Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) (30 page)

He closed his eyes. Hoped he would drift into sleep and sink to the bottom, a strange Ophelia, mad and clinging to a love that had perhaps made him more so.

When he did not, he swam a few laps, then hauled himself out and dried off. The hall to his room was quiet. He was not yet used to a life without noise. He could not bear silence and the things dwelling in it.

Alex step-thumped through the corridor but stopped a few feet from his door. His knees wobbled. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

***

Stephanie

She had knocked for the better part of five minutes to no avail. He might have checked out already. She hadn’t bothered to ask at the front desk and doubted he’d used his real name. His turn to be the first to leave, but neither would make another journey of reconciliation.

She sank to the carpeted floor, knees drawn up and her head in her hands. She’d left work early yesterday, because the choice required of her prevented her from concentrating on meaningless things like trades and free-agency signings. She had lain awake all night, locked in an internal debate, until she had decided.

She did not want to live this lifetime without him.

The
shup-shup
of flip-flops and the dull thud of a cane roused her.

“What are you doing here?” Alex was wearing nothing but swim trunks, the body whose phantom curled around her at night now standing before her in all its tattooed glory. Thinner, true, and the right calf smaller than the left, but he’d put obvious effort into maintaining his chiseled muscles during bed rest. The firebird’s brilliant oranges and reds blazed against his fair skin. Hope. Healing for the sick. If only it had brought him those things.

He glanced down at himself, and a faint smile graced his lips. His beard obscured his dimples. As good as it looked on him, she preferred those little indentations. He inserted the card into the lock; she pushed herself up and stood behind him.

“Don’t you have to work?” he asked.

“In a couple hours. That wasn’t me turning my back on you, Alex. I did once already, and it’s shitty to abandon someone when they need you the most. I just had to get my head together.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. For you, I mean.” He opened the door and let her pass. “I gave you such a hard time about the interview. I broke up your engagement. Then you were fired because of me. All I do is fuck up your life.” He gestured to a chair, but she didn’t sit.

“That interview led to my dream job.”

“Far away from me.” He sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot the other night. I don’t want to interfere with the life you’re making here.” Alex tossed his towel into the bathroom, then bumped the heels of his flip-flops against the carpet until they dislodged from his feet. “You deserve better.”

She pressed her trembling lips together. It didn’t matter, even if there was someone better. He wouldn’t be Alex. “We could’ve fixed this sooner.”

“Could we?ˮ

“You wouldn’t have done it if I’d been there.” If she’d listened to her instincts, dug in a little harder, fought for him instead of running away…

“I would’ve. I happened to do it when everything else was falling apart too. This is mine, Steph. How I deal with it or don’t is all on me, and there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again. That’s why I was afraid to tell you, but I owe you the choice to end this once and for all.”

“Or the choice to stay.”

His face reddened, and his chin quivered. He walked to the closet and hefted out his suitcase.

“What are you doing?”

“I changed my flight. I’m leaving this morning.”

“So that’s it, then.”

He sniffed, his crystalline eyes ready to unleash a deluge. “I don’t know what else to do.” He tossed clothes from the dresser into the suitcase. “Maybe we’re too broken to be together.”

“Or maybe each of us has the parts the other is missing.”

“Let me rephrase. Maybe
I’m
too broken.”

“Do you really think you don’t deserve to be loved? I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know if I can be what you need. What you should have. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

“I know who you are. And I know I love you.” In the darkness near the door, Stephanie kicked off her sandals, shimmied out of her panties, and pulled off her dress and bra. If he refused to listen to her words, she would communicate by any means necessary. “Where is my choice, if you’re just going to leave?”

“Love and pity aren’t the same thing, Stephanie. It’s—ˮ Alex straightened and turned toward her. His gaze roamed her body, and he let out a long breath.

She crossed the room. He stood still, arms at his sides. Stephanie unfastened his damp swim trunks and pushed them down his legs. His hard cock sprang free. She backed him to the bed, and he sat on the edge, his eyes huge and confused but his body enticing her into connection. To be what they were together.

“How long has it been?”

“Over three months. But—ˮ

She straddled him and angled herself so the head of his cock rested between her lower lips. He moaned as she gripped his shoulders and inched down his shaft, filling every emptiness. Only children loved perfect things; perfection was simple, asking nothing. It did not challenge, but it also did not reward. For all the tribulations loving Alex might entail, no man on Earth would return that love with his unswerving, heartbreaking devotion.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he whispered, his mouth against hers. They did not kiss, though they shared each breath. He clutched fistfuls of the duvet.

“How many women?”

