Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) (29 page)

“She works for SWN. She’s the one who approached me about the co-hosting job.”

“Oh! And you play together. That’s a good thing,
da
?”

“Hope so.”

“So look at you, winning games and stuff.” He bumped her shoulder. “Nice number.”

“Crazy, right? Let me drop this stuff off in my car, and then we can go for a walk. If you’re up to it.”

“I’d like that.”

They stepped into the back of the elevator and stood side by side as others filed in, each face illuminating with recognition of the tall and striking man inside. Alex curled his pinkie around hers. Her heart thrashed against her breastbone.

She hung on.

***

Aleksandr

They stood on the pedestrian bridge spanning the water that in winter transformed into an ice rink. Streetlamps cast a tranquil glow over the walking path and green spaces below as an uncomfortable silence mushroomed between them. Alex’s tendons, wanting to call it a night, protested. He shifted his weight to his left foot and folded his hands on the railing.

“I think I know the answer, but I have to ask. Would you come back if I asked you to?”

Something closed off in her expression. A door slamming shut. “No, Alex. I wouldn’t.”

“
Ya durak
,” he murmured. He lowered his head and swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid question.”

“I’m happy here. My career is finally going in the right direction. And I’ll never again sacrifice my own happiness for someone else. No one should. Including you.”

Alex gazed at the clear, star-dappled sky. He picked out the faint pattern of Aries, his sign, feeble even at its brightest in December. Spontaneous, adventurous, a fire sign needing a true companion, a best friend to balance him. Stephanie’s, Pisces, was yet harder to see. Adaptable, resilient, emotional, often torn between two life paths. “I don’t have anything left to sacrifice.”

Stephanie scooted closer to him, shoulder to shoulder. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

He swiped a hand over his face. He was so tired. Too drained to maintain the pretense anymore. “I want to come home.”

“You
are
home. If you want to be.” Stephanie laid her hand over his and fit her fingers between the spaces.

His heart thundered as though it meant to finish the job the pills and booze hadn’t. A meteor streaked through the sky. He made a wish.

“Do you still love me?” he asked, not sure he’d meant to say it aloud. An impulsive, desperate question. Would she love him when she knew what he’d done? All the things he wasn’t anymore, and never was.

“Do you think I don’t?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

Her eyes softened. The pain in them had departed at some point, clearing a path to the future. If only he hadn’t laid a fatal obstruction in their way. “I left because I love you, not because I didn’t. I’ll always love you, Alex. And sometimes that terrifies me.”

Terrified, and she did not know the worst of it.

They walked back to the parking lot, his hand in hers.
A chill skittered over his skin, as though her ghost had passed through him and he was reliving what was already a memory.

By this time tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

***

Stephanie

The lot had long since emptied, and under normal circumstances, Stephanie would not have loitered. However, she and Alex were having a difficult time saying good night. They had even engaged in the small talk he hated in order to postpone their good-bye.

“Thank you for coming to my game,” she said. “And thanks for the sign. That was very cute.”

“Thank you for inviting me.” Alex stuck his hands in his pockets. “So…call me when you get home from work tomorrow. It’s time I told you everything.” He scuffed the heel of his sneaker on the asphalt. “If you do still love me, please don’t stop because of what I tell you.”

“Do you trust me?”

A bit of the old impudence adorned his smile. “It’s hard for me to trust people.”

“Touché.” Stephanie brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “Alex, I’m your friend. At the very least.”

“I guess that will have to do for now. I don’t deserve more than that anyway.”

“Don’t say that.” She threw her arms around his neck in an impetuous hug. Masculine and sensuous cologne, worn with the aim of seducing her whether he’d intended to or not, suffused his skin. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

He stiffened before returning the embrace. “You don’t know what you’re promising.” Alex withdrew and, cupping her face, stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. “But thank you.”

“Alex…”

He tilted her chin. “Sweet dreams, Stefania.” He kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Wait,” she whispered.

