Her Mafia Brothers

Ice skating

Jack and Anna held one of my hands each and slowly led me out onto the ice. I'd never been on any kind of skates before in my life, so it was a bit scary at first, but Anna patiently coached me. She talked softly as she explained how to make myself move on the ice, and once I felt semi-balanced on the narrow blades she held both my hands out in front of me, and skated backwards, pulling me along with her. Jack skated behind me with his hands on either side of me, ready to catch me if I fell.

I didn't fall, though. I was a pro!

"You're a natural!" Anna declared as I skated all by myself when we'd only been on the ice for 15 minutes and beside her, Jack smiled proudly. The praise, and Jack's smile, filled me with happiness.

Once, not very long ago, happiness had been a foreign concept to me. I very rarely smiled, I never laughed. Hunger, pain and fear had been my constant companions. But since coming to live with my brothers, I'd been happy pretty much every day. Damons strict rules had annoyed me at first, but now they made me feel safe.

I skated happily, feeling so free on the ice. Behind me, Jack and Anna skated hand-in-hand and every so often they would stop and share a kiss. At first, I tried not to let it bother me, but after a while I got pretty resentful. This was meant to be a fun outing for me, but they only had eyes for each other and weren't paying any attention to me at all. This was exactly what I had known would happen, and exactly what I was afraid of. Anna was stealing Jack away from me. She was stealing his attention, his time, and his love.

As I skated, I hatched a plan.

Focusing intently on my technique like Anna had shown me how to do, I worked at building up speed. Once I was going as fast as I dared, I cut across the ice and came up behind them, intent on crashing into Anna and sending her flying.

Sadly, it didn't quite go to plan. Just as I was catching up to them I got the speed wobbles, leaned over slightly too far and lost my balance and went crashing down onto the ice, sliding on my back across the rink. I screamed, and Anna and Jack both turned. Anna dodged out of the way and Jack leaned down and grabbed me, stopping me mid-slide. Somehow, in the fall, I managed to hurt my knee and tears welled up in my eyes.

Jack helped me up.

"What happened?" he asked. "You were doing so well!"

"I don't know," I sobbed into his shirt. "I think I just went too fast. Carry me! My knee hurts."

But Jack shook his head. "I can't skate well enough to carry you, sweetheart. We'll both fall down if I try it."

Anna skated up beside me, looking concerned and immediately, I felt guilty. I'd just tried to hurt her, and here she was being all nice and caring.

"If I hold you on this side and Jack holds you on the other side, do you think you can get to the seats?" Anna asked, taking as much of my weight as she could.

"Lean more on me," she said. "If you lean on Jack he might tip over, and as funny as that would be, you might get even more hurt." She gave me a conspiratorial wink, as though she was planning to push Jack over later, and wrapped her arm around me securely.

Anna wasn't strong like my brothers, but even so, she made me feel secure enough to lean on her and take the weight off my throbbing knee.

Once we were off the ice I leaned against the wall with Anna while Jack quickly traded his skates for shoes. Surprisingly, he was dressed casually for a change, and his shoes were white converse. Very different to normal. But, I suppose ice skating would be rather uncomfortable in a suit, no matter how well tailored it was.

Once he had his shoes on instead of skates, he came back to me and lifted me gently in his arms, carrying me to the seats. He put me down and carefully unlaced my skates, slowly sliding them off my feet. He gently slid my pants leg up past my knee so he could see how bad I was hurt.