Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) (10 page)

Chapter Nine

Stephanie

Stephanie had convinced Alex to meet at her apartment. She could control the situation there, but as she busied herself with straightening up, her anxiety metamorphosed into nausea. Her new digital voice recorder sat on the coffee table, along with the small journal in which she’d written her questions.
Stay on track. Third time’s a charm, right?

She’d attempted to call Joe, but he had shunned her as expected. Too soon, though she needed the assurance he wouldn’t do anything stupid. She had seen nothing on the internet yet. Hopefully he’d cooled down, started to move on.

The door buzzed. She sucked in a deep breath to avoid throwing up on her shoes. Alex, wearing a navy blue suit, white herringbone dress shirt, and a blue silk pindot tie, stood in the doorway. He shifted his weight from foot to oxford-clad foot, his eyes tired, bloodshot, and smudged with purple underneath.

“Hey. I came straight from the airport.”

“Hey. I can tell.” Why did he always have to look amazing?
“Come in.”
Try not to be utterly stupid around him for five minutes.

“This is nice. Mine is too big for one person. I don’t know why I bought it.”

“Make yourself at home.”

Alex smiled and took off his jacket, handing it to her outstretched hands. He slumped onto the couch and loosened his tie.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Not sleeping well.”

Stephanie handed him a glass of ice water and sat a safe distance away.

“Thank you. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I was being selfish, and…” He shook away the thought, whatever it was, and directed a pointed stare at her left ring finger. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“To be honest, I don’t think you are.”

He crinkled his nose as though he’d caught a bad smell. “I’m not good at this shit. When there’s another man in the picture, they don’t usually find out. And if they do, well…” He waved a hand over himself. “They’re too intimidated to do anything about it.”

“I was looking for an excuse to leave. Too much of a coward to just get up and do it.”

Alex fidgeted with his shirt cuffs, then flicked lint from his pants. Anything to avoid eye contact. “Is that what I was? Just an excuse?”

“You’re never ‘just’ anything, Alex. And you were right. Joe was my security blanket. I should’ve handled it differently. A lot differently. But it’s over now. Life goes on.”

“You miss him.” He contemplated the ice cubes in his glass.

“It was five years. It takes some getting used to.” Uncomfortable silence spread between them like a stain. She had to change the subject. Had to stop the intolerable urge to touch him, even as an act of comfort for the blame he shouldered. “So…thank you for the flowers. They were very pretty.”

“You’re welcome.” He continued to stare at the ice as if partaking in a divination ritual. “I’m sure you heard about the road trip. Two and four. I put up at least a point almost every night, except when I’m being scratched for telling the media the truth. The rest of the team barely shows up.” Alex set the glass down and wiped his hands on his pants. “I spend so much time with my team, the fans, women, and I still wonder what the fuck the point is.”

Maybe everyone was right. He couldn’t change now, and why was that a surprise? He’d cast himself in the role so long that his personality had conformed to it, hardened around it. He had answered the nagging question of who he was in the most cynical way possible.

But his pretense had shown signs of brittleness, and if stretched enough, perhaps it could break.

He clinched his hands in his lap and stared at them. “I should go.”

“No,” Stephanie said with more desperation than she intended. She’d feared this. That this ridiculously talented, ridiculously handsome man would take up residence in her heart again, not that he’d ever truly departed, despite her brain’s attempts at eviction. “Not just for the interview. I could use a friend right now.”

“Are we friends?”

“I’d like to be.” Against her better judgment, she clasped her fingers around his. Everything where he was concerned had been against her better judgment.

“I should be honest with you. About why I’ve been putting off the interview.” He was rubbing his thumb over her fingers, sending an ecstatic chill through her. “I thought once you got the story…”

“I wouldn’t want to see you again. Alex, I can’t pretend you aren’t here.”

“I’m glad I am.”

They studied each other. A lifetime ended and began between them.

She reluctantly withdrew her hand and switched on the recorder.

***

Aleksandr

“I’ve even thought about going to the KHL,” he said by way of conclusion. “Then the NHL and local media wouldn’t be up my ass eight months out of the year.” He winced at the stricken look on her face. Did she want him to stay?

She shut off the recorder. “Makes sense, I guess, going back to Russia.”

“I think I’m too American now.” Sasha glanced at the kitchen clock. “Do you want to go out? It’s been hotel to arena to hotel, and I get a little…” He circled his index finger at the side of his head and cuckoo-whistled. “Besides, it’s Friday night. I can’t let you sit here by yourself, even if I have a curfew.”

“Should I change? I feel a little underdressed next to you.” She was wearing a metallic print, hip-length tunic over skinny jeans, and black riding boots with buckles at the ankles. Beautiful the way she was.

He removed his tie, rolled his sleeves to the elbows, and undid the first two buttons on his shirt. Smiling, he tracked her gaze to his chest. “Better?”

“Where are we going?”

“Well, we should probably eat dinner. I feel like dancing too.”

“You still like to dance?”

He rose from the couch and did a little hip-thrusting, arm-pumping move.
I can be Alex again, if it will make her happy. Anything to make her happy.

She burst into laughter. “Can’t wait to see that.”

“Steph,” he said as they walked into the hallway, “I’m sorry for, uh…before the road trip. It was a lot to process.”

“I know. I should’ve told you a long time ago.”

“I would’ve done the right thing. Whatever I had to. Although as far as my parents are concerned, I was still a virgin when I came home from America.”

