What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (9 page)

“There
is
no reason, on the outside. But you have to understand that one day his illness can be telling him to take stupid risks because he’s the greatest thing in the world, and the next tell him he’s a worthless piece of shit that has nothing to live for. We deal with the latter more days than not, and now we’re dealing with the fallout from the former too.”

“I feel like the biggest asshole right now, shooting off my mouth—”

“Brandon.” She smiled and took his hand. “If things were different, I’d pick you any day. I’d be crazy not to.”

“But you’re going back to him.”

“Right now, I’m trying to raise my daughter and not give the media any more fodder. They don’t know I’m not living at the house.”

“Fair enough. But you know what a lucky bastard he is, right?”

Laughing, she hooked her arm around his. “Walk me back to my car.”

Stephanie had parked one spot over from him, her expensive BMW and his aged Ford Fiesta a jarring juxtaposition, the white paint married with rust around the fender and windows. Looked like someone had keyed the driver-side door. Brandon had been making slightly less than a million a year before he retired but had undoubtedly lost much of it in the divorce.

“Call me soon, eh? Weather’s nice, and there’s a great beach about forty-five minutes from here.”

“Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind. I
am
a California girl.”

“Not exactly the Pacific Ocean, but there’s also a restaurant right on the beach. Dancing on the weekends, if you’re into that.”

Images of Alex flickered through her mind, a flipbook. One night in a Seattle bar, the night their lives had changed forever. Her eyes prickled with tears, though she caught herself smiling. “Not much of a dancer.”

“Good, me neither.” Brandon grinned and extended his arms for a hug. “Hang in there, Steph. And don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t. You’ve been a good friend.”

His expression rearranged into a fine-spun but manifest heartache. “Hopefully I’ll be as lucky as Aleksandr someday.”

“I don’t know that I’d call him lucky.”

“Where you’re concerned, he’s the luckiest guy in the world.”

The sudden kiss ended almost before it began—he’d tipped his head and, taking her upper lip between his, sucked gently before stumbling back as though he’d passed her a deadly disease.

“I, uh, God. I’m sorry. Have a good night, Steph.” Shoulders hunched and hands jammed into his pockets, Brandon strode the few feet to his car, climbed in, and drove away without another look.

“Shit,” she muttered. Stephanie unlocked the car then, provoked by an odd creeping sensation down her spine, glanced around at passersby and other cars. As she stood alone in the midst of hundreds of people shuttling home or off to dates and dinners, she scanned their faces, searching for her husband’s among them.

***

Stephanie hopped onto a barstool in the former nightclub that had reinvented itself as a gastropub, brunch until three on Saturdays and Sundays with three-dollar mimosas and Bloody Marys. Most of the staff had retained employment, including the bartender—now bar manager—who had been pouring drinks the night of Alex’s alleged crime.

Middle-aged women, groups of college girls nursing hangovers, and the occasional single-child couple populated the pub at eleven on a Sunday morning. A couple of loners straggled in, alternating between staring at the muted TV and into their drinks. Stephanie ordered eggs benedict and a cappuccino, the latter delivered in a dainty porcelain cup atop a saucer. She emptied a packet of Stevia in the Raw into it and stirred. “Excuse me,” she said to the bartender. “Hi. I’m with TWSN.” She licked cappuccino froth from her lips and raised her voice over music far too loud for eleven on a Saturday morning. “Can I ask you a few questions about the Volynsky case?”

His dark eyes sparkled.
Some people.
“Yeah, sure. I was working that night.”

“Did you see anything unusual? Did Volynsky come here often?”

“Once a week, maybe, if he was in town. He seemed to be in a worse mood than usual that night.” The black-shirted manager, sleeves rolled to his elbows, moved from one end of the bar to the other as he spoke.

“He’d just found out he had been traded. Did you notice anything else? What about the accuser?”

“Definitely not the kind of chick he usually hooks up with. She kept pestering him to have a drink with her. Totally fixated on him. He had all kinds of crazy fans.” The manager snickered and polished a glass he then placed into a green dishwasher rack. “Nice problem to have.”

“I bet. Go on.”

“He finally gave in. They had a few more rounds, and he seemed…I don’t know, out of it? I’ve seen him drunk before, but this was different. I figured he was doing drugs again.”

Drugs?
“What makes you say that?”

“He was, like…disoriented? Having trouble talking, walking, didn’t seem to know where he was. She left with him, and that’s all I know.”

“That’s very helpful. Thank you.”

“Hey.” He leaned over the bar as though about to divulge a juicy secret. “Do you think I’ll have to testify or anything?”

“I don’t think this case will make it to court, to be honest. The accuser’s story is pretty flimsy so far.”

