As a new strength built from the reservoir where it had always lived.
I jolted when my phone rang out from the nightstand, my heart thrashing with a bid of nerves before I smiled when I saw the name on the screen. Reaching over, I tugged it free.
“Hi.”
“Oh my god, Aster Rose, what the hell is going on?”
My sister Taylor hissed it beneath her breath from the other end of the line. It might as well be the opposite side of the Earth with how out of touch I felt.
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, glancing around as if I were doing something salacious, when that honor usually landed on Taylor. There was no shucking the instinct to check my back, to make sure no one was listening, that I could actually have a private conversation with my baby sister without someone running back to report to my father or Jarek.
The sound of a vacuum running from the other side of the apartment echoed through the door, the same as it’d basically been for the last three hours.
Gretchen was a machine.
“Give me all the details,” she pressed. “I’m literally dying.”
“I hope that’s not true,” I said, my voice wry.
Taylor harrumphed at me. “So literal.”
“That is what it means.”
“You’re so no fun.” I could almost see her pouting through the phone. It made me smile.
“What are you talking about? I’m a blast.”
“You’d better behavinga blast.” There was the innuendo I was waiting for.
“Uh, let’s see, my worthless, piece-of-crap husband bet me in a poker game, and I was won by my ex…”
The one who still owned my heart, the one who I’d first believed hated my guts and was only in it to torture me, but now…
“The really freaking hot one?” It was a high-pitched whisper.
“That’s the one.” I saw no point in denying it.
She squealed. “Oh my god. I cannot believe you’re with him. This is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it?” I deadpanned.
Because it was exhilarating and terrifying and possibly the most reckless thing I’d ever done.
“Well, it is if you’ve gotten up in the good dick because we know Jarek isn’t giving you any of that.”
“Taylor,” I hissed as I sat up. “What is wrong with you?”
“Well, have you? You can’t keep the good stuff from me.”
A heavy sigh filtered out. “Believe me, none of this is good.”
Except there was a glimmer of something good that hadn’t been there before.
A chance.
A way out of a life I hated leading. One my sister was most likely heading toward. Nineteen and ripe for my father to find her agoodhusband that would make him agoodally.
Half the time I thought he chose to be blind, and he allowed himself to believe he was doing us a favor, saving us from heartache when the only thing he was doing was bartering those hearts.