What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (3 page)

Alex flashed his stunning smile. “Hey. I think she’s asleep now.”

“She’s a lucky little girl to have a daddy like you.” Stephanie knelt beside the chair and kissed the back of his hand. “And I’m a lucky woman to have him for a husband.”

“Sometimes I think I’m having this wonderful dream. It comes after all the bad dreams, where everything inside me spills out and it feels like I’m breaking apart.” He wandered off for a moment, gazing at Anya and humming to her. Stephanie let him go. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m always afraid I’ll wake up and still be in pieces, and none of this will have happened. Then I open my eyes and see this ring, and you next to me. And I remember that the only way I could grow was to be destroyed first.”

She stroked his hair. She wasn’t naïve enough to think therapy and medication, or even she and Anya, wielded the power to dispel his darkness. He tended now to express it through his music, but it was always there. An apparition half-glimpsed around a corner or in a mirror, an evocative scent conveyed on the wind.

“When I first saw you, I saw everything I wanted to be. Jung said, ‘The soul cannot exist in peace until it finds the other, and the other is always you’.” Alex laid Anya in her crib. “The one thing I’ve never quite figured out is how to tell you how much I love you.”

Her throat grew thick and in it, her pulse ticked out a rapid rhythm. A career built on words, and
she
was the one lacking sufficient ability to express her love. “I think you just did.”

His cheeks dimpled. “Come on. Let’s get some sleep while we can.”

Chapter Three

Alex

“Pass!” Alex shouted from the stands. The Chippewa Icemen were leading by one goal with nine minutes left in the third period, and an insurance goal could potentially put the game away for them. “Right winger’s open!”

Telling Stephanie how to play was what he considered good practice for coaching his own team, even if she despised him doing it. A little extra coaching never hurt anyone. He’d already spent much of his time studying video of the past season’s special teams, the main weakness that had locked the Gladiators out of a playoff spot. Both their power play and penalty kill, essential for a deep playoff run, had dwelled at the bottom of the league for the better part of the season. He had signed up for coaching training and development and read several improvement books as well. The next step was to get out on the ice himself. He had concentrated his recent workouts on lower-body strength training in preparation—lunges, squats, one-leg dead lifts, and ankle band exercises. While it wasn’t similar to actually playing, he’d spend enough time on the ice that maximum ankle strength was critical.

The Icemen set up in perfect formation for a cycle that should have netted them a goal. From the point, since no shooting lane was available to her, Stephanie whacked the puck to her right-winger, who passed it to the center. She was rubbing her chest. Coughing. The puck sailed past her and into the neutral zone. She dropped to her knees.

“Steph!” Alex leaped over seats and possibly several people, jumped down to the bench, and hurled the gate open, his ankle screaming. He skidded across the ice but righted himself before toppling into a face-plant. She was waving off teammates and the medic by the time he reached her.

He knelt beside her and removed her helmet. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine. Just short of breath.” She pounded a glove against her chest.

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“You’re overreacting. I just need to sit for a minute.”

“
Nyet
. Jessica, can you take her to the locker room so she can change?”

“Of course. Come on, Steph.” Jessica gripped her hand and hoisted her up, then skated with her to the gate and walked her down the tunnel. Alex gathered her helmet and stick and waited for her at the rink entrance.

“This is ridiculous,” she said on the way to the city’s best hospital. Nothing less for her, even if he had to drive across town.

“My wife collapsing on the ice is hardly ridiculous.”

“I didn’t collapse. I just…lost my breath after that pass.”

“Do you suppose that happens often to healthy twenty-seven-year-old women who have been playing hockey their whole lives?”

She sulked.

“If it’s nothing, then no harm done. But I’d rather be safe than sorry, especially with that cough you’ve had.” He pulled up to the valet window, handed over his keys, and helped Stephanie out of the car, into the ER. “Excuse me,” he said to the unit nurse. “My wife was playing hockey and started having trouble breathing.”

“Your name, ma’am?”

“Stephanie Hartwell.”

The nurse gave Alex a split-second sideways glance, eyebrows lowered and lips tight. In return, he offered a teeth-baring smile. Fuck her and her silent judgments. She pressed a large green button that opened the door to the exam rooms. “Right this way.”