But he was limping across the lot into the shadows.

***

Meaningful coincidence.

Stephanie set her phone on the nightstand, shed her clothes, and examined her legs. Discolored, but they’d heal before the next game. Too late for a bath. She put her pajamas on and crossed the room to the closet to dig through sweaters, spare blankets, and other cold-weather items until she located the box stashed out of sight on the top shelf. Stephanie sat on the bed, her phone beside her, debating despite the late hour whether to call Brandon. Someone to ground her. Alex was doing it again, carrying her over the threshold of their lovely little dream world.

On cue, her phone lit up. The picture from yesterday, a diffuse halo of gold-and-orange light behind them as they jammed their tongues into ice cream cones.

The phone buzzed again.

Thank you for the past two days.

She texted back:

The week isn’t over yet
.

He did not respond.

She removed the ring from the box and cupped it in her palm. A promise, but the promise went both ways. He needed her faith in him.

She slid it onto her left ring finger.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Aleksandr

Alex stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, surveying the cityscape as dread cinched his heart. He’d spent most of the day before Stephanie’s arrival holed up in the suite, tormented by anxiety and throwing up until only bile remained. Stephanie was sitting in one of the upholstered chairs on either side of him, too close and too far away all at once.

“I didn’t know whether to start with my diagnosis,” he said, “or what got me there in the first place. But this can’t go any further until you know. It’s not fair to you.”

“You
are
sick. You’re okay, right? Please tell me you’re okay.”

“It’s not that kind of sick. Read this. And then I’ll explain.” He handed her the notebook.

“Poetry?”

“Kind of, I guess. Maybe song lyrics. I don’t know. Just needed to get some stuff out.”

She read from the first page to the last one on which he’d written. His pain inscribed in each line: for her, for the baby, the injury, the loneliness. Singing her his scars. But it changed in the later poems, a veil of darkness shrouding each word, lamenting how his mind had betrayed him.

“What does this mean? Alex, what’s going on?”

“Remember when I would get angry and lash out? Of course you do. That’s why you moved, or at least part of it.”

“Alex—”

He raised a hand. “Hear me out. You know some of the stupid things I did, like at the strip club and in Ibiza. I could drink and dance, and fuck and play hockey, and for weeks at a time, everything was great. Except it wasn’t. After the injury, I started going in the opposite direction. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten sad. I did a lot; I hid it and kept pretending. I did some things…” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “
Gospod′ Bog
,” he whispered.

Stephanie twined her fingers with his. “Whatever it is, Alex, you can tell me.”

He drew in a deep, slow breath, but tears burned his eyes, and his bowels clenched. “Back in March, I went on a week-long coke binge. And during that week…” He drew another breath. Shaking. “There were a lot of women. I gave some of them money. And some of them brought more drugs.”

Her hand fell away. He’d known she would not want to touch him any longer. She would regret he had ever come.

“That’s prostitution, Alex.” Her voice was rising. Her breath shuddered. “Since when do you have to pay
anyone
to sleep with you?”

“It wasn’t for that. They took the time to come over, and I was lonely. Just trying to feel better.”
Keep digging.
“But one day I woke up, and I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t stand the thought of living like that. And…first I tried it with a knife, but it reminded me too much of…” He glanced at his foot. “So then I took the pills and vodka.” His voice broke. “I tried to kill myself.”
And couldn
’
t even do that right.
He could not bring himself to look at her, to face the judgment he had earned.

“Alex, why didn’t you call me? I would’ve—Why?” Her shriek ripped through his ears and gashed his heart. He cringed.

“I didn’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“Do you think I want you dead? Would I be better off then?”

Entirely possible.
“I called Jacob, so I guess I wasn’t so ready to die. They put me on a seventy-two-hour psych hold. After I started therapy, I found out I have type-two bipolar disorder. I have for years; I just didn’t know. Now I’m on medication. And trying to get better.”

She was silent for so long he turned from the windows to make sure she hadn’t sneaked out. She was cradling her head in her hands.

