Forged by Sacrifice Kindle rev 100519

by Evans, LJ

  I stopped at a deli I’d been frequenting on my way and was waiting in line when a text from Raisa came in.

  RAISA: Please put me out of my gloom.

  ME: Do you mean, out of your misery?

  RAISA: This is no time to correct my English.

  ME: What’s up?

  RAISA: Father and Malik are at odds once more.

  ME: Why now?

  RAISA: They would not let me hear. They shut the door when I went by the study.

  I often forgot about the dark side of Petya’s business. Maybe it was on purpose. Maybe it was so I could have “plausible deniability.” Raisa didn’t have that option. She lived it. I’d joked with Ava about Petya being followed by multiple agencies when he came to the States, but I wondered now if that was also the case for my siblings. Would they have their own tails when they came? With a sort of shock to my system, I wondered if I’d been followed whenever Raisa had visited me in New York. I wondered if our conversations had been listened to.

  The happiness that had filled me at the library dimmed. Back in Rockport, I’d been hard on Mac for letting the idea of my family stop him from kissing me again. I’d pulled on my normal, to-hell-with-you attitude. But now it made me wonder if he’d been right to be wary. To step away from a woman with ties that could never mean anything good.

  When I’d left Ava’s, I’d also expected to leave behind Mac, our one stormy kiss, and the pull he’d had on me. Instead, he’d tormented my dreams in a way that left me aching in the morning like I hadn’t ached before. As if I was suddenly missing something that had never been mine.

  For the first time in a long time, my bitterness was directed at my parents instead of the person walking away from me. Would my family prevent me from more things in my life? Things other than kisses? Would I be admitted to the bar with their history sitting on my shoulders?

  I returned to the last text from Raisa.

  ME: It’ll pass. It always does.

  RAISA: It will not matter once I am at Stanford. I wish I were leaving tomorrow.

  Suddenly, I feared that everything with Petya might actually matter, for both her and me, but I didn’t want to be the one to darken her hopes.

  ME: A few weeks more. September is right around the corner.

  RAISA: Love you, moy dorogoy.

  ME: Love you, malyshka.

  Thoughts of my family and Mac followed me back to the apartment.

  After eating a sandwich, I purposefully lost myself back in the Fourth Amendment with a podcast that I’d discovered on the topic. I allowed myself to geek out over the law and the facts that I could see in black-and-white instead of the what-ifs of my family.

  When the last episode on the podcast ended, I took off my noise-cancelling headphones and heard the TV on downstairs. Daniella was home. I wondered if she’d want to catch up on the latest episode of Fighting for the Stars. I’d started watching the singing competition because Brady was going to be a guest host in a couple of weeks, but the show had slowly sucked me in—and Daniella along with me. It had been a good way to bond with my new roommate. We’d laughed, screamed, and thrown things at the TV over the judging.

  Now, I could use the show and her company to continue distracting me from my thoughts.

  I headed down the stairs, water bottle in hand. “Hey, Daniella…” I started, and I abruptly stopped when I realized that she wasn’t alone on the couch. There were two dark heads tucked together—one decidedly male. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize your boyfriend was here.”

  The two bodies jumped apart. Daniella yelled, “Ew,” at the same time that the male said, “What the fuck?”

  My water bottle clattered to the floor as the male body that rose from the couch and turned to face me was the same one that had haunted my dreams. Now he was here...in sweats and a T-shirt that showed every part of him that I’d tried desperately to forget.

  We all stood, staring at each other as if someone could find an explanation as to how—in all of D.C.—Mac had ended up in my apartment.

  Mac

  WHY GEORGIA

  “'Cause I wonder sometimes,

  About the outcome

  Of a still verdictless life.”

  Performed by John Mayer

  Written by Mayer

  I stood, staring at Georgie like she was a ghost. She felt like a ghost. A ghost in yoga pants and a Panic! At the Disco T-shirt that looked like it had seen one too many washings. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hid her white stripe. I’d just spent weeks at sea with Truck in order to forget her. To put her behind me. And now she was in my apartment, looking better than any memory I’d had of her, even better than in that damn summer dress she wore the last night in Rockport. Because she was real. Flesh-and-blood real. Kissable-lips real. Body-that-fit-into-mine-perfectly real.

  I could feel my sister staring at me like I’d lost my mind, but I didn’t even turn to her. “What the fuck?” I repeated.

  “Mac?” Georgie’s voice was as surprised as I felt.

  “Wait. You two know each other?” Dani asked.

  Georgie turned to her. “You said your brother’s name was Robbie.”

  “It is.”

  I groaned. “It’s my middle name. Robert. I haven’t gone by Robbie since high school.”

  “You were the one who hated Macauley,” Dani teased.

  “Just like you hated Daniella, and yet that’s what you go by almost exclusively now.”

  “You still call me Dani.”

  “Well.” I rubbed my hand through my hair and down my face that needed a shave. It was almost a full beard from the weeks on my sailboat. Dani was right. I was one of the last holdouts in our family, still calling her and all my sisters by their nicknames. Gabi. Bee. Dani. It was probably only fair that they still called me Robbie after years of hating the name Macauley with a passion.

