She handed a DVD to Chaska—Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “I saw this. I hadn’t read the books, so I had no idea what was happening. I loved it anyway. It seemed incredible to me.”
“I bet it did.” He bent down, loaded the DVD into the machine, trying to imagine all the things that had been new to her after she’d run away—not just movies or technology, but paying bills, holding a job, dealing with paperwork, getting a bank account, finding her way around a big city. She’d had to adjust to an entirely new way of life, and she’d done it by herself at the age of sixteen.
“I read all the Harry Potter books after that. I identified with Harry.”
“Why?” Chaska wasn’t the biggest Harry Potter fan, but he’d have sat there watching paint dry if it had made Naomi feel better. He clicked Play and went to sit down beside her.
She gave him a heartbreaking little smile. “He is the Boy Who Lived. I figured I was the Girl Who Lived.”
Thathit Chaska right in the solar plexus.
“Thank goodness for that!” Winona called from the kitchen, where she was popping corn. “And, hey, popcorn is Oglala, too.”
“It is?”
Chaska chuckled. “She’s joking—I think.”
Naomi snuggled against him while they watched the movie, her gaze on the screen. But his gaze was on her, watching the subtle shifts in her expression as she reacted to what was happening to Harry and his friends.
You were led to her.
How could he have gotten so lucky?
Afterward, Winona dragged herself up to bed, Naomi and Chaska giving her time in the bathroom before heading upstairs themselves.
It felt right to go through the normal bedtime rituals together, sharing toothpaste, Chaska brushing her hair, the two of them undressing in the bedroom, throwing their clothes onto his sofa. Oh, yeah, he could get used to this—sharing life’s most mundane moments with her. But then nothing felt mundane with Naomi.
They lay together in silence, skin against skin, her head on his chest.
“I’m afraid,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I am. I can’t shake the feeling that everything is going to crash in on me.”
“You’ve been through a lot, Naomi. Finding your father—that’s a big deal. It’s only normal that you’re nervous.”
“I don’t know what I should hope for—that the test shows he is my father or that it shows that he isn’t.”
“Then why don’t you just leave it to fate? Nothing you can do will change the outcome of that test.”
But she couldn’t let it go, not yet. “I guess if he isn’t my father, I’m no worse off than I was before, right?”
“True.”
“And if he is my father…”
He trailed his fingers down her spine. “If he is your father, then a whole new world opens up for you—a new family, a new community, a new way of life.”
“That’s part of what scares me.”
He could understand that. “You’re a survivor, Naomi. You survived Peter and Ruth. You ran away and survived life in a world that was completely unfamiliar to you. You fought back and survived those bastards up in the mountains. You did all of that on your own. You can handle this. I will be right there beside you—Winona, too. You’re not alone. Oglala is our world.”
Some of the tension left her body as he spoke. Then her hand slid down his chest and belly to stroke his cock. “How about you take my mind off all of this by giving me something else to think about?”
“Angel, I think you’re onto something.”
Naomi woke with a start, dreams giving way to reality in a rush of adrenaline. She sat upright, saw that it was early still, the sun not yet high enough to spill its light onto the backyard.
Chaska sat naked on the sofa, lighter in hand, about to do his morning prayer, the eagle feather sitting in its box before him. “Come.”
She got out of bed and went in search of her bathrobe, not quite as free with nudity as he was.