Page 63 of Broken

Nova

We lay there for a long while in the dark. He held me in his arms and I actually felt safe. We talked quietly and some of it didn’t make any sense and I didn’t care. We talked about our favorite seasons. We talked about our favorite pizza spot. Frankly, I didn't think we had anything in common until we talked about losing our parents.

It was then I realized that both our parents were gone.

"I found him in a pool of his own blood. He was just another dead black man in Chicago, the cops didn't care," I said.

My head was laying on Liam's chest, my finger running across the smoothness of his taught stomach. I could feel his abs beneath my fingers. They were tight and corded from the working out he did. God, it felt so right to be laying in bed with him, just talking.

"My mom died of a broken heart. She had a younger sister that ran away. They never found her. That was what led her to start the foundation I had that police gala for. It was a car crash that actually took her, though. My father was insanely in love with her and did everything in his power to make her happy by funding it."

I touched at the pearls still around my neck, feeling ashamed that I had taken something so beautiful. "I should give these pearls back, Liam."

His fingers had been drawing lazy circles along my spine as we cuddled in closer. "No. I always intended to give them to someone I cared about. They were the only thing of value that my mother's family owned when they came to the states all those years ago."

"But you didn't give them, I stole from you."

He chuckled, "Nova, I want you to have them. Stop worrying about it. My mother would have gotten a huge laugh out of us meeting this way."

I sat up and looked back at him. "You think so?"

"She would have liked you and how strong you are. Her strength came from a place of surviving, much like you. When she met my father, she and her sister had been orphaned and living with a cruel relative that abused them."

I was thoughtful for a few moments. "Sometimes you don't even realize how strong you're being until a storm has passed you by."

Liam kissed my hair. "This is true. In both business and life. Strong people survive obstacles placed in their way. The weak perish."

"You are so Russian," I laughed.

"And now you've had Russian in you." He slapped at my ass playfully.

"I need to check on the kids, it’s getting late." I reached up and kissed him fully on the lips.

"Spend the night, Nova," he murmured against my mouth.

"Okay." I crawled across his body and got onto the floor.

In the dark my fingers roamed over the softness of the carpet. I found fabric but not my jeans. In our haste we'd stripped, and I hadn't kept track of where everything had landed. Finally, I found them by the door. My phone was on silent and I had fifteen missed calls from Des.

"Shit!" I said.

"What?" Liam asked.

"Des has been calling...a lot."

Frantically, I swiped my phone open and hit the call button for him. I was murmuring for him to pick up when he finally did. My stomach was in knots.

"Nova, where have you been?"

"I'm with Liam," I whispered.

By then Liam had turned on the light and I was sitting naked, leaning against the coolness of the white oak door. Surely, I looked a complete mess with lips and love bites from our passionate romp.

"We stayed in the house, Nov. I promise you, but it was like someone knew you were gone."

"What is going on, tell me!"

"Someone knocked on the door and we thought it was pizza, Nova. It wasn't. Someone came in and snatched Yara. She yelled at him to stop."