Lev (Shot Callers 1)

“Like me?” he asked, his puzzlement evident.

I rolled my eyes at his attempt at modesty. “Come on, Lev. You must know you’re gorgeous. If your eyes couldn’t hypnotize women, the rest of you would for sure.”

His brows rose. “You think I’m handsome?”

I would’ve decked him if it weren’t for the sweet little girl currently using him as a mattress. Instead, I picked up my bottle of water and sipped, keeping my eye on him. He seemed sincere in his disbelief that I would find him attractive.

Life had this way of sneaking up on you. You’d just be sitting there, lost in a moment, when all of a sudden, a cold feeling swept across your belly and you asked yourself if you ever lived a day in your life.

Being alive was easy. Living, on the other hand…well, that was a little harder. Courage rose from deep within me, and my heart pounded. I didn’t have a thing to lose, so I went for it. “You’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, Lev. Hands down.”

He blinked at me for a long moment, and then turned his head, looking out into the open greenery. His face was stuck on a frown. Then he muttered, “Okay.”

It came out in a way that nearly sounded as if he was reassuring himself, and it hurt my heart. I waited a while, but it seemed he was done questioning me. I took advantage. “Tell me about your family.”

He took in a long breath and started to speak as he exhaled. “Sasha is an asshole. That’s all he wants people to know about him. He was twenty-one when my father died, and took over raising us. He lost much of his youth so suddenly that I don’t think he ever recovered from the loss. My mother ran off when I was eight. We never saw her again. That hit Nastasia relatively hard. She was Mom’s favorite.” A dull throb worked in my chest. I ached for this family. “Nastasia may come off as rough, but she is one of the most generous people I know. When she loves, she loves so much it hurts. And I’m grateful for that.”

I smiled at hearing him speak about his sister. “Why doesn’t she have a boyfriend?”

“Like I said, she loves so much it hurts. And Nastasia has loved Viktor from the time we were children.”

I sat up at that point, mouth gaping. “What? Vik Viktor? That Viktor?”

“The very one.” He was enjoying my astonishment. I could tell.

I was stunned by this information. I sputtered, “But they don’t even like each other!”

“On the contrary,” Lev revealed. “Viktor loves Nastasia very much. In fact, he spends every night in her bed.”

I wheezed out in disbelief. “No way!”

He shrugged, his eyes alight with mirth. “She thinks no one knows, but often, when I can’t sleep, I walk around the complex and his car is parked in front of her house. Every single night.”

Oh, my God. That was who she was with the night before. The god who kept her awake with his tongue skills was Vik. But then…

“But Nas makes out like he’s a womanizer.” I was baffled.

Lev nodded. “He is.”

My head was starting to hurt. “I don’t understand. Why would she put up with that? I wouldn’t. He’d be out on his ass.”

“Love,” he advised gently, “is a doing word. And sometimes the people who least deserve it are the ones who need it most.”

He was right, of course. This conversation we were having was easy. Almost too easy. I was coming to recognize that Lev Leokov was an open book. I only needed to discover the language in which his pages were written.

Chapter Sixteen

Mina

The impromptu picnic Lev and I had been on came to an end soon after Lidiya had fallen asleep. The poor thing started to sweat in the mild heat, so we took her home to finish her nap in the comfort of her own bed.

I left Lev to do whatever it was he did in the afternoons, and went upstairs to shower and change for work. I decided on comfort over class and wore a plain black tee over my blue jeans, finishing off with the black pumps that were clearly going to be the death of me—that is, if I couldn’t learn to walk in them.

It was like walking on stilts, for crying out loud!

I zhuzhed my long, wavy hair, taking it into my hands and scrunching it as I lightly sprayed it with hairspray, and then I washed my face and reapplied my makeup, thickening the eyeliner a little for that dramatic cat’s eye effect. I lightly glossed with something that was pink and smelled of cake, and the scent was so delicious that I wanted to eat it.

Don’t worry. I didn’t. Licking your lips didn’t count.