“You matter.”
I swallowed, staring up at him with wonder.
“You matter to me,” he admitted honestly. I saw the sincerity in his eyes. It was all too easy to revel in the glow of our connection. He meant it.
“You matter more than you should.”
And there he went, ruining the moment.
“Sorry?”
He rolled his eyes before lowering to kiss me once. “No. You’re not sorry. I’m not either.” He cupped my face and rubbed his thumb over my cheek as he searched my face. “You’re getting under my skin, and I can’t fight it.”
“As… a fuck buddy?”
He grunted. “As something,” he quipped wryly.
I appreciated that he was opening up more. His initiative to start a conversation like this was a huge step. Still, I remained guarded. I regretted the moment I blurted out that I wanted to matter, afraid that it could’ve made me sound needy or pathetic. Then I worried that he’d want to knowwhyI wanted to matter and hadn’t already.
I couldn’t bare myself further than that. Not with his hot-and-cold treatment. Not when he could swing from one end to the other, being so affectionate and passionate one second, then flipping to be so aloof and dismissive the next.
“Where did you go that one day?” he asked.
“Does it matter?”
He brushed my hair back, staring at me like he’d never get enough of looking at my face. “Yeah. Because you seemed upset afterward.”
“I was upset because you shoved me aside and pushed me out.”
“I was mad, too.”
“I wasn’t mad.”
“Yes, you were,” he argued. “If not mad, upset about someone or something.”
This is exactly what Margie was talking about. This overprotectiveness.I couldn’t lie and say it was a bad thing. He wasn’t being controlling and dominating to want to know. He was merely asking.
My determination to keep up the walls guarding my heart crumbled. I lost some of my defensiveness and sighed. “I went to see my sister.”
“Sister?” He raised his brows.
“Yes. Melissa. She’s a few years older than me. We used to live together, but I left the day I came here to work with you.”
“Did you leave on good terms?” he asked.
I snuggled closer to him, happy when he draped his arm higher to rub small strokes on mine. His touch was soothing, and it relaxed me enough that I wanted to tell him everything.
“No. She became my guardian when our parents overdosed. I was fifteen then, and ever since that day, she’s been using me for money. I have held down multiple jobs, even before I was legally allowed to work, because she was so lazy. She’s never done anything except date some loser drug dealers, and she acts as though I ‘owe’ her all my income because she prevented me from being an orphan or living on the streets.”
He didn’t reply. He just kept rubbing my arm and listening. And that was more than enough. This chance to share this information with someone was a gift I’d never had before. I told Becca quite a bit, but with Dmitri, it felt more significant somehow.
“She’s always wanting something from me, expecting to scoot through life without working or doing anything for me. It’s money, usually. That was what she wanted that day. I’d been ignoring her calls since the moment Becca found me and asked me to come work here. I haven’t spoken to Melissa since my first day here, but when you kicked me out the day after we…”
“Fucked,” he finished for me.
“Yeah. The day after we fucked, and you shouted at me, I went to my room and accidentally answered her call. She wanted to meet up so I could give her money, so I told her that it was thelasttime. Ivan had a guard go with me, and I’m glad he did. She was mean, like usual, demanding to know where I’d gone. I didn’t tell her anything, and I made it clear when I left that she wasn’t to reach out to me ever again. I’d been planning to leave her for a while. The day she stole money from my secret bank account, thesavings I had built to run and start a new life somewhere else, that was the day Becca found me and offered me this job.”
“Good timing.”
