Page 34 of Forged By Sacrifice

ME: Love you more, malyshka.

I suddenly felt the need to get my new life settled. To move to the glamorous apartment with Daniella and her brother. To get my schedule and my textbooks. To research and discover my new city and my new campus. To have things ready for when my siblings came to see me. It meant that I needed to leave behind the little cloud I’d been living in with Eli and Ava.

When Ava came back to the couch, she had the Cheerios I’d expected, but she also handed me a bag of Skittles. They were my favorite. “I hid these from Mac because he would have eaten them in one sitting.”

“Wow. He really does have a sweet tooth.”

Ava smiled and nodded. “Obscene. It’s going to catch up with him and that trim figure of his someday.”

“I can’t imagine him ever going all lumpy around the middle. Look at Eli; he’s married with a baby on the way and no fat on him.”

Ava’s smile disappeared. “I’m going to have lots of fat.”

“It won’t be fat; it’ll be baby. There’s a difference.”

“I know. But…it’s going to be an adjustment. I’ve never really worried about my body or what I ate. It was just me, you know?”

“I don’t think you have to worry now, either. Just be healthy, be balanced. That’s all that’s important. Plus, you have the ocean sitting right there; you can go swimming whenever you want for exercise.”

Ava waved a hand at my phone. “Who was bugging you?”

“Raisa. She and Malik want to come visit on her way to Stanford.”

“Malik is coming with her?”

“Well, Mom can’t step foot in the U.S., and as much as I adore Petya, he’s not exactly a welcome visitor here, either. I’m pretty sure every time he steps in the States, he’s followed by half a dozen agencies that use up all the letters of the alphabet.”

“I can never imagine that side of your life.”

“I love them all. But in a lot of ways, they are like friends who come to stay or who I go and visit.”

“Like me?”

I smiled at her. “Honestly, I’m closer to you than all of them. Raisa might be the exception.”

Ava nodded. She understood not being close to family. There was no judgment in her eyes or her face. Her relationship with her father was nonexistent. He’d been a controlling, emotionally abusive bastard to her growing up, done some awful things to Eli and his friends, and basically walked out of her life once she got control of her trust fund.

“But at least you still talk to them. They’re happy to hear from you,” Ava said quietly, a hand to her flat belly. My heart panged for her, knowing that her father wouldn’t know or care about his grandchild.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I have Jenna’s and Eli’s families. I have Andy and Lacey. I have so many people who will care about this little critter that the one missing isn’t a big deal.”

She was confident in her words, but I knew there had to still be a very small part of her that ached for the loss of her parents. One by death, one by choice.

I still had my parents. I got a note and random calls from Dad in prison. I got a lot of texts and calls from Mom. I had people who would notice if I went missing. Before Eli had stepped into her life, Ava hadn’t had many people who would have realized that something had happened to her. I was grateful to be one of them.

? ? ?

Two days later, I boarded a plane back to New York and the storage locker that I’d placed the few belongings I’d kept after moving out of the apartment I’d lived in for over twenty years. It seemed strange that everything that mattered had fit into the smallest unit I could rent. My life with Grandma had been narrowed down to a few boxes.

After emptying the unit into the small truck I’d rented, I shut the door with a click that sounded harsh and final, as if it was confirming with noise what I knew in my heart to be true. Everything was going to be different now. My life was on a precipice. Like the ending of the first book in a duet. The crescendo high and yet so much still to come.

I was ready for my new life.

When I got to D.C., Daniella hugged me as if we’d been friends for a decade. If there was a poster child for professional D.C. staffers, she was it, in her pinstriped pencil skirt and matching jacket. She had on a lavender silk blouse that peeked from the suit and accented her gorgeous purple heels. Her hair was a shade darker than mine, and it made her blue eyes stand out. She had a smile that was wide and striking with full lips that tugged at a memory.

As if we were really lifelong friends, she insisted on helping me unload the truck after she’d changed, and to top it off, she followed me to the rental office to drop the truck off. After giving up the truck keys, I sank into her Mini Cooper, and she zipped through the D.C. traffic as if it was nothing. Between the help with the boxes and the way she drove, I was half in love with her.

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