“Steph.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, though he feared she would crumble beneath him like the sand upon which he had built his pretty dream. To his horror, she shrugged him off and bolted from the chair. She stopped at the door, one hand pressed to her mouth and tears cutting down her cheeks. Something sparkled in the darkness.

The promise ring. She hadn’t been wearing it yesterday.

“Oh…” He swallowed around the briars in his throat, her tears washing away bits of him because he was disintegrating along with that dream.

“I need to process this, Alex. Not that you’re bipolar. I can deal with that. Shit, it explains just about everything. But the things you did…And I get it was because you were sick. But I need to figure out if I can live with what happens when you can’t cope.”

“But I’m getting help now,” he said, because he did not know what else to do.

The door closed.

“But I love you,” he whispered. He pulled the box from his pocket and hurled the forty-thousand-dollar ring across the room. It bounced off the headboard and landed in the center of the bed. He dropped into the chair still warm from her, clawing at his hair and grinding his elbows into his thighs. Breathing as though he could not any longer. Tears spattered his jeans. That he had expected another outcome had been the pinnacle of idiocy. He could not guarantee her the terrible things he’d done wouldn’t happen again despite medication and his best efforts. No matter how much he loved her.

He called the airline and changed his flight to Seattle for Wednesday. Tomorrow he’d salvage something of this trip, at least, and talk to his old general manager.

With the walls closing in, he locked the ring in the room safe and went for a long walk, his fingers so tight around the cane’s handle his knuckles throbbed. He stopped to light a cigarette. Less than two miles to Canalside and back, an easy trip once, minutes on a hockey player’s legs. But he wasn’t a hockey player anymore. He was nothing anymore. And while being free of expectations, the sole crafter of his future, should have excited him, he felt only pointlessness. He had failed at the most important thing of all, and whatever else he might be was a charade. Like always.

***

Stephanie

She sobbed into her pillow like a teenaged girl suffering her first heartbreak. It wasn’t even about the women, given Alex’s notorious past, though it hurt to imagine others pleasuring what in a denial of reality she had continued to deem hers. She’d relinquished her rights the second she had walked out of his condo. That she’d remained celibate these six months was her own damned fault. Brandon would’ve gone to bed with her if she had asked. She hadn’t owed Alex her fidelity.

It was that the spontaneity she so loved also made him unpredictable. If she could not foresee he might view a drug binge as an appropriate coping mechanism, what other shocks lay ahead? He had a terrible temper. Had he ever been violent off-ice toward anyone other than himself? He hated discussing personal problems. What if he did something stupid instead of talking to her?

She wandered into the kitchen, her eyes half swollen shut, and uncorked a bottle of wine. Hypocrite or not, she wasn’t about to get sanctimonious over self-medication. Stephanie sprawled on the couch and drank the whole thing straight from the bottle. Her skull throbbed; she would puke sooner rather than later.

It would have to be something like mental illness. Something intangible and capricious, compelling him to do what was otherwise unthinkable in his right mind. That would cause the most pain, because it had convinced him he did not warrant the happiness they had found, however fleeting, in each other. His brain, she wagered, sounded a great deal like her father.

She picked up her phone, though not to call Alex; the vindictive little part of her mind that clung to the idea he’d betrayed her wouldn’t permit it. Tonight, bad judgment reigned supreme. “Brandon?”

“Stephanie? I was wondering what happened to you this weekend.”

“I, uh…Oh, God.” She crumbled again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you come over? I really need someone to talk to.”

“Of course. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Thank you.” She hung up and wandered into the bathroom, where two of her stared back from the mirror, and both revolted her. Red and puffy eyes, red nose, tearstained cheeks, tottering into anything she could hang on to. No fixing it now.

She buzzed Brandon in. He assessed her with a pronounced crease in his forehead and declared, “You’re wasted.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“What the hell is going on?” He sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside him.