“What? Why the hell—”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes more than one at a time. I was fucking high on coke. Why are you doing this? Do you like being hurt?” Alex flipped her onto the bed, on her back. The calluses had softened now that he hadn’t held a hockey stick in half a year and soon would disappear altogether. New hands, suppler, but still the ones that set her on fire.

He pried her thighs apart with one knee and, kneeling between them, pulled her legs around his waist before stabbing into her. She cried out and arched her back, an instinctual writhing to get away, her body fighting her brain. He squashed her shoulders into the mattress. She could already feel his hands leaving imprints there, bright red at first, later deep blues and purples. People would think he had done it on purpose. But he was not enjoying a single moment; he had clamped his teeth together, his handsome face distorted in some private torture.

“Alex,” she whimpered.

He impaled her. A deep ache seeped into her nerve endings from her pummeled cervix, into her belly. “All I ever do is hurt you. Is this what you want? Do you want me to hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“
Why?
” he demanded through gritted teeth, his eyes reddening. “Why are you letting me do this to you?”

“So you don’t have to hurt by yourself anymore.”

He gave one last halfhearted lunge, his breath that of someone in life-threatening pain. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, but his shining eyes spilled over, his tears falling on her like a summer shower. If there were a sound of one’s soul rending itself apart, of things breaking and of scabs tearing from the profoundest wounds, it was Alex’s wail. He folded onto her, his wilted penis slipping out as he buried his face against her neck. He slid one hand over her chest and laced their fingers together, a man clinging to the last handhold before the fatal plummet. She feared he would shatter her bones, but she did not let go. His tears soaked her skin and the duvet beneath her, his body quaking, his sobs barely muted by the fabric.

“I’m choosing to stay,” she said into his ear. She caressed his hair. “
My
choice. I won’t let you go. I won’t let you fall again.”

His breath shuddered and snagged, and he clung tighter. “I’m nothing anymore.”

“No one can take away the things you’ve accomplished. And to me, you’re everything. Please, let me love you. All of you, even the broken parts. Look at me.”

Alex moved onto his side, cheeks wet and eyes dimmed with the existential sadness of a man who believed he no longer served a function in the world. “I’m like a shadow,” he whispered. “A ghost. Haunting what’s left of my life.”

“Shh.” Stephanie brushed her fingers over his lips. “Let me love you, Alex. Let me carry some of this. Please. I can’t stand to see you hurting like this.”

He sniffed. His sobs quieted a little. “I love you,” he whispered. “It’s all I have left.”

“I have everything else.” She pressed her lips to his temple. “I was waiting for you all along.”

***

Aleksandr

Alex awoke naked and alone. He glanced around, squinted into the dark, and then switched on the light over the bed. His eyes hurt, and the tracks on his cheeks where the tears had dried felt like dead skin he could peel off. If only he could shed himself entirely.

A note was lying on the end table:

Meet me at my place tonight. I’ll be home around 6. We have a lot to talk about.

S.

He took a long shower, dug through the suitcase for something to wear, and fixed his hair. Red, puffy eyes stared at him from the mirror as he shaved his neck and trimmed his beard and moustache. Emotional exhaustion and he hadn’t even asked her yet.

He left the ring in the safe. There were too many things yet to say.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Alex wandered the city until close to six, visiting his old haunts, then bought a bouquet of purple roses and white lilacs. In her building’s lot, he sat in the car for a few minutes, gathering his thoughts and taking deep, palliative breaths. She’d had all day to reconsider. Being with him was more than she’d bargained for and not in a good way. But it was out of his hands now. He put on a brave face and buzzed her over the intercom.

“Hey, Alex. Come on up.”

He rode the elevator up and, after one more deep breath, knocked on the door. He’d stopped hiding the surgical scar and had arrived in khaki cargo shorts and brown leather sandals, surrendering to western New York’s humid summer dress code.

Stephanie opened it, and a few moments passed in ponderous silence as they weighed the emotional pros and cons, the damage they could do and had done to each other. She stepped aside to let him in.

“Hi. These are for you.”
Obviously.
He held out the bouquet.

“How pretty. Thank you.” She snipped the stems at an angle and tucked the flowers into a yellow ceramic vase on the kitchen counter. Alex, meanwhile, studied the books on her counter.
Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder
.
Living with Someone Who’s Living with Bipolar Disorder
.
The Bipolar II Disorder Workbook: Managing Recurring Depression, Hypomania, and Anxiety
.

She’s doing this for me.

“I picked up a couple of bento boxes on the way home. We can eat on the roof deck.”

“That sounds nice.”

She grabbed the bag of food from the counter. Back into the elevator, to the top floor, and a short staircase to the roof. Alex took the steps with care, cane first, then his right foot, then his left. Stephanie followed behind, her hand on the small of his back. He smiled to himself and opened the door to the deck, where they sat at a cast-aluminum bistro table. There were also a couple of love seats and coffee tables, with plants and garden torches at intervals along the deck’s perimeter. She pulled the boxes from the bag and passed one to him along with a bottled iced tea.