Stephanie shot him a look:
We don’t have to wait?

He looked back at the people slumped in the waiting room’s chairs. Wounds, illnesses, probably more serious than Stephanie’s issue. People whose names did not serve as currency. He shrugged and set a hand on the small of her back as they entered the unit. What could they do about it?

The nurse directed them to an exam room. “Someone will be with you shortly.” She tugged the curtain shut.

“How are you feeling?” Alex asked.

Stephanie hopped up onto the table. “Okay. A little burning in my lungs.”

“Ms. Hartwell?” Another nurse ducked into the room and fixed the curtain behind her. “What brings you in tonight?”

“I was playing hockey, and I suddenly felt short of breath. I’ve had a cough for a while—about a month, I guess? I thought maybe it was bronchitis or walking pneumonia.”

“All right. Let me get your vitals, and the doctor will listen to your lungs when he comes in.”

Weight, temperature, blood pressure. Everything checked out normally. The nurse advised Stephanie to undress from the waist up and put on the faded cotton robe beside her, then assured them the doctor would arrive soon.

“It’s freezing in here.” Stephanie chafed her pebbled arms. An exchanger hissed as it replaced air stinking of bleach, cleanser, and stainless steel with fresh air. The intercom reported codes and summoned doctors. A keyboard clacked. A wheelchair squeaked past the curtain. She covered her ears when the moaning began next door.

Alex sat next to her and hugged her. He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll buy you a bottle of wine and some chocolate on the way home for being such a trooper.”

“Mr. Volynsky!” the doctor announced. He stepped in and stuck out his hand. “I’m Dr. Cohle.”

“Hi. I’m not the patient. As you can see.”

“Right, right. Not feeling too well, Mrs. Volynsky?”

She side-eyed Alex. Few things angered her more than the assumption she’d taken his last name. He’d known all along that she was keeping her own, despite its association with her father. And it hurt a little, that she’d prefer to use his name rather than starting over with a new one. Still, Alex understood her dislike of the tradition, the implied ownership, and he hadn’t put up much of an argument. “It’s Ms. Hartwell. I’m sure it says so in my file.”

“Of course, of course. Having some breathing trouble?”

“Yes. And my chest hurts.”

“Let’s have a listen.” The doctor pressed his stethoscope to Stephanie’s chest. “Deep breath in, and let it out. Good.” He held it to her back. “And again. Definitely some rattling in there. I’m going to prescribe a cough suppressant. I’ll have that for you with your discharge instructions. The nurse will take you to X-ray.”

“Thank you.”

Alex scooped up her clothes and messenger bag. “I’ll be in the waiting room. You’ll be fine, baby.” He kissed her cool forehead. “See you in a little bit.”

He sat in the back of the room, by the windows, and speed-dialed Jacob.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me. We’re going to be a little late. I had to take Stephanie to the ER.”

“Is she okay? What happened?”

“She had trouble breathing during her game. She’s getting X-rays now. How is Anya?”

“She’s fine. Sleeping.”

“Thank you again for watching her. I planned to have a sitter by now, but you know, it’s our first kid, and no one seems good enough—”

“Hey. We got this. Go be with your wife. You’ll get here when you get here.”

“
Da.
Thanks.” Alex tucked the phone into his pocket. The TV volume was too low to hear, and no one had turned on the closed-captioning. Restless, he fought the compulsion to pace, not wanting to disturb the other patients and their families. He checked his social media accounts but lost interest after a few minutes, and stared out the window. The doors shushed open and shut. Paramedics maneuvered someone on a gurney, covered in a bloody sheet, toward the ER. Doctors and nurses swarmed the dying victim and vanished into the unit. If his own experience hadn’t solidified his hatred of hospitals, this did. The industrial, antiseptic stink of it. The squelch of slip-resistant shoes on tile. The mournful wails of pain, of loss. So many lives began and ended here.

The automatic door swung open, and Stephanie trudged forth, her fair skin whiter than ever. She was clutching papers that she handed to him with a weary exhale.

“So…”

“They saw something.”

He stuffed the papers into her bag. She heaved it onto her shoulder as though it weighed a thousand pounds.

“What? What do they think it is?”