She laughed a little, and his heart lightened. “I wouldn’t have asked you to make that kind of sacrifice. Your career was just starting.”

“If you hadn’t…it hadn’t…What would you have done?”

She poked the Down button. The elevator dinged and opened. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Your father never found out?”

“No. God.” Her voice was teeming with tears. “He would’ve killed us both.”

“Did it…hurt?” He flinched as he said the word. He could not bear the thought he’d been responsible for inflicting pain on her, however circuitous. It had been his baby, after all, though he was stupid for thinking of it as such. Barely more than an embryo, and her body hadn’t been ready. But adulthood and having the money to care for a family magnified the loss.

She sighed, but not because she was exasperated with him. He could tell the difference. “There was cramping, and bleeding, and then it was over.”

“I’m sorry I put you through that.”

“I was just as responsible. We had sex more than once. We both weren’t thinking, and teenagers do dumb things. Especially when they’re in love.”

And they had been so in love. “I know it was a long time ago, but…”
You are some kind of masochist.
“I shouldn’t even ask. Never mind.”

“No. Ask. Please.” She glanced away. “I owe you that.”

“Did I make you happy when we were together?”

She blinked and stared at the floor as the elevator doors opened. “The happiest.”

He suppressed the compulsion to kiss her. Instead, he loosely clasped his fingers around her hand, the way a friend or a casual date might. They walked out the rear entrance and into the parking lot. Alex pressed Unlock on his key ring, then opened the obsidian roadster’s passenger door. “So,” he said to alleviate the tension, “it occurs to me you’ve never been in my car.”

“I’m almost afraid to sit in it. There are houses that cost less, you know.”

“She’s a beauty,
da
?” He slid into the cockpit and retracted the roof. “If you get cold, the seats are heated.”

“Fancy.” Stephanie relaxed into the Nappa leather seat and ran a fingertip over the black ash-wood trim. “Look how far back you have to push the seat,” she said with a sunny laugh.

Grinning, Alex buckled up, put it into first, and rumbled out of the parking lot. “You try being very tall. I’m surprised I don’t have post-concussion syndrome from all the times I’ve bumped my head.”

“What’s this?” She tapped the Music Register.

“It holds ten gigs of music from my collection. There’s Bluetooth too, if you want to listen to your own music. There are twelve speakers in here. I don’t usually let people touch anything, but go ahead and play with it.” He laughed and cleared his throat. “That sounded dirty.”

Stephanie giggled. She raised her face to the open roof, to the stars sparkling above and a half-moon suspended in the infinite black expanse. The wind whisked its fingers through her blond hair.
Tonight
, it sang,
she comes back to you.

“I won’t let you go again,” he said, his voice lost in the thumping bass and the noise of the Mercedes flying down the highway.

***

Stephanie

Alex led her through a dim alley and into a dimmer hole-in-the-wall that must have been a Prohibition speakeasy in a former life. They bypassed the upstairs bar in favor of the downstairs, which held the dance floor. The place was already drawing a substantial crowd; she and Alex claimed an empty table with a banquette on one side. He sat beside her instead of across from her, hip to hip so they could examine the menu together. Alex extracted a pair of metal-frame glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on.

“You,” he said with a smile, as he scanned the selection, “are staring at me.”

“Glasses, uh, look good on you.” Clark Kent with better specs and more stylish hair. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans.

“I look like an asshole.” He snorted with disdain and tucked them back into his pocket. “I’m a bit farsighted. If only I hadn’t masturbated so much.”

She choked on a sip of water, scrambled for a napkin, and covered her mouth.

Alex snickered. “Normally I’d have a salad. I have to maintain my figure.”

Her turn to laugh. How easy that was too, with him.

“But I’m dying for pizza. Split one with me? I’ll feel better about myself.”

“Sure. Want to do the margherita?”

“Excellent choice.” Alex flagged down the server and ordered the pizza along with a glass of ZYR straight up for himself and a cosmo for her. Even his forearms, sinewy and sprinkled with fine black hair, were sexy.

Christ. Get it together.

The drinks arrived a few minutes later. “A toast,” she said. “To new beginnings. What do they say in Russia?”

“We don’t really have one word for ‘cheers.’ Sometimes we say ‘
Budem zdorovy
.’ It means ‘Let’s stay healthy.’”

“I’ll drink to that.
Budem zdorovy!
” Stephanie clinked her glass with his. “How did your English get so good, anyway?”

“I binge-watched TV during summers.”

She scowled.

“I’m serious. The best way to learn American English is to watch your TV shows. Also, I wanted to impress my peer language partner if I ever saw her again. You’re impressed,
da
?”

“Very.” She laughed.

Alex took a vigorous gulp, then set the tumbler down. “Do you ever think about it? I mean, what it would be like if things had turned out differently.”

Only every day.
“I try not to dwell on it too much. I don’t know how we would’ve made it work, being so young.”

“The baby, or us?”

“Um…” Stephanie sipped the tart cocktail to occupy her mouth with something other than speaking. Buying time to find the right words. “We worked pretty well, but we were kids. Maybe it wouldn’t have always been that way.”
Whatever helps you sleep at night.

“I don’t mean to keep bringing it up. But family is everything in Russia, and I didn’t know how close I came to having one.” Alex shrugged. “Who am I kidding? I’d be a shit father.” He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes.

The server placed their pizza in the center of the table. Alex slid a piece onto Stephanie’s plate first, then his. By the time he was working on his third, she was still taking dainty bites from her first. When had she become
that
girl?