Read Online Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) by Catherine Gayle - Free Book Online Page B

me down next to her.
    “What?” I demanded.
    She dug into my right wrist and held my hand up in front of her, looking at the back side. Her fingers traced the Cyrillic lettering. “What does it say?”
    I ground my jaw. “None of your business.”
    “I’m making it my business.” She leaned in closer to me, resting her weight against my side.
    “Why?” Why did she care? Why wouldn’t she leave me be? Everyone else in the world understood they needed to keep their distance, that I didn’t want to talk. Why did this woman have to be different from all the rest?
    “Because we’re stuck in this house together for who knows how long. What else are we going to do? Stare at the walls?”
    I tried to jerk my hand back, but she had an unexpectedly strong grip and refused to budge. “You’re obstinate. Anyone tell you that before?”
    “My brother tells me that all the time,” she said. “So tell me.”
    More frustrated by the moment, I bit off, “Says ya ne zabudu .”
    She waited a beat and then scowled up at me. “Care to translate?”
    “Means I won’t forget .”
    “I doubt you could if you tried. Lord knows I can’t.”
    Every bone in my body itched to get away from her. Because she was getting too close. Not just physically, either, although that alone was enough to send me to my wits’ end. Her limbs were long and lean and very firm, and I couldn’t get the memory of her wrapping her arm around my shoulders out of my mind. Or her scent, for that matter, which was currently wrapping its way around me and taking me captive. Citrus and vanilla. I wanted to bury my nose in her hair and breathe her in.
    But it was the way she kept prying into my past, more than anything, that left me wanting to escape.
    I stared down at the words on my hand. I’d had them tattooed there about six months after the wreck, after trying to bury the pain of the memory in as much alcohol as I could possibly consume. “I tried to forget,” I said.
    “How?”
    The memories washed over me like a flood. “Sergei found me one morning. I was on bathroom floor in a puddle of filth. He kicked me with his new leg until I woke up. ‘Wake up, you fucking son of a bitch,’ he said in Russian. Kick. Kick. Kick. ‘Wake up. I’m walking, for first time in forever, and you try to drink yourself to death. You should help me celebrate. Your papa wouldn’t be proud to see you this way, Dima.’”
    “Did you drink a lot back then?”
    “Too much. Always too much. Tried to make it stop hurting. Papa would have been more disappointed in me than I could stand, because I nearly killed Sergei. Once I finally cleaned myself, we decided to celebrate. Get tattoos.”
    “And that’s when you got this?” London asked, still tracing the letters.
    “Didn’t go for this. Sergei got a phoenix. Tribal phoenix on back of shoulder. I wanted tribal husky. Tribal to match Sergei. Husky for Papa.” I pointed to the curved lines on the right side of my neck that covered some of the worst scars left from the wreck and felt her gaze travel over the black ink. “He had husky named Anya. She came to Lake Baikal and jumped around on frozen lake while I skated.”
    She’d also lain by his side as cancer killed him, following years of exposure to toxic chemicals at the paper mill. That damn dog hadn’t left him even after he was dead and in the ground. I’d tried to get her to come stay with me at Sergei’s house, but she’d always gone back to Papa’s grave.
    I didn’t tell London that bit. Didn’t want her to see anything that was such a deep part of my soul.
    “But that wasn’t only ink I got that day. I also got this on my hand. Made sure the words faced me. Drinking to forget doesn’t work. Drinking was what got me there—me with mountains of guilt, Sergei with no leg. Haven’t touched alcohol since.”
    She was still staring at my neck—staring far more intently than she needed to in order to make out the design. It was big and bold, with