Boys are handsome, not beautiful, dummy! he used to argue.
He took two more steps until our eyes were level and moved his hands to circle my waist. “You’ll only ever get the truth from me, Zvezda.”
“Don’t say that name so loud! You want the whole town to hear that name?”
“I love that name.” He kissed the tip of my nose, and I wrinkled it in response.
“Please stop, I’m going to choke on this much sweetness. Quick, say something mean or sarcastic.”
“You’re a bitch.” He deadpanned, eyes serious, lip twitching at the corner.
I jabbed him in the chest with my fist. “You’re an ass.”
“I love you.” He kissed my lips. I smiled and slipped my arms around his neck.
“Much better.”
“Are we eating dinner, or are y’all just gonna make out?” Sasha grumbled from the other side of the screen door.
“Ew!” Anya squealed from behind him.
“Take a picture; it’ll last longer!” I called over my shoulder and kissed my boyfriend again. Somehow, the gagging sounds coming from the kids made the moment.
Mrs. King was working the night shift, making up for hours she had missed during Peter’s relapse. The house ran a lot less smoothly when she was absent, but Adam and I did our best to round up the kids. They slept on twin beds in the guest room. Half of their things and our old toys filled the room. They told me they’d spent a good bit of time over here before I came back to the States. Hailey’s and Adam’s rooms were still intact.
I sat on the floor next to Anya’s bed, while Sasha already had curled up and faced the wall, pretending not to listen to tonight’s Russian folktale.
“You have to tell me tonight,” Anya said while waving a plush wand through the air. It was much safer than the evil, sparkled stick she fancied smacking Sasha with.
I groaned. “Can’t we do another Baba Yaga?”
Anya lifted her chin and shook her head. “Nope, you promised, and I want to hear it tonight.”
I pretended to contemplate and then sighed. “Okay. Just this once, right? It’s embarrassing, you know.”
She looked up at the projected stars on the ceiling. “I think it’s romantic.”
I rolled my eyes and started to tell her the evils of believing in fairy tales and romance. Then I thought of Adam and smiled.
“Once upon a time, my papa and mama met at a festival in St. Petersburg. He was from a very old and wealthy family. They had lived in the capital for centuries and survived the many wars that killed much of their extended family by using their wealth and cleverness. My papa, Alexander, did not care about his family fortune or his title. He loved the old tales, wanted to study the history and their origins. To please his family, he married a woman from another wealthy family, and they were happy for a time. His first wife died in a car accident when their boy, Peter, was a small child. For many years, Peter lived with Alexander’s parents because he was lost without Peter’s mother. He lived a quiet life, teaching at university.
One night, he went with some old friends to a gypsy carnival. They teased him until he went into a tent, where my mama was giving Tarot readings. She knew their future the moment she saw him—that they were meant to fall in love and be together.”
Anya interrupted, “And they had you!”
“Shh! Don’t interrupt her,” Sasha hissed from his side of the room. Anya stuck her tongue out at him.
“As I was saying, they fell in love, and yes, they had me soon after they met. They named me after the morning star because it was the first star they wished on together.”
“And they lived happily ever after?” Anya asked.
“Obviously not, stupid,” Sasha grumbled.
“Want me to finish this story?”
“Sorry,” Sasha said.
“The truth is, not everyone gets to live happily ever after. Sometimes, they only get to live happily for a time. My mama had led a nomadic lifestyle for so long, staying in one place was difficult for her. My papa told me how much she loved me, but how it broke him when she left. I used to believe she did it because she loved us and didn’t want to let her unhappiness ruin us.”
“You came to America after that?” Anya pitched in.
I grinned. “Yep. I was eight years old, and Peter was eighteen. Papa came to teach at the university here. I hated America. My English wasn’t so good since I was used to speaking mostly Russian. Peter had already been to school and had less trouble fitting in, but I learned from our papa at home. I didn’t know many children my age.
My first day of school, I met Adam. He told me we were going to be best friends, and that’s exactly what happened.”
“And now you’re in love,” Anya teased.
“Yeah…”
“Will you live happily ever after? Will Papa and Hailey?” she asked.
I turned when I heard a creak at the doorway and saw Adam waiting in the shadows. In that moment, I tried to believe in hope, to help them believe what I struggled with all my life. I decided then and there they wouldn’t have to question true love like I had. We could show them, all of us.
I smiled as I turned back to my niece and smoothed back her wild curls. “We can live happily as long as we choose, I think. It won’t always be easy. But if we all try to love each other, we can write the best ending to our stories.”
Anya reached up her arms and kissed my cheek while I kissed her. “I love you, Aunt Dani.”
“Love you too, shvibzak.” I moved to Sasha’s side of the room, and he glared at me.
“Don’t you dare kiss me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, kid.” We shared a slight secret smile.
I pulled Adam after me and shut their bedroom door.
Adam held me in the bed we’d shared our first time. It felt surreal lying beside him here again. We were a far cry from the kids we had been. That we’d somehow made it here after everything was miraculous, or maybe it was inevitable.
“What are you thinking about, Morning Star?” His lips brushed against my ear.
I shivered and snuggled closer to him. “The past, the future, sentimental shit, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah… Like maybe we were destined to be here like this together no matter what choices we made.”
“I knew it was inevitable, loving you.”
“Guess that means we’re soul mates.”
“I like to think so.”
I turned around in his arms and circled his waist with my arm. “You always were the romantic one.”
He smiled, and that haunted look I’d seen so often when I first came home was barely a flicker in his eye. “When I woke up the night after you left, it was like I had nothing of myself left. I knew I’d never be right again without you.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” I teased and trailed my fingers up his chest.
He caught my hand in his and pressed it to his mouth. “I’m the romantic one, remember?” He smiled, but his eyes held a question.
