Page 41 of Cashmere Ruin

“Yeah, aside from that.”

I take a moment to think. Not about what to say, but whether I actually want to say it. April doesn’t deserve my confessions—not after how she treated my last one.

But this isn’t just about me. This concerns May’s roots as well as mine.

And she’s her daughter, too.

“His father wasn’t particularly good at playing the mafia game. He got in a turf war with a rival family and lost. Instead of staying and fighting, Carmine joined the army and fled.”

“Fled to Russia?”

“Bosnia, actually. He was deployed there first. Lasted a couple of months and then…” I grit my teeth. “Then the fucker deserted. Again.”

“Seems like a real lionheart,” she drawls.

You don’t have to tell me that.“He spent the next few weeks on the run. Landed himself across the Russian border. My mom found him starving in the snow and took him in. Within a year, I was born.”

“That…” April hesitates. “That doesn’t sound like the start of a tragedy. It sounds…”

“Romantic?” I scoff. “Yeah, that’s what my mom thought, too. But he wasn’t the type to settle down. Or stay on the straight and narrow.”

“Well, that’s not you, either.”

“No,” I concede. “That’s not me, either.”

A long moment ticks by in silence. I almost managed to forget about April’s hands on me, but now, it hits me twice as hard: her warmth, her scent, her everything.

“Alright. That’s enough,” I growl.

“Almost done. Just patching up.”

Every touch, every breath—it’s torture, pure and simple. I can feel her fingers working over my skin, her labored huffs breaking against my neck. Her knees, parted on either side of my back.

It would be so easy to turn our positions around. To nestle between those warm thighs until all I can feel isher. Until I can’t fucking breathe. Until I’m where I belong.

Without warning, I lurch to standing. “I said that’senough.”

April manages to tamp down the last corner of the gauze just before I’m out of reach. “Matvey?” she calls to me. “Wait—did I say something wrong?”

“I just need to sleep.”

“Matvey, did I hurt you?”

More than you’ll ever know.

14

APRIL

They say good things come in threes. Well, apparently, they’re not the only ones. Bad things arrive in nasty little triplets, too.

“Legs a little wider, please.”

Bad thing number one: moving back here.

Bad thing number two: yesterday’s “dinner.”

Bad thing number three?—

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