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She blushes again. “Well, I mean…” She looks out at the distant horizon again and that trembling fear comes back in her eyes.
“Hey.” I smooth a hand up her back. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“But we’re so far out?—”
“Hey,” I say again, firmly this time. I rest my brow on hers so she has no choice but to look at me. “I’ve got you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Her heart really is racing inside her chest. But I’m determined to wash those fears away, along with everything else keeping her up in the lonely hours after the sun has gone down.
I want to be the only thing that keeps her up at night.
“Clara. Focus on me, okay? Have I ever let anything bad happen to you?”
She pauses. I realize that is a very loaded question, and I probably shouldn’t have asked it. I’m sure she’s coming up with a sizeable list of moments when yes, in fact, I did.
“No.” At least she acknowledges the irony with a small chuckle. “I know. You’re this big bad Russian mob boss with several bones to pick and I’ve been top of your hit list for years. But…”
“But?”
Clara tilts her head as she looks at me. Like she’s seeing me for the first time. “You’re a good man, Dem. And… you took care of me. You’ve always taken care of me.”
“I’ll always take care of you.” I grind out the words like an oath, same as I swore to Willow yesterday. Now, my own heart is racing, but the fear is a different kind. “I’ll always keep you safe.”
This time, she’s the one who seals the promise with a kiss. I take the momentary distraction as a way to ease her out into even deeper water, until the gentle rolling wave caps reach our necks and I’m not able to keep my feet on the sand as easily.
Clara lets out a soft whimper of fear. “Dem…”
“Feel that?” I smile against her lips. I hold her as close and as tight as possible, letting the waves carry us toward the shore.
She hesitates. Then smiles, and as that smile grows, she nods. “I do. I do!”
“Good.” I kiss her again as another wave lifts us, then drops us even closer into the shallow water. “That’s what we’ll be riding.”
13
DEMYEN
An hour later, Clara has surfed a grand total of one wave, though that’s stretching the word “surf” to its absolute limit. Still, she’s beaming ear to ear, even as her eyes flutter closed with exhaustion when we lay back on the sand as the tide laps at our toes.
“Where did you learn to surf?” Clara murmurs.
“Tolya taught me,” I admit. “Whenever we went on vacation, he’d take me out.”
“Did you go on vacations a lot as a family?”
I take a deep breath and remind myself that she’s asking totally normal questions that any random person would ask. She doesn’t know how loaded they are.
“Did we go on vacations? Yes. As a family? Not so much.”
“Oh.” I expect her to ask me to explain that, but she doesn’t.
“Our father loved to travel. I’ll give him that much. He’d take us around the world, to all these exotic places with beaches and private resorts…” I sigh.
“But he wouldn’t spend time with you?”
I shake my head. “Too busy with his work or his women. And when he was around, he and our mother would fight. It was better for him to just dump us there and leave.”
Clara nods and turns on her side to look at me. “I can understand that.”