“Between you and me, I’d be surprised if he could’ve gotten it up. He was a mess that night.”

Stephanie sipped her coffee to placate the growling in her stomach the buttery scent of frying breakfast potatoes had instigated. A runner emerged from the kitchen with her plate in hand. “I appreciate your insight. You’re sure you didn’t see anything else? Someone tampering with the drinks?”

“Sorry. Friday nights, we were slammed. Wish I could tell you more.”

“Here’s my card, in case you do think of something.” Stephanie slipped one from her card case and passed it to him. He stuffed it into his pocket without a glance, to discard later. She plunged her fork into the center of the poached eggs, spilling yolk and hollandaise over the brioche beneath. The whites were on the runny side, she noted with a curl of her lip.

“So, do
you
think he did it?”

“I think some people want everyone to believe he did. He’s no longer interesting if he’s not what they constructed him to be.”

“Huh.” He dipped a glass into soapy water, rinsed it, and set it on a rack to dry, then drifted to the other end of the bar to greet a customer.

My kingdom for an intelligent conversation.

You could call Alex and apologize.

She pushed her half-eaten food away, her lungs two sacks of hot stones. Maybe she hadn’t inherited her father’s propensity for physical violence, but that had never been the worst of it anyway. Bruises faded; bones healed. She satisfied him, and he left her room. But his words, things he had said ten or fifteen or even twenty years ago, were the supreme force of the universe, things time itself did not dissolve. She had become all too skilled in manipulating them herself, wielding them as weapons against the one she loved so he couldn’t possibly harm her as badly in return. No matter his own talents for verbal cruelty.

Taking Anya ended their reign as the worst harm she’d inflicted on Alex. And remorse would make her pay soon enough, with Father’s Day fast approaching.

She stared into the under-the-counter fridges, where they kept the milk, Bloody Mary mix and orange juice, and bottled beer, then up at the shelves of liquor. The bar manager returned only to hand her the check.

The hospital called on the drive back to schedule her testing appointment and nurse interview. With the chest X-rays in their possession, they required additional bloodwork and a sputum cytology. Her surgeon had already sent over the Consent for Surgery form, her medical history, and the results of her physical. Paperwork to fill a binder. Her life, or her death, no longer in her own hands.

That night, Stephanie tossed and turned in an attempt to find a position in which her heartbeat wasn’t the tick of a clock winding down, a metronome memorandum that only so many beats had been assigned to her, and she was likely running low. She’d never sleep again if she had to listen to such a flagrant reminder of her mortality. Eventually, she quit trying and instead watched over Anya. How many years did she have left to do so, or was it less than that? Months? If she would get to see her little girl blossom into a woman.

And if she and Alex really had nothing left to prove to anyone, or if that too had been no more than an illusion.

Chapter Nine

Alex

Brandon Johansson kissing
his
wife.

The image rejected all efforts to be purged from his mind. Alex paced the house, a caged lion, muscles coiled and prepared for attack. It did not matter who was unfortunate enough to wander into his path; he craved the destruction of someone, anyone, as long as it was no longer him.

He stared at the photo above the fireplace of him and Stephanie kissing after their wedding ceremony with Niagara Falls as their backdrop, the mist forming a prismatic halo around them. Betrayal set his blood ablaze. She needed “space”. Given the recent chaos, it had been almost believable. Maybe they did need a break, fortifying themselves individually before they reunited stronger than ever. He’d almost been willing to concede that, despite his continued shadowing of her. He might have stopped this insanity if he hadn’t seen them in the parking lot of a restaurant to which he had specifically promised to take her.

She had asked him to trust her, but how misplaced that trust had been. And what a fool he’d have played, greater than the one he was now, if he
hadn’t
been following her, hadn’t obtained visual proof of her infidelity. To read in the headlines that his wife was cheating on him.
Him
of all people.

He stormed up the stairs. It would have been more menacing if he’d been able to walk properly, although there was no one else in the house to intimidate, and that just enraged him more. By the time he reached Anya’s nursery, murderous with fury, he took it out on the only thing available.

Then he chucked the Pooh bear’s headless, limbless torso into the guest bath’s garbage along with its appendages oozing white stuffing. Instant regret consumed him. That was Anya’s bear now, not Stephanie’s. Alex gripped two fistfuls of his hair and breathed deeply, slowly. Focus on the positives. He could play piano and sing all goddamned night if he pleased. Maybe pick up another instrument—drums would be fun. Spend all day perfecting his coaching skills. Drink what he wanted when he wanted. No negotiations for anything, not what he did or what he ate or where he went. His time belonged to him alone.

