Page 84 of Sapphire Tears

“I’m not lying down, June,” I growl. “I’m not an invalid.”

“No one’s saying that. I just want to lie down, and I’d rather do it with you.”

I roll my eyes. “Jesus.” But I let her lead me to the bed. She makes a show of clambering on the mattress herself. I have to admit, mothering comes naturally to her. Her first instinct is to look after others. Something I swore I never needed.

And yet here I am, lying down next to her.

“Can I get you anything?” she asks once we’re settled.

“I thought this wasn’t about me.”

She shrugs. “It can be about both of us.”

“You don’t have to take care of me, June.”

She frowns. “What if I want to?”

“Why would you want that?”

She looks nonplussed for a moment. “Because I care,” she tries.

But I’m not buying it. “Because you care about me?” I challenge. “Or because you want me to care about you?”

Her eyebrows rise, and for a moment, I think I’ve pissed her off. But then her face slackens and she looks down like she’s ashamed. “I guess I’ve always felt like I needed to earn love. My parents’ love. My sister’s. Adrian’s. Yours.”

I take her hand and press it flat between mine. “You don’t have to earn anything from me,” I promise her. “You could do nothing for me and it wouldn’t make a difference. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to relax and let me take care of you for a change.”

“Relax, huh?” she teases.

“Believe me, it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

Sighing, she slides down against my side, nuzzling up to me. When she speaks, I feel the vibration of her lips on my ribs. “I have to make things right with my sister,” she whispers. “I know what she did was horrible. But she thought she was protecting me. And for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like she’s competing with me.”

I just listen, saying nothing. I’m not going to give her validation. She can only get that from herself. She has to learn that her own validation is the only thing she needs.

“If I tried to contact her, would you… would you mind?”

“The only way I would stand between you and your family is if they posed a threat to you,” I tell her. “And as you said, despite how misguided Geneva was, I do believe that she had your best interests at heart. She just needs to understand that I do, too.”

“I’ll make her see that. I promise.” She clasps my hand tightly and lays her head back on my shoulder. “Family is hard, huh?”

“The bane of my existence.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Sometimes, I do,” I say honestly.

Her eyes soften. “You need to find out what happened to your mother, Kolya,” she says gently. “Even if it’s bad, you need to know. For closure’s sake.”

There’s that word again—closure. The ending I never got.

As much as I try to fight it, I keep thinking about her, trapped in a hellhole that her own husband helped forge. Chained in a sick circus that was built for ugly people and their dark desires.

I hope, wherever she is now, that there’s a piano for her to play.

“I know,” I agree. “And I intend to find out exactly what happened to her. And that means…”

“You have to talk to Adrian.”

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