“Did you do anything for your birthday?” she asked.

He pinched a wad of seaweed salad between his chopsticks. “Not really. I was still on crutches. I got your card, by the way. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t write anything. I just didn’t know what to say. I got your card too. The Pooh quote was very sweet.”

He smiled. “Seemed fitting.”

“I’m not going to let you do this alone anymore, Alex. I wasn’t there when you needed me, but I am now. I want to be.”

A warm breeze rustled over the deck, rattling the leaves and the plastic bag. He sipped his iced tea. “I’ve done a lot of bad stuff. Hurt people. And I tried to blame you. I never took responsibility for the things I did, like you said.”

“I said that before either one of us knew you were bipolar.”

“How much of it is because I’m sick, and how much of it is because I’m not a good person?”

Stephanie laid down her chopsticks. “Alex, don’t ever say you’re not a good person. In there—” she pointed to his chest “—is a heart so big and so full of love you can barely contain it. You proved it by giving me my brother for Thanksgiving. You proved it with that boy and with your fans. And by coming here to see me. Hate your illness, but please don’t hate yourself. Because what does it say about
me
if you’re as bad as you think you are?”

“You’re not ashamed of me?” She must be. He was so ashamed of himself.

Stephanie tilted her head. “Why would I be?”

“I’m weak, and-and—ˮ

“Weak? You’re the bravest, strongest person I know.”

“No.” He reached across the table for her hand. She had borne his pain along with her own but had not crumpled under the strain. She could carry the weight of the universe on her back, and she would bear it with the grace of wings. “That’s you.”

She looked up at him through her lashes.

“The thing is, in Russia, mental illness is a huge stigma. I haven’t even told my parents yet. I’m still trying to convince myself I didn’t do something to deserve it.”

“You didn’t, Alex. No one does.”

“I know that, logically. But at the end of the day, I’m still Russian.”

She squeezed his hand before withdrawing hers. “Promise me if you feel like you want to hurt yourself again, you’ll talk to me, okay? Please?”

He dipped the last piece of a California roll into soy sauce, then wasabi. His chest burned behind his breastbone. “I can’t promise that, Steph. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I just want you to be okay.” She finished her sushi and walked to the railing. Alex stared at her long legs, the hem of her shorts skimming the luscious curves of her ass, before he joined her. Sunset was still two hours off, the sun hanging low over Ontario and bleeding orange into the royal-blue sky. “What got you to that point, Alex? That you couldn’t see anything to live for.”

“My career, the thing that defines me, was over. My girlfriend left me. I didn’t know if I’d walk again. All that before I knew I was sick. Not so hard to make the leap,
da
?”

“I guess not.” She folded her hands and blew out a long sigh. “Just because I left doesn’t mean I don’t want you in my life.” She turned her limpid blue eyes toward the skyline. “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you.”

“I’m sorry, Stephanie.”

“You really thought we’d never…?”

“Didn’t you? That’s why you left, isn’t it? Because I couldn’t be what you needed. And you weren’t sure I ever could be.”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t just that. I had to think about my own career too. I would’ve gotten nowhere in Seattle once everyone knew about us.”

Alex edged closer to her until their hips and shoulders were touching. He clasped his hands on the rail, mirroring her. “What you did this morning…don’t ever do that again. Don’t let me hurt you.”

“You should know better than to tell me what to do, Aleksandr.
I’m
not Russian.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said with a brusque laugh.

“You weren’t listening to me, and I didn’t know how else to get through to you. Love isn’t the happy bullshit the card companies and jewelers want us to believe it is. It’s not a product. Why do so many people sing songs about how awful it feels to be in love? Because it’s work. Sometimes it’s pain.”

His stomach knotted.

“It’s just risk versus reward. Does the good outweigh the bad? That’s
life
. And I don’t want to be afraid of living just because living hurts sometimes.”

Alex fished into his pocket for his lighter and pack of cigarettes. “Is it okay if I smoke?”

“Go ahead.”

He lit up and sucked in a lengthy drag.

“You only smoke when you’re agitated.”

He smirked. “Can’t hide anything from you.” He took several more drags, then flicked ashes over the railing. “I can’t change the things I said or take them back.”

“You weren’t in control of yourself.”

“I said them because I knew what would hurt you the most. Not because I meant them, just that they would hurt. Doesn’t that make me a bad person?”

“No.”

“You said no one should sacrifice their happiness for someone else. So why are you?”

“Alex, look at me.”

He shot her a timid glance and took another puff to calm down.