Fuck whomever he wanted. Given that Stephanie was never around when he sought her out, it stood to reason that Johansson was balls-deep into his wife at that very moment. The more he rationalized, the less he believed it. If he were going to do something stupid, he’d prefer it not be due to an affair he had invented.

He called his doctor anyway. She increased his lithium dosage again and advised him to come in tomorrow morning, or head to the ER if he felt he was a danger to himself. He was a danger all right, but for once not to himself. Not yet, anyway. He drove to the pharmacy to pick up the new dosage, then online-ordered a replacement Pooh for Anya.

The fucking silence was driving him insane. He switched on the DAB radio on the kitchen counter. Taylor Swift’s latest travesty against music was crossfading into the last thing he wanted to hear.

Their song.

Alex seized the expensive, vintage-styled radio and smashed it onto the floor, then kicked it across the room as it spilled its electronic innards all over the travertine. His carapace cracked. He slumped to the floor, head in his heads, and sobbed with an intensity worthy of the baby girl he longed to hold.

***

Father’s Day. Instead of waking to his daughter’s cries for food, attention, and a diaper change, it was again to that godawful, maddening silence. He went through the usual motions: workout, shower, breakfast. No call from Stephanie.

The doorbell rang. He was not fit company for anyone, even on his third cup of tea, but he answered nevertheless.

Stephanie, holding Anya and her tote bag. “Happy Father’s Day.”

He glared at her. If looks could kill, his wife would be a puddle of blood and bone on their doorstep.

How can you think that about her?

Alex gnashed his teeth and looked away, and made a vain attempt to blink the grit from his eyes.

“I thought the three of us could spend a few hours together.”

“Where the
fuck
do you get off sneaking into the house and taking her from me?” He stabbed a finger at her. “You’re lucky I didn’t call the fucking cops, which I had every right to do. I had to get my lithium dosage upped because of your shit.”

Eyes watering, chin quivering. Her posture as crumpled as a used tissue. Her face was gaunt with worry but not about the state of their relationship. He saw it in the remoteness of her eyes. “Nice to see you too. Don’t fucking put that on me. I told you why I needed space, and
you
chose to blow it out of proportion.”

The biopsy.
Not good news, then. Her body language revealed her intent to tell him nothing.

“I—Come in.” He stepped aside.

She didn’t want to be there. She perched on the edge of the couch, ready for flight, with the tote between her legs while Alex sat beside her and held their daughter.

“You haven’t exactly made it easy, Stephanie.”

“I know.” She plucked at a loose string on the tote. The more she pulled, the more it unraveled. “I can’t talk about it right now. Not today. This is supposed to be your day.”

“‘My day.’ You walked out on me. You stole my daughter from me.”

“I didn’t mean…I just…” She shuddered every time she breathed. She reached for his hand, then retracted as though she believed herself unworthy of touching him. He deliberately construed it as guilt, but not for leaving.

“I have something for you.” Stephanie withdrew a large, giftwrapped rectangle from the tote and gathered Anya from him so he could open it.

He tore the paper away to reveal an 11”x17” framed black and white shot of him shirtless and holding their baby. How tiny Anya was in his arms, her doll-like perfection a stark contrast to her scarred and tattooed father. Stephanie had taken it during Anya’s first week at home and modeled it on the famous
Man and Baby
poster.
The Players’ Tribune
had found a number of her photos good enough to run them with the essay he’d written about his transition to family life and coaching, instead of sending one of their contributing photographers.

“It’s beautiful,” he murmured. “
Spasiba.”

“Do you…want to do something?”

I want you to go.
Except when he looked at her stricken face and her rumpled clothes, he ached to relieve whatever burden she carried. She was still, would always be, what he yearned for more than anything in the world.

She was cradling Anya in one arm, her other hand limp on her lap. He laid his over it. Her big blue eyes filled with more tears; she gave Anya to him then scrambled to get up, her hair falling into her face. “I’ll leave her here for a little while. I should go.”

“Why?”

Stephanie shook her head and rushed to the door. Alex followed.

“Stephanie.”

She gazed up at him, arms hanging at her sides. She did not try to hide her tears. “I’ll just let you down, Alex.”

“What? What are you talking about?” He creased his brow. This flimsy, beaten imposter was not his wife.

“I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Alex watched her walk to her car, her shoulders drawn in and her head down as if to make herself invisible.

When she returned three hours later, she said nothing as she collected Anya and the tote and departed into the rainy afternoon. And he didn’t try to stop her.

***

Alex inhaled a centering breath, gripped his stick, and stepped onto the ice. He and Stephanie had skated a few times last winter, but this was his first attempt with any gear since the injury. A year and a half ago, he’d felt as comfortable in skates as he did in sneakers. Work hard enough, long enough, and he was bound to get that feeling back. Maybe not with a hockey player’s doggedness, but he belonged on ice.

