She keeps her hands on my arms and doesn’t speak until I can look at her.
“Nico kept things from you,” she says. No preamble. No softening. “He was wrong.”
My eyes burn again. I look at her hands on my arms because I can’t look at her face yet.
“He is also ours.”
Something moves in my chest before I can stop it, low and aching, the way a bruise aches when you press it.
“I’m not defending him,” she says. “What he did is between you and him. But this is what family is. You don’t get to set them down when they’re difficult. They don’t get to use that against you either.”
My throat tightens. Yelena is in the ground and Mama is in the ground and I have been alone so long that what she is saying lands like a hand on a door I forgot was there. I want it. The wanting is so sharp it scares me and I press my lips together hard against it.
“Family isn’t blood,” Cassia says. “It’s who chooses each other, every single day, even when it’s hard. And we choose you, Mila. We choose you.”
My eyes are burning again. I look at her hands on my arms because looking at her face will undo me, and I am so tired of coming undone.
She means it. I know she means it. She doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean.
Nobody has chosen me since I was fifteen years old.
“What you do with that is yours,” she says. “Stay or go. But if you stay — you stay in the mess too. The wrong choices. The ours.” A pause. “He is ours. Which means he’s yours to be furious at. Not mine to apologize for.”
The breath that comes out of me is slow and unsteady and something in my chest loosens just enough to let it through.
She stands, and her hand moves briefly to my shoulder before she lets it go.
“Eat the bread Maria brings up later. You don’t have to want it. The body has to keep running.” A beat, almost dry. “If you don’t nourish it, it catches up.”
She leaves the glass of water on the small table beside me and walks out of the room quietly.
She came.
“Cassia.”
She stops at the door.
“Thank you.” My voice is wrecked. I don’t try to fix it.
She looks at me. Her face does something — not quite a smile.
“You’re in this house,” she says. “That means you’re mine to look after.”
She walks out.
I drink the water.
It’s the first thing I’ve put in me in a while.
I don’t eat the bread Maria brings.