  Georgie was watching us, eyes ping-ponging back and forth, going wider and wider.

  “You live here?” she finally breathed out, as if it was finally catching up with her.

  I nodded.

  She sat down on the bottom step. I didn’t blame her for needing to sit. I felt like I might need to keel over myself. This was so screwed up that I didn’t even know where to start. Dani had never told me the new roommate’s name, I realized now. She’d just said she had brown hair and brown eyes. Georgie’s hair was closer to black than brown, like my own, and her eyes changed color with her outfits, so it wasn’t really Dani’s fault that she’d told me she had brown ones.

  Dani and I hadn’t talked much while I’d been at sea. The cell signal was pretty much impossible unless I was in port, and Truck and I hadn’t spent much time in port.

  Dani perched on the arm of the couch.

  “How do you two know each other?”

  “Ava,” Georgie said just as I said, “Eli.”

  “Oohhhh,” Dani said, and she gave me a wicked smile because I had told her about the dark-haired woman I’d kissed and left behind. Damn sisters. Nosing into everything. Dani started laughing. “This is really funny.”

  The more she laughed, the more it loosened the knots in my stomach. You couldn’t not laugh with Dani. She had a great laugh. And she was laughing so hard that she had to wipe at her tears. I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped, and when I looked over at Georgie, she started to smile, too.

  “Your smiles,” Georgie finally said over all of our laughter.

  “What?” Dani asked.

  “Your smiles are so similar. I kept trying to figure out who your smile reminded me of. It’s the same as Mac’s.”

  “People used to think we were twins,” Dani said. “And I’m not sure I can get used to you calling him Mac.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to consider him a Robbie.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is really preposterous.”

  “Preposterous or unbelievable?” Dani asked.
/>   “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  Georgie finally rose from the seat she’d taken on the stairs, picked up her water bottle, and went to the kitchen where I could hear her filling it. Dani was watching me, and I pulled on my poker face—the one that had me earning lots of dollars against my academy and Navy buddies. It was harder to have a poker face with people who’d known you your whole life, but I tried.

  I sat back down on the couch, and Dani joined me. This time, she left more space between us than had been there before. I could see how Georgie had mistaken me for a boyfriend, with Dani’s head on my shoulder. I wasn’t ashamed of being close with any of my family. Being a hugger was yet another thing, like my cussing, that I was going to have to filter out of my personality, though. I didn’t want to be on the secret list women in the government passed around D.C. The list that said: “Stay away from that guy.”

  Georgie came back in and paused behind the couch, both hands surrounding her water bottle, squeezing. “What’s this?” she asked, waving toward the TV.

  “Good Will Hunting. You’ve never seen it?” Dani asked.

  Georgie shook her head.

  “That’s almost a sin,” I said.

  “It’s an incredibly romantic movie,” Dani told her.

  “It’s not. It’s an underdog story,” I objected.

  “With a great romance.”

  “And Robin Williams.”

  “Do you want to watch it with us?” Dani asked her. I could feel Georgie’s eyes on the back of my head. I didn’t want to chance looking at her, because Dani was still analyzing the air between us.

  “Nah. I’m going to hit the hay. One of the professors caught me studying at the library, and he asked if I wanted to come by tomorrow and get a head start on some of the case studies.”

  I snorted. I bet he did.

  “What?”

  Now, I couldn’t not look at her. I turned sideways, looking up. Her hands were still clutching the water bottle like it might be a lifeline, but her face was still. Her poker face was good but not quite as good as mine.

  “You realize he was hitting on you, right?”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “Yes, he was,” Dani agreed with me.

  Georgie looked between us, her cheeks flushing slightly. “Why would he do that? I’m a student.”

  “Puh-lease. Guys in this city see a gorgeous woman, and they always hit on them. Sleep with them, too, if they find someone willing. Married or not. Welcome to D.C.,” Dani explained.

  “But it’s against the code of conduct, I’m sure.”

  “Girl, you and I need to have a whole conversation about D.C. men if you’re going to live here. I thought, with all the models and finance guys you dealt with in New York, you’d have a bit more of a ‘sleaze-o-meter,’” Dani told her.

  I was just watching. Georgie was flustered but trying not to be. It grabbed at my heart and yanked it up to my throat and then back down to my balls. It made me want to go with her to the professor’s office so I could tell him to back the hell off. But I had no right to. I couldn’t afford to want to.

  “I can sense a sleazy finance guy a mile away, and an egotistical, self-centered model—because that’s pretty much all of them. I guess I had hoped that was behind me in the academic world. I didn’t have this problem when I was at school before.”

  “Probably because you were too young. Now, you’re gorgeous, all grown up, and this professor thinks you’ll be more up for it without the repercussions of a dramatic post-teen. It’s like the officials who won’t mess with the summer interns, but once you become permanent, you’re fair game,” Dani coached.

  Georgie headed for the stairs to the loft. “You realize that, even if he was legitimately just wanting to help me out, I’ll never be able to see it that way now.”

  Good, I thought to myself and took a swig of beer.