“I-I’ll be right back.” She dashed down the hall, kicked the bathroom door shut, and flung herself before the toilet just in time for dinner and the wine to come back up.

Brandon knocked. “Can I get you something?”

“There’s ginger ale in the fridge. Please…I’ll be out in a minute.”

“You got it.”

She flushed, wiped her mouth, and brushed her teeth. As if the night wasn’t bad enough, humiliating herself in front of a co-worker. A potential lover. Stephanie trudged back to the living room, flopped onto the couch, and sipped the ginger ale Brandon had poured for her.

“Rough day, eh? Something happen at work?”

“No. The reason I wasn’t around all weekend was because…” She blew out a breath. “Aleksandr showed up on Friday afternoon.”

“Oh.” Brandon’s gaze smoldered with resentment over an opportunity lost. Plenty of hockey players, even retired ones, held grudges against Alex. No one wanted to compete with him. Couldn’t.

“I didn’t know he was sick, and the things he did…I don’t want to feel like this. Like I’m dying inside.” She took Brandon’s face in her hands and mashed her lips to his. “I want to forget. Help me forget. Please.”

“Steph, you are so drunk—ˮ

“I’m consenting.”

“You can’t.”

“I’m not going to change my mind tomorrow morning. Help me fix this.”

“This won’t fix anything.”

“Stop being so goddamned nice, Brandon. I’m offering.”

Gripping her upper arms, he shunted her away. “I really like you, Steph. But this isn’t how I want it. I want
you
to want it. Not because I’m a Band-Aid for a wound that won’t heal.”

“You don’t know it won’t help.”

“But you do. A lot of guys would take advantage of this situation, but I’m not one of them. Maybe that does make me too nice. But whatever is going on, you need to work it out with Volynsky. And then you can let me know when—if—you’re ready.”

“He’s mentally ill,” she said as Brandon stood at the door. Wondering if she should have divulged information not hers to give. “I knew there was
something
wrong, but am I a bad person to say I don’t know if I can handle it?”

“Everyone has their limits.”

“Love doesn’t. Shouldn’t.”

“Then it sounds like you’ve already decided. What he probably needs most right now is someone who will love him no matter what. Can’t say I’m not a little jealous.” Brandon smiled and shrugged. “But I’m not about to take away his support system.”

“Thank you. You’ve been a really good friend.”

“This isn’t easy, I know. But I’m always here to talk. Try to get some rest, okay?”

She nodded.

“I’ll see you soon, I hope. Good night, Steph.”

She bowed her face to her hands. Time, the one thing she needed most. The one thing they did not have.

***

Aleksandr

Alex had set the alarm for five a.m. The one time he wished for Latuda’s drowsiness, it had refused him all night. He shut off the alarm, then changed into his swim trunks and flip-flops for a dip in the pool before he began packing. He would not tell Stephanie he had gone until he was back in Seattle. If they ever spoke again. He’d received no calls, not even a text, at all yesterday.

His mind grappled with many things. He’d met his old GM for lunch to let him know he held no grudges about the trade and its consequences, but the guilt had been palpable. Not like Connor Talbot’s, though. Alex had called him after the Tornadoes were eliminated from the playoffs and asked him to reconsider retirement, assured him he was doing fine—he had learned to walk again; that was the important thing—but Connor wouldn’t hear it. Couldn’t have that hanging over his head every time he played. Commentators would always refer to him as the man who had ended Aleksandr Volynsky’s career, and so Alex, by extension, had ended Connor’s in an inadvertent act of media-instigated retaliation.

He grabbed a towel, the card key, and his phone and headed upstairs to the pool. After arranging his things on a deck chair and kicking off the flip-flops, he stumbled down the metal ladder into the shallow end. A gray-haired man, likely one of the executives who frequented the hotel, exited at the same time, as though sadness were some waterborne illness he could detect on sight. Alex rolled onto his back and stared at the recessed white ceiling. A blank slate like the life before him, a story he was inventing as he went along. But he did not know how to write it without her.