Page 88 of Dirty Grovel

The message was short but it made my insides turn to jelly.

I think of you constantly.

That’s all he said, his voice raspy, low and oh-so sexy. My immediate thought was,Is this for me or the baby?My pride prevents me from asking.

But when he looks at me like this, finds excuses to touch me, steals me away on his yacht for a couple of nights…

The answer seems obvious.

His lips descend on mine. I allow him a lingering kiss before I wriggle out from under his arms and escape to the edge of the yacht. I hear nothing but a growl, but he doesn’t stop me.

A few seconds later, he joins me at the edge, leaning forward so that half his body is angled overboard.

“It’s so silent out here,” I murmur. “Even the engine barely makes a sound.”

“As it should. I designed it that way,” Oleg reveals.

I turn and look at him in surprise. “Youdesigned it?!”

“You don’t have to seem so stunned.”

“Sorry. I just thought?—”

“—that the rich boy would pay other people to do his work for him?”

“Well… maybe?” I grin.

The wind is blowing softly at his hair and there’s an ease on his face that I never see on land. He bumps his shoulder into mine and I revel in the strange new harmony between us.

When didthathappen?

“A few years ago, I would have hated it,” I say. “The silence.”

“Why?”

“I associated it with being alone, being… abandoned,” I explain haltingly. “Our mother liked noise. There were always half a dozen different things running in the background of our lives. Loud music, movies… She liked singing, too. Even though she could barely hold a note. If she wasn’t at home, though, it was quiet. Sydney and I didn’t dare use too many things because we never knew if the bill had been paid or not. We just sat there, in the silence, in the dark, waiting for her to come back home.”

“And did she?”

“When we were younger, she came back more often. A few hours here and there. A day at the most. When we were older, though, we would go weeks without seeing her. We always had to pretend she was around. Especially when the neighbors started noticing. But even that jig was up the moment we lost electricity or the landlord came by to hand us our final eviction notice.” I glance towards him, realizing that I’ve been talking a lot. “I don’t normally talk about her.”

His face stays calm. “Why is that?”

“Honestly?” I sigh. “Spite. She never gave a shit about us when she was around. So why should I give a shit about her now?”

“Because you’re not her,” he says immediately. “You’re better than she ever was.”

I bite my lip, unable to keep myself from leaning in towards Oleg. “It’s so easy to paint her as a villain. Don’t me wrong—there were days when that’s exactly what she was. But there were days she was the perfect mom.”

My nose starts itching as I remember the time she busted Sydney and me out of school under the pretext of a “family emergency” so that she could take us to Disneyland.

It was a four-hour ride to and from, but she stuffed the back seat with snacks, made a special playlist for the road trip, and booked us into a cheap motel right outside the park for the night.

And for one day, it really was the happiest place on earth.

Right up until Mom threw a hissy fit while we were waiting in line for a ride. She didn’t like that the people with fast passes got through faster. And she didn’t have any money to spend on the passes.

So, in an attempt to balance out the scales of justice, she tried to assault the people with the fast passes, wielding her popcorn as a weapon of choice. She screamed obscenities when they removed us from the line, and told Mickey to kiss her ass as we were escorted off the premises and barred from Disney properties forever.

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