I tilted my head back and kissed him. “This is for keeps, you and me.”
“Promise?”
I nodded and squealed when he attacked my chest and neck with kisses. His strong arms lifted me up and trapped me against him. I rolled my hips against his and savored his groan. With a free hand, I reached between us to push his shorts down, and he helped to strip us bare. I touched him everywhere with kisses, and his hands squeezed, reached for me, and pulled me closer. He rolled until he straddled my waist, and I helped guide him in. We sighed as we came together, as we came home to each other, the only home we had truly found.
We came together in an imperfect blend of flesh and teeth and tongues. In that perfect moment after, we held each other, and I whispered the words I would never run from again. “I love you.”
Epilogue
White Unicorn
Peter had had one request in the final months before he died, that I take the kids to St.
Petersburg. He wanted them to see our homeland, where their grandparents came from and our home.
“You’ll show them yourself, Petey,” I had teased back.
My brother had known better.
It had been two years since I left Europe behind for America. My father’s house in the city was still intact and filled with half my wardrobe and furniture. The house that had felt so empty for so long was like home again with Adam, Hailey, and the kids there. I knew then I would have been miserable without them. Coming home to Petersburg wouldn’t have felt right any other way.
Snow fell in soft waves over us as we walked the streets of my city. The kids were enamored with the carnival that had rolled into town the other day and insisted on returning. I laughed as they pretended not to know the language with the carnies. Anya would pretend until they managed to hustle the carnies right back and then burst into perfect Russian.
“I love Petersburg, Aunt Dani! Can we stay here forever?”
“We can visit anytime you want, shvibzak.”
Sasha hung back with Adam. “Not me. I’m gonna run Papa’s garage when I grow up, right Uncle Adam?”
Adam grinned at me. “If it’s okay with your mother.”
Hailey shifted her nine-month-old baby to her other hip. “Sure, we’re counting on you to make the big bucks, anyway.” My baby niece, Petra, waved her mitten-covered hands at the carousel. “Y’all want to go for a ride?”
Anya jumped up and down. “I wanna ride the unicorn!”
Sasha muttered under his breath. “Too old for this…”
Adam led him by the shoulders. “Aw, c’mon, Sasha, you know you’re never too old. Am I right, Zvezda?” He batted his pretty eyes at me, and I glared daggers back. He knew better than to call me by my first name.
Hailey interjected before I could answer. “Danica, could you hold her for a minute?”
“Of course.” I didn’t need an excuse to hold my niece. I held back with her as Hailey stood in line with Adam and the kids. Adam winked at me as he helped set Anya on the white unicorn and Hailey climbed onto a horse beside Sasha’s dragon.
I swayed with Petra to the carnival music and grinned as she blew bubbles and held my cheek with her tiny hand. We gave Petra the credit for Peter’s joy. She was the reason he’d held on as long as he did, longer than all his doctors had expected. Every time I looked into her periwinkle-blue eyes, I saw her namesake—I saw my brother’s joy.
I didn’t realize I was humming a familiar lullaby until Petra laid her covered head on my shoulder. It was the same Roma tune my mother had sung to me once. I couldn’t remember the words, but the thought of her with the carnival, the city… A strong feeling came over me, like the night Adam and I had slept together in his bed, when destiny and fate had seemed so clear and obvious. I felt as though we were meant to be at this point, in this place in time, like everything had led us here. From my parents’ failed romance, my mother’s abandonment leading us to America and the King family, and finally back to St. Petersburg.
I had spent most of my life feeling out of place, struck by the same wanderlust my mother had passed on. With Petra in my arms, my family laughing and smiling before me, the love of my life here with me in my city, I felt lifelong longing abate. I felt joy.
Acknowledgments
I set about writing this novel as a challenge to myself and a joke. While I do enjoy the contemporary romance genre, I often have laughed at the melodrama and tropes. So I thought writing She Walks in Moonlight would be easy. I even planned on hamming up the more heated moments and didn’t take the romance seriously. Until I started writing it and discovered the real story.
Danica’s story as the fallen girl who just wants to come home, who is just looking for a second chance, started to hit home for me. Especially once her big brother, Peter, makes his life-changing phone call. What started as a simple second-chances romance soon became so much more. This story captured my heart and has taught me so much along the way. Also, coincidentally, while writing and sharing chapters of this story with my beta reader, her parents were diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly the struggles Danica and Peter and their family go through became personal to me. Which is why I wanted to dedicate this novel to Melissa and her family.
To all the families who have lost loved ones, who sit at their parent’s and sibling’s and loved one’s bedsides, hoping and praying they get well. To those who have lost hope in their lives, don’t ever give up. Live each day one breath at a time and love with everything you have. There is always room for second chances, to right wrongs, and to come home. This book belongs to you.
About the Author
Jennifer Silverwood was raised deep in the heart of Texas and has been spinning yarns a mile high since childhood. In her spare time, she reads and writes and tries to sustain her wanderlust, whether it's the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, the highlands of Ecuador, or a road trip to the next town. Always on the lookout for her next adventure, in print or reality, she dreams of one day proving to the masses that everything really is better in Texas. She is the author of two series—Heaven's Edge and Wylder Tales—and the stand-alone titles Stay and Silver Hollow.
For more about books, writing, and beauty, visit:
WEBSITE | BLOG | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS
Also by Jennifer Silverwood
Heaven’s Edge Novellas
Qeya
Ohre
Tamn
Wylder Tales
Craving Beauty
Wolfsbane’s Daughter
Scarred Beauty
Bound Beauty (coming 2018)
Silver Hollow
Stay: A Love Story
She Walks In Moonlight (Second Chances Romance Book 1) Page 17