Page 50 of Dirty Grovel

She points upwards to a gorgeous profile shot of Oriana. She’s the female version of Oleg. Dark hair, golden eyes, pale skin. But her features are softer, more delicate. Even when she’s not smiling, her eyes are light and creased at the edges.

The next frame over captures both siblings side-by-side. They must have been seventeen or eighteen, faces still dewy like teenagers but lankier, bored, smirking like they knew a secret no one else did.

Oleg is wearing blue trunks and a wide smile, his abs bared for the camera as he drapes an arm around Oriana’s shoulders.

She’s wearing a white linen dress and a broad smile that matches her brother’s. Her hand is clutching his wrist with a yacht as their backdrop.

It’s so picture-perfect that it barely looks real.

“I took that picture,” Jesse says. “The first time I ever went sailing with them. It was Oriana’s idea to invite me. She was kind like that.”

“When was…?” I can’t even finish the question.

Jesse understands what I’m really asking her, though.

“This was two months before the accident.” She swallows, her eyes dropping, “It was hard to process, knowing that she was gone. Oriana was one of those people who had everything. She had the brains, the beauty, the wealth. But you didn’t hate her for it because she was just sonice.” Jesse smiles sadly. “I had a huge crush on both of them, if I’m being honest. With Oriana, I just wanted to emulate her, be just like her. And with Oleg—” My gaze trails back to the yacht picture of Oleg and Oriana. “Well, look at him. I was sixteen and smitten. It was impossible not to be in love with him.”

“I know the feeling,” I mumble to myself. I drag my eyes back up to her. “What was he like back then?”

Jesse bites her lip. She’s quiet for a while as she thinks.

“Different,” she says at last. “More… open. He smiled a lot more. Laughed loudly. Teased constantly. You could tell he was enjoying life. Now, it feels more like he… endures it.”

I turn away so she doesn’t see my eyes fill with tears I refuse to shed.

Blinking them back, I meander down the wall, drinking in all the family pictures, all the singular little moments that made up Oleg’s life.

It feels like I’m stealing pieces of him he never wanted to share.

I don’t feel guilty, though.

I need this.

Because there’s a piece of him growing inside of me now. I didn’t steal that, did I?

So if it helps me to look at all this so I can make sense of the man who’s changed my life forever, then I’m gonna do it.

Sue me, Oleg.

“We didn’t see him for more than a year after the boat accident,” Jesse continues. “Even when he did finally come back, I think it was just to hide out. He stayed holed up in his room the whole time. It was either there or out on the water, far away from everyone.”

“Did you try to talk to him?”

“I didn’t dare,” Jesse says with a shudder at the mere thought. “He was unapproachable. When he looked at me, it felt like he was lookingthroughme. And that was on a good day. Being near him was… difficult, I’ll say. It was like being next to a black hole. Like someone had stolen away all his joy. I suppose, in a way, Oriana and Elise were his joy, and without them, he had nothing left to smile about.”

I stop in front of a photograph of Oleg. Just Oleg, framed against the backdrop of the ocean.

It’s a candid. He’s looking out at the water, his face free of scars.

He looks like Oleg.

But he doesn’tfeellike Oleg.

I hate what he had to endure to receive his scars—but despite the pain, the heartbreak, the agony, I don’t wish that he didn’t have them.

Because theymadehim.

If you showed me this face—unblemished, unbothered—alongside the damaged face of the man I fell for, I’d pick the second one every single time. That’s the face of a man who has been through tragedy and survived it.

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