Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 68195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
I didn't realize I had grabbed ahold of his hand, digging my nails in in my worry, my facial expressions giving away my inner turmoil. At least I think that's what alerted him to my minor inner meltdown.
"Ssh, lyubof, it's alright I won't leave you, you must calm down lest you make yourself ill again." He drew me onto his lap with my head on his chest over his heart.
The steady beat somehow settled me down again, and when he started humming what sounded like a lullaby, I could've sworn I'd heard it before.
The familiar sound tickled at the edges of my memory, but I couldn’t place it no matter how hard I tried. Anna wasn’t one for lullabies as far as I can remember, but maybe she had been when we lived here before?
I got the feeling sometimes that there was a lot different about my mom in the years before she’d made off with me, that maybe her life hadn’t always been one of moving around from place to place.
But when I’d ask before, she’d shut down, and as the years went by, I stopped asking. Now I wasn’t so sure that I should have.
Now I had more questions than before, but there were no longer the inquisitive questions of a child wanting to piece together her past.
Now I needed to know why I sometimes got this feeling that Thorn was a part of my past, or how it was that he had been in my dreams for years and was now here.
As the days had gone by I had been giving more and more thought to that strange occurrence and coming up with some very outlandish answers. Hopefully the truth was less hair-raising than my imagination.
He kept humming the lullaby and I found myself drifting away, caught up in the sweetly familiar melody as my heart slowed to normal and my mind cleared.
I saw a quick flash of a baby girl running through a filed of flowers with a young boy running after her.
There was laughter and happiness; a joy so strong, I could feel it, but just as quickly as the image came it faded, leaving me empty.
The humming ended and I came back to my senses, still wrapped safely in his arms.
***
It was sometime before I realized that he had once again side stepped my question about him reading my mind; just as he’d done when I asked him about his strange words to my dad that night in the kitchen.
What did he mean I would die without him? And how had he known that I’d decided to ignore him?
It all played into my over active imagination that was telling me that there was more going on here than met the eye, but I had no experience with such things.
The town sure fit the setting though, with its eerie backdrop and constant darkness. Just in the last day or so I’d noticed that the dark cloud that always seemed to be hanging over the place had grown darker and seemed to linger longer.
There was also a chill in the air that no one else seemed to notice except me. Like the day he had taken me for my walk and everyone else were dressed in sweaters while I felt like I needed my parka.
I’d put that down to me being sick, or the fact that maybe the locals had grown accustomed to the temperatures though.
But I couldn’t deny the heavy feeling that seemed to be lingering over our house, especially when Thorn was here. Maybe all old New England towns had a touch of the fey about them.
Whatever the case, I couldn’t deny that there was also a certain feeling of coming home, and after the days spent with him, I realized it was as much about him as it was the town.
Like the two were connected somehow, which made no sense, because Mark had said the Azarovs had only just arrived right before I did.
Maybe I should look up his family name, since he wasn’t very forthcoming about himself. I grew suddenly tired and cuddled into his arms more deeply.
“You need to have your bath now lyubov moya.” I had been about to doze off again, which seemed like all I did these days.
Between the quietness of my new surroundings and the feel of his arms around me, I’ve been sleeping like a baby.
My strength was coming back and I no longer felt like hell, in fact I felt better than I can ever remember feeling in my life.
I was afraid that that was due to his nearness and wondered what would happen when I was no longer sick and we went back to life as usual. The thought was to say the least, depressing.
Dad had taken to dropping in unannounced throughout the day, but each time we’d been on the couch. The last time he’d done it Thorn had growled something at him in Russian and there had been another standoff, before once again, dad had given in.