He started with basic balance drills: accelerating with a few strides, then balancing on one foot, switching at each line; Russian lunges; dropping to both knees and hopping up as quickly as possible; squats and shoot the duck. Coaching power plays? He had to get his feet back under him first.

Balancing—or attempting to—on his right foot sent him crashing to the ice more than once. He picked himself back up, each setback a provocation to perform better next time. He had been elite, and as an example and mentor to the Gladiators’ veterans and rookies alike, he’d damned well show them how an elite player skated.

He glided back to the bench to regroup as a blonde picked her way through the rink. An American man’s Russian wet dream, straight off a mail-order bride website. None of the economic baggage but all of the social and emotional ones. Only a few years until she’d be deemed an old maid, and as far as he knew, she had never sustained a serious relationship. Too busy lamenting the one that got away.

“Sashka!” Natasha embraced him, squashing against him perky, round tits that did not resemble the ones he remembered. She wore a low-cut, cropped black T-shirt, denim short-shorts, and glittery black platform sandals—all terribly impractical for a fourteen-hour flight, unless she’d changed at the hotel for his perceived benefit. “Housekeeper tell me you are at hockey rink, so I come to you.”

Another housekeeper to fire. Keeping one who handed out his personal business like Halloween candy to anyone who asked, especially with his current state of affairs, invited misfortune. “Long flight. I thought you’d want to go straight to bed.”

“I just get here, Sashka. No hanky-panky yet.” She cackled and pinched his ass.

“
Ey!
Hands off. I’m married.” He waved his left hand in her face, then sat on the bench and unlaced his skates.
Even if she
is
fucking someone else.

“We can’t go out with you looking like…this.” She made a face and plucked at his nylon warm-up pants.

He wished he could crawl out of his skin.

“We go dancing,
da
?”

“I was injured, Natasha. I can’t dance like I used to.”

She elbowed him. “If not for your accent, I’d think you American. You need to come home.”

Maybe I do.

“You marry woman who cares more about job than taking care of her man and baby. She should be cooking you big meals and—”

“Enough.”

She pouted. She’d always had a beautiful mouth, and she knew it. Full, plump, the kind a man might suck on for days, when he wasn’t sucking on other things. “I make Sashka angry at me already.”

“No, I—It’s different here, Natasha. Stephanie has always been independent. It’s one of the things I love about her. She’s not like the girls back home.” He wouldn’t even be in this situation if she were. She’d have never dared leave him for her alleged “space” or to fuck another man, whatever the excuse was.

Natasha side-eyed him. “What is real reason you don’t come to Russia?”

“Look, let’s have a good time without delving into my personal life.” Alex set the skates in his bag and laced up his sneakers. “I’m going home to change. I’ll pick you up at your hotel in a couple hours.”

“Here is address. I see you soon.” She pressed a cocktail napkin into his hand, then patted his knee and rose to leave.

All the old urges were breaking the surface. It took only one night, one mistake. The worst part was that he didn’t give a fuck anymore.

***

Alex pulled into the lot of what had been one of his favorite haunts as a young and irresponsible star athlete. Natasha’s type of place for sure. Strong drinks, a big dance floor, and men on the prowl. They claimed two high-backed chairs at the bar.

“You are in bad mood still, Sashka.”

“I’ve been dealing with a lot of personal issues lately. I don’t mean to take it out on you. It’s great to see you.” He forced a smile as fake as it probably looked. “Really.”

Natasha delicately sipped her apple martini. Her squared-off nails were painted the same shade of rose as her lips. “You know your mother hoped we would be together.”

“If you flew halfway around the world trying to convince me to leave my wife, you can go back right now.”

She flaunted her mean-girl smirk. “She is all you talk about that year. Stephanie and hockey. That is all I hear.”

“I was a hockey player. What did you want me to talk about? You know how it is back home.” Focusing on skating and skill. No hitting. Absolutely no dumping pucks from the blue line, or the coach would bench you for the rest of your natural life. Eyes always up, and no puck watching. People thought Russian players were lazy. They didn’t understand that North American players had it easy by comparison.

Russian boys worshipped Ovi, Kovalev, and Kovalchuk. They studied hard but prayed for the clock to hit noon, the signal to leave for hockey school. Dying to break into the NHL so they could afford to take care of their families after all the sacrifices made. Meeting their idols and shaking so badly their knees knocked together, even a highly touted first-round draft pick like himself. Playing with those idols on the Big Red Machine in the Olympics and World Championships. It was special then. Innocent. As he and Stephanie had been, once upon a time.