  “You’ll be fine. Do you want Mac to go with you just so he sees you have some oversized behemoth ready to go to battle for you?”

  I choked on the beer. “What?”

  Dani was smirking at me.

  “No. I’m fine. I know how to handle myself. Pepper spray and all.” Georgie continued up the stairs. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” Dani said. When I said nothing, she smacked my chest.

  “Goodnight, Georgie.” Her name on my lips was like acid dissolving in my stomach, eruptions of thoughts that I shouldn’t have tearing at the lining there and making me want to run into the loft after her and kiss her again.

  I hit play on the movie, determined to put thoughts of Georgie sleeping in the bed upstairs out of my head.

  After a few minutes, Dani whispered, “This is very interesting.”

  “It’s the worst goddamn thing that could have happened,” I whispered back.

  “Maybe it’s the universe telling you something?”

  I already knew what the universe thought. I’d felt it in the kiss on my boat in Rockport. I’d felt it in every inch of my body every time I’d casually touched her. The problem was that the universe seemed to have forgotten she had a dad in jail, and a mom with a revoked visa, and that I planned on running for office.

  “Whatever it’s trying to say, the universe is wrong.”

  Dani laughed quietly. “I don’t think that’s the way it works.”

  After a few more minutes of the movie—of which I saw none, not that it mattered because Dani and I had seen this movie a thousand times at least—Dani added on, “Are you going to go with her tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “What if he’s a real asshole who grabs her and then threatens to have her kicked out before she’s even started? This is her second chance at law school. It would ruin it for her.”

  “You heard her. She can take care of herself, and I believe her.”

  “Did she pull a ninja move on you?”

  “No. I never shove myself on anyone, you know that.”

  “Then, how do you know she can take care of herself?”

  “Why are you pushing?” I asked.

  Dani looked at me. “You like her.”

  “Dani, did she tell you about her family?”

  Dani shook her head. I whispered to her about Georgie’s dad and mom.

  “Yikes.”

  “What would you tell some newbie who was trying to run for office with a wife who had a dad in jail for Ponzi schemes and a mother banned from entering the country?”

  “I’d tell him to get a new wife or walk away.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “But you aren’t trying to marry her, right? I mean, you obviously like her. There’s no reason the two of you can’t―”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t understand. If I started something with her, I’d never be able to walk away.”

  “This is completely unlike you. You’ve never kept a girl for more than a month. Except that godawful Mindy who wasn’t anyone that any of us wanted to see you with for the long haul.”

  I made a face at the mention of Mindy. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen that one coming. I didn’t say anything; I just watched as Matt Damon blew off Minnie Driver on the screen, pushing her away with all his hateful words so she’d leave him alone. I couldn’t be hateful to Georgie. Not ever. But I also couldn’t let her under my skin or into my heart any more than she already was. The mark she’d left there would have to be a simple notch and not an entire tattoo.

  Dani snuggled back down onto the couch, and I could practically hear her wheels turning from where I was, but there wasn’t anything that could change the facts. And the facts were all that mattered in this case.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  When Dani and I left for the Capitol the next morning, Georgie hadn’t appeared from the loft. I eyed it a couple times, wondering what she’d do about the professor. I hadn’t been able to sleep a damn wink the night before. I’d tossed and turned, not only because sh
e was under the same roof as me again, but because I’d worried about her.

  Dani and I spent the morning getting me signed in with human resources and security at the Capitol. By the time we actually got to Guy Matherton’s office, he and my grandfather were there and in the midst of some top-secret briefing. For a moment, I felt a brief pang at the loss of my old job. I’d always been in the know. It had been my job to be in the know. I probably had a clearance level higher than any of the people in this office, but that didn’t change the fact I was the newbie on the block. Guy’s assistant let him know we were there, and Granddad came out right away.

  My grandfather was huge like me. Huge like my father. Tall and built. He’d kept his figure, even more so after the bypass surgery he’d had to have five years ago. He looked younger than he was, but he still looked like a speckle-haired, wrinkled version of me.

  Granddad hugged me. “Robbie, I’m so glad you’re finally here with us.”

  “He seems to be going by Macauley now,” Dani teased just as Guy came out of his office to shake my hand.

  “Nice to have you onboard, Macauley.” The senator looked like a young Mark Harmon. He looked like someone you’d trust to go into battle with you. He was younger than my parents but still old enough to have teenage daughters. He was one of the up-and-coming on the Hill and not just because of his good looks. He was smart and seemed to always be on the right side of any legislation.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dani smirk as he repeated my full name.

  “Mac,” I told him, returning his handshake with a firm grip.

  “Daniella will get you up to speed, I’m sure. We have a whole pile of defense bills I’d like you to take a look through and give me your opinion on. Plus, there’s a long list of things I need you to research for us. Isn’t that right?”

  Guy looked at Dani like she was a star. It threw me for a loop. It threw me right back to Dani saying she could sense the sleaze-o-meter a mile away. I hadn’t ever thought of Guy as a sleaze. My grandfather wouldn’t work for a sleazeball. I knew that. But Guy was married. Had two teen-aged kids. But he was smiling at my sister in a way I just didn’t care for.