Page 62 of Walking Red Flag

I looked at him then.

“I’m not leaving anything to you,” I said carefully. “Do I think that you coordinating with my club will be a good thing? Yes. Do I think that this is a fucked up situation that I’m going to profit from? Also, yes. But I’m not doing anything to hurt her in any way. I’ll marry your sister. I’ll make her mine. But I don’t want her to leave me later on because she finds out that this was all set up by her brother.”

“You actually like her.” He studied my face.

“Like I’ve never liked anyone else in my life,” I admitted. “I just got out of a year-long relationship with a woman that I could barely stand to be around. It’s been like that for all of my long-term relationships. And even a few short-term. I like them, but not enough to change my life for.”

“But not with Milena,” Shasha said.

I didn’t answer him at first.

I stayed quiet, contemplating my next words, before saying, “I’ve never felt like this before with anyone.”

“I thought that when I met Brecken.” He grinned. “I wasn’t sure that I would ever feel that way about anyone, and then I met her, and she started stalking me, and I couldn’t stop myself from finding it amusing.”

My brows rose. “She stalked you?”

“Minutely,” he answered. “In a cute, she never quite could figure out how to conceal herself, kind of way.”

I grinned. “I don’t want her to hate me when this is all done.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Sounds like you might love her.”

I grimaced.

“I don’t know that I’m…”

“You might not acknowledge it to yourself yet,” he offered. “But it takes half a second to fall. And when you do, you’ll tell yourself it isn’t what it is. You’ll fight it, because loving women like them is like taking your soul and giving it to some barely capable of taking care of herself person to protect and nurture your very being. You don’t expect them to take care of it as well as they do, and all of a sudden, one day you’ve let them all the way in and never intended to. You think, okay, how bad can it be? She’s a tiny little thing half my size. I’m stronger, faster. She doesn’t have that kind of hold over me. Then she almost dies in your arms, and you’re wondering how the fuck you’re supposed to live without her.”

I swallowed hard.

“That sounds awful.”

He laughed. “It’s the best goddamn feeling in the world. You only have to give her everything.”

I didn’t care what he said.

That wasn’t something I was willing to do.

At least, I didn’t think it was.

But the way Shasha looked right then…he made me want what he had.

Could I have that with Milena?

The sliding glass door opened and Dima walked out, looking rough as fuck.

He had a beer mug full of coffee, and I laughed into the one and only coffee cup I had and took a drink.

“You need more coffee cups,” he grumbled as he took the last remaining seat on my porch.

I looked out over the water, checking out the very point of the lake where I knew the Semyonovs lived, and said, “I never needed more than one before.”

When Dorie semi-moved in without me asking, she’d brought extra everything.

When she’d left, she’d taken it all back with her.

I’d had to go out and buy a coffee mug because she’d taken mine with her, as well as the few forks and knives that I’d had.

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