“Do you remember when you asked if you made me happy? God knows I’ve tried to be with other people. I really have. So no, I’m not sacrificing happiness. I’m choosing it. Because no matter how hard it might be, nothing compares to the way I feel when I’m with you. Why do you think you’re here right now?”

He rested his hands on her waist and ever so slightly shifted her away from him. “Don’t do it because you pity me,” he said. “Please. I couldn’t live with that.” He inhaled a deep drag. “You deserve so much better than me.”

“Goddammit, stop saying that.”

“I’m…sorry.” He looked toward the city again, as though something out there could tell him the right thing to do or say. Shades of amaranth and rose saturated the sky, deepening into violet and cobalt. The stars winked on. “No one has ever said, ‘Aleksandr Volynsky makes me so happy. I love being around him.’”

“I don’t care what other people think. They don’t know you.”

“No one really knows me. Not you, not even me.”

“
Stop it.
” She was clenching her fists at her sides. Her chin quivered. “You’re shutting me out again.”

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I care too much about you.” He blew out a blue-white cloud of smoke. “But that’s what love is, isn’t it? Caring too much.” Alex laughed a little and touched the pendant lying against her chest. “A very wise bear once said that.”

She stroked the back of his hand. “The only thing you can do to hurt me now is to push me away.” Stephanie gathered their trash from the table and dumped it into a bin. “I need to show you something. Come with me.”

Alex stubbed out the cigarette and pitched it into the appropriate receptacle.

He sat on the edge of the queen-sized bed while she rummaged through her closet. Next to the bed stood a dark brown two-drawer chest. A table lamp casting a warm, mellow glow sat atop the matching four-drawer chest across the room. The bed itself featured a soft headboard and a crisp duvet of cotton percale. Browns, blacks, grays, a sophisticated palette. She had saved nothing from her old apartment in Seattle except the vintage Pooh with the nubby fur and the green ribbon around its neck, lying between the pillows.

She set a black walnut box on his lap. A photo of them when they were sixteen, lips puckered at each other in a movie-theater photo booth, inlaid the lid.

“Oh my God.” He laughed. “I remember that.” He opened the box. Dried wildflowers he had picked for her on mornings filled with kisses and all the possibility in the world. His old-fashioned parents, raised under the Soviet regime, would have gone round the bend to see teenagers engaging in such frequent, Western-style public displays of affection.

Photos of them clowning for the camera, and ticket stubs from the movies they’d gone to. The high school hockey team photo. The official prom photo. He thought of what had come after, their first time, as awkward and enchanting as he’d feared and hoped. He cleared his throat to dislodge the obstinate sob biding its time there.

Beneath them, folded articles and pictures clipped from every magazine in which he’d ever appeared. Then game photos of him in his Gladiators’ road jersey. Actual photos, not printouts.

Twenty-three years old. He was hoisting the Stanley Cup.

He leaned into his hand to hold the tears in place, but they slipped past. Only three years separated him and the man in the photo, yet they might as well have been two different people.

“I had Kings season tickets until I graduated from USC. But whenever the Gladiators played LA and Anaheim, I bought front-row, center-ice tickets. And I made the trip from Seattle to see you beat Anaheim on their home ice in the Final. I was there—” her voice broke “—for you. I had to see you, even though you didn’t know. Even though I was with Joe.”

He shook his head. Not because he didn’t believe her, but because their sharing of the moment dumbfounded him into speechlessness.

Stephanie pried his hand away from his face and forced his chin up. “After those games, I would go home and cry myself to sleep. And I tried to fill the void too, like you did, but in a different way. I was always with you, even when we were apart. I wanted to get rid of this fucking box and move on, but I couldn’t let go. I never stopped caring. I never stopped loving you, Alex. And I never will.”

He gasped for air, for words. The upwelling of emotions clouded his brain. He rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes. His lips trembled, and more tears blurred his vision. As she kissed his tears away, he breathed in the scent of her skin and hair. Sweet, clean, sunny, like a child who had spent the day playing in a freshly mowed backyard.

“You’re not the man in those pictures anymore, but you’re still the one I fell in love with.”

He opened his mouth, hoping to say something profound, something worthy of her love. All that came out was “Thank you.”

“For what?”

He rubbed a finger over the back of her hand. “For coming back this morning. For loving me. I don’t have anyone…” The tears threatened again. “Everyone knows who I am, but I’m so alone.”

“You’re not. You’ll never be alone.” She cradled his face and pressed her forehead to his. “You will always have me.”

***

Stephanie

They curled up together on the couch and watched TV until Alex’s arms slackened around her and his soft snores let Stephanie know he’d succumbed to exhaustion. She kissed his cheek, his beard coarse beneath her lips, then got up to retrieve a blanket from the linen closet and tucked it around his shoulders.