“Oh, I bet it’s good.” She giggled.
“You don’t even know him.”
“Um, you realize you whisper his name at night in your sleep, don’t you? Last summer when we were on vacation in the Mediterranean on that boat? I had to listen to it all night long.Oh,Logan. Ohhh, Logan.” She moaned his name.
Embarrassment flushed my skin. “I do not.”
“Um, yes, you so do. Thank God your actual husband wasn’t there because it probably would have incited a murder spree.”
Worry filled my chest.
I could only imagine the type of anger that would incite in Jarek if he’d heard me calling for the one I belonged to in my dreams.
He’d likely not mention it, though. Admitting it would be a blow to his ego.
“I mean, who could blame you because Jarek,” Taylor continued. “Ew and gross and I literally just threw up in my mouth. And besides, I found your keepsake box when I was fourteen. There were letters and pictures in there. I know exactly what he looks like and Oh. My. God. He is delicious.” She rambled all of it so fast I almost missed the middle.
“Wait, you did what?”
My letters.
I’d hidden them in the floorboards in my bedroom at my father’s house, as if I’d buried my heart and my hope and my dreams with them.
My love and our secrets.
Because it had no space to flourish with the confines of the walls that had been built around me.
I could feel everything about her soften.
“It’s okay, Aster. I know you love him.”
My spirit trembled. “I don’t.”
I couldn’t admit it to her. Tried to deny it to myself.
Because I couldn’t allow it to sink in and take hold.
Those words were dangerous.
They desolated and destroyed.
“Then why are you there, with him? One call to Papa, and you’d be on the first flight home.”
I hesitated, warred, wasn’t sure if I should be honest with my sister or just lay it straight. I scooted over so I could sit on the edge of the bed. “I can’t stay with Jarek anymore, Taylor.”
Silence fluttered through the line.
Worry from her side.
Agony on mine.
She lowered her voice even farther. “You mean, like you’re getting an apartment across town, or you intend toleave him, leave him?”
Women in our family didn’t do that. When it came down to it, we didn’t make any real choices of our own. The fact my father had granted me this time was a miracle.
Defiance lined the words, old pain and disgust and hatred bleeding into the claim. “It means he won’t ever touch me again.”
“This isn’t going to end pretty, Aster.” Her voice went timid, and the mischief drained away when she pressed, “That’s why I’ve been trying to find a good time to call you in private. I heard Jarek freaking out in Papa’s office yesterday morning, talking about a pact that had been broken. Papa said something I couldn’t hear, then Jarek stormed out. I overheard Camden telling Lorenzo that he took off…I think he went back to wherever you are.”