“I don’t know. I have to get it biopsied.” Her palm was clammy as Alex held her hand on the way out to the valet, her shoulders hunched. She shuffled along beside him.

“It could be anything.”
Like what? What else could a spot on her lung be?

“Yeah.” She blew out an incredulous sigh.

The valet brought the BMW around beneath the portico. Alex tipped him, then assisted Stephanie into the passenger seat as though she’d become suddenly brittle, subjected to so much stress that she might break with the slightest taction. “It’ll be okay.”

She said nothing, just slouched against the door, arms tightly folded over her chest and her hands balled into fists.

***

Stephanie

Alex was in the gym room overlooking the pool, while Anya slept in her bassinet near the windows despite the bass-heavy electro house pouring from a Bluetooth speaker. His back to Stephanie, and wearing only soccer shorts and sneakers, he performed hammer curls with his dumbbells. Keeping his upper arms immobile, he bent his elbows and curled the weights as close to his shoulders as he could, biceps fully engaged and bulging. He held them in place for a beat, then slowly lowered them to his sides, straightening his arms. Sweat dribbled between his trapezius muscles and disappeared beneath his waistband. Stephanie ran a finger down his back, massaged his delts, and squeezed his luscious ass.

He gave her a saucy little shake and set the weights down. “Hi, baby. Oh—don’t hug me. I stink.” He laughed.

“There’s a scent produced by fresh sweat that women find very attractive, you know. It carries a pheromone.” She kissed the dip in his throat. “I can’t wait to steal you away for a few days.”

Alex slithered his fingers into her hair. His lips brushed hers. “And what,
moya lyubov′
, do you have in mind?”

“You’ll just have to wait until we get there.”

“Mmm. I like surprises.” He replaced his weights on a three-tiered steel dumbbell rack. He’d organized his equipment in precise rows, as though one stray object would disassemble the house into a jumble of non-Euclidean geometry fit for a Great Old One. One idiosyncrasy he’d have to get over with a kid in the house, especially when she learned to walk.

Alex wheeled the bassinet out of the gym and into the kitchen. Stephanie unpacked the Thai food she’d picked up for lunch—an apology for shutting down on him last night when they’d left the hospital—and arranged it in bowls.

“I got a call today,” he said.

Please not another scandal.

Alex kneaded her shoulders. “Tell you all about it while we eat. I’m going to take a quick shower.” He pecked her cheek and headed upstairs. Stephanie carried the bowls to the kitchen table. Houses this big came with the standard formal dining room, but they had not yet found much use for it with little time to prepare or host dinner parties and with their families scattered across the country or on the other side of the world.

Anya remained asleep; she didn’t do much else at three weeks except poop and pee, which happened hourly, it seemed. Combined with her eating every couple of hours, Stephanie and Alex had bid a painful goodbye to sleep for the foreseeable future.

Alex slid into a chair and twirled rice noodles around his chopsticks. He hadn’t bothered styling the still-wet hair pushed back from his face. Without his usual regimen for taming it, the longer top coiled into waves as it dried.

“No plans for the rest of the day?”

“Don’t know. Maybe do some stuff around here. So the call,
da
? From an old friend in Russia. How do you feel about finally making the trip?”

“Guess I should meet my in-laws sometime.” Although, Alex had informed her, they didn’t speak a word of English.

“And they’re dying to meet you and Anya. Anyway, my friend. She’s a pop star back home. She wants me to record a song with her for her new album, and shoot a video.”

“You’re a regular Renaissance man. So this is someone you knew from school?”

“
Da.
We met in secondary. Had music classes together, and my mother gave her voice lessons.”

She made a slight noise in her throat. “So you were close.”

Alex set his chopsticks down and crinkled his nose. “I know that look.”

“I didn’t give you a look.” All her expertise at interpreting expressions, and she couldn’t control her own.

“Baby.” He folded his arms.

“Oh, come on. I have a right. Russian women are gorgeous.”

“And yet, instead of going home, I married my American love.” Alex closed his hands over hers on the bistro table. “Listen. We went to senior prom together. We were friends. I didn’t start…you know, until Buffalo signed me. Honestly, I didn’t want to go, but Natashka and my parents insisted. Thought it would help.”