Page 81 of Scarlet Secrets

“That’s a start.” She puts down her glass and leans forward. “Father was an asshole to you, I saw it. Don’t be the same. You need to move past this resentment and anger with her and make amends; otherwise, it’ll be real hatred and it’ll hurt Sasha.”

“I’ll think about it,” I mutter.

But her words hit hard, cut deep.

The last thing I want to do is fuck up the way my father did.

I just have to work out how not to.

Chapter Twenty

ERIN

“Mama!”

The tears flow as Sasha runs up to me the next day, his knee scratched from his fall outside after running around like a tiny maniac.

I kiss the boo-boo better and gather him up, distracting him with talk of his new toys as his scrape is superficial and barely there. Like always, the shock of his fall is the mean culprit here.

His chubby little arms go around me as he wheezes out the virtues of the robot thing he has. Nothing’s going to replace his goat, but this toy is a close second. I remember his eyes getting big at the ad on TV.

Suddenly, he looks up, and he smiles, then his face scrunches, like he’s trying to work out which way he wants to go. Sasha wiggles away from me and dashes off as I turn right, as he stops a safe distance from Demyan. “Look! Dane! Look! I hurted!”

My heart flips at the sight of the tall man, who takes up too much space.

He frowns and sits, examining the offending knee. “Perhaps we should cut off your leg? Keep it and throw the rest away?”

Sasha’s eyes go round. “Noooo. Bad Dane.” He sidles a little closer, nervous of him, and my heart squeezes because it’s clear how much Demyan wants to sweep him up and hug him.

But he doesn’t, and there, around the corners of his smile, the tautness tells me how much he hates he can’t do that.

I’ll never in my life take holding Sasha for granted again. Not after he took Sasha from me, not after the pain I can see.

“Do you have boo-boos?” Sasha sidles closer to him, hovering.

Demyan lifts his pants leg, the strong muscles there somehow riveting, and he points to a puckered mark which looks like a stab mark or healed bullet wound, not that I have experience with either. But after the whole army of guards and the shootout, I wonder…

Of course, Sasha’s so fascinated he goes up to it, his little fingers poking at it.

“Did you falled?”

“No.” His eyes meet mine and he says, “I bumped into something.”

The scar’s interesting but so are the toys and now that Sasha is inside and his scratch forgotten, he goes off to play, giggling as he tries to build with the blocks and Legos.

Without thought, the word ‘sorry’ slips out of my mouth. This earns me a sharp look from Demyan.

“What are you sorry about?”

“I… everything? Holding him?” I look at my hands as I move to the sofa, perching near him. “I know… I know you want to do that, and I stole the ease of that from you. I didn’t mean to. I just…”

Crap, I’ve no idea where I’m going with this, only that the words are falling all over themselves, jumbling. I want to say I see him. See how he wants to hug his child, how he aches to be as loved as I am. It’s about time. Sasha’s already getting over his fear and he’s fascinated by him. I want to say Sasha doesn’t know many men, that the fact he’s come so far in such a short period of time is a miracle.

But I settle on one thing. “Your sister offered to drive us away, help us escape. I don’t think she meant it.”

“She did.”

There’s warmth beneath his mask as he says that. He worships her, like he does Sasha, and something sharp claws at me.

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