What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (14 page)

“You like?”

“Very cute.”

Alex put on some music, lit a votive candle in the center of their cozy table for two, and arranged a basic place setting at each chair: fork, plate, knife with blade facing the plate, and spoon. Bread and butter to the left, drinks to the right. Napkins on the plates. Impressive. He returned to the stainless-steel stove, stirred the bubbling sauce, and dumped a package of fresh pasta into boiling water for only a minute or so before transferring it to the sauce and mixing. After dividing the pasta and sauce into shallow bowls, he retrieved the browned meatballs from the oven and topped the noodles with them.

“When did you learn how to cook spaghetti and meatballs?”

“Remember the six months I was on bed rest? I watched a lot of TV.” He grabbed the bread knife from the knife block, sawed into a loaf of crusty garlic bread, and added a piece to each bowl. “Besides, I don’t want you to get sick of Russian food, and we eat out too much anyway. Here you go. Hope you’re hungry.” Alex added a glass of water to his meal, a tacit committal to the sobriety now required of him. He shed the apron, leaving it draped over the counter, and carried the bowls to the table.

“Thank you for not blowing up the house. You know, like Thanksgiving at your condo.”

He chuckled and glanced at Anya, who remained sound asleep, immersed in orange by the sinking sun.

Stephanie playfully kicked his leg under the table as they ate, then twined her foot around his ankle. The sauce, though slightly on the peppery side, proved tasty for his first attempt. “I’m sorry for the way things have been. For everything. I let it all get to me. The lack of sleep hasn’t helped. I didn’t know it was possible to be this tired. Sometimes I’m so exhausted nothing seems real.” She drew her shoulders in and sipped her wine. “I wish some of it wasn’t.”

“At least now I know why you were acting like that.” He twirled a bundle of noodles around his fork, brought the pasta to his sumptuous lips, and gave them a subtle lick once he’d chewed. Even after a decade, his most trivial actions bewitched her. “I knew as soon as I woke up from surgery that I was going to be all right. Not the same, but all right. Physically. But there’s this thing inside you that might be killing you, and we don’t really know, do we? That you’ll be okay.”

“No,” she admitted. “We don’t.” She sprinkled some Parmesan on her spaghetti. “I heard you in the bathroom. Crying.”

“I found a gray hair.”

She bit her lip to keep from laughing, but failed.

“Look. It’s right there.” He pointed to his left temple. “All the stress,
da
?”

“A silver fox in the making.”

Alex smirked and shook his head. “Does anyone else know about the cancer?”

“Jacob. I asked him not to tell you.” Mentioning Brandon served little purpose except to ruin a perfectly nice evening. Still…“Alex, you know it’s not okay to follow me around, right?”

His cheeks blazed. He rolled a meatball around his plate, impaled it on his fork. “Even when I was doing it, I knew it was wrong. But I was afraid…”

“That I was having an affair.”

He raised his red-limned eyes to hers.

“It will always be you, Alex. It always has been. I can’t imagine living this life with anyone else.”

His shoulders relaxed, and his gaze softened, glossed over. The hope he needed, hers to bestow as part of their responsibility to each other. “I will give you your happily ever after, I promise. If you’ll let me.”

Stephanie reached for his free hand. “Same here.”

“Well.” Alex smiled sweetly. “That’s a start.”

***

Anya woke demanding a meal of her own. Stephanie heated a bottle while Alex cleared the dishes and loaded the dishwasher. He fetched Anya from the swing and cradled her on the couch while Stephanie tipped the bottle to her mouth. This time, he wasn’t looking at their baby. Stephanie met his eyes, heat blooming in her cheeks. No trapdoors to tumble through, no subtext to decipher in those bedroom eyes. For all his pretenses, his love was nothing if not unambiguous.

He rested his forehead against Stephanie’s. Dark stubble shadowed his cheeks and his sharply angled jaw. “Thank you for being here.”

Those lips, evoking their imprint on her tingling skin. She swiped her tongue over hers.

With a knowing smile, Alex settled Anya back in the swing. “So, we have a few leftover cupcakes. Care for dessert?”

“Are you seriously asking if I want chocolate?”

“Silly question.” He shuffled into the kitchen, removed two cupcakes from beneath the glass cloche, and brought them to the table, where Stephanie rejoined him.

“We never did have a wedding cake.”

“Do you regret not having a bigger wedding?”

“No.” Stephanie peeled away the paper. “But I do regret not doing this.” She crammed the cupcake into Alex’s face, leaving a dollop of fudge frosting on his nose and crumbs trapped in his whiskers. Laughing, he wiped his face with several napkins.

“Let me help.” Her hands on his shoulders, Stephanie leaned in and licked the mess from his lips, the wine—and more likely the buoyancy left by sharing her burden with him—having erased any discretion. She’d damned well lick her husband if she pleased.

His breath caught. He closed his eyes. “You know, things like this tend to lead to…other things.” He flicked out his tongue, brushed the tip against hers, and she shivered. “The worst thing that could happen right now is that we end up naked and doing something we both really enjoy.”

“I better use the napkins, then.” She polished his chin and scrubbed the corners of his mouth. “We wouldn’t want a repeat of yesterday.”

“Yes we would.” His eyes crinkled.

He curled one arm around her waist. She snuggled him, his skin diffusing heat through his T-shirt, his body so calming even as it aroused her. Alex tilted up her chin so he could look into her eyes. Soul gazing. Destroying the barriers, opening the channels to a profounder gratitude for each other, their energy free-flowing through a connection more intimate than physical contact. Two separate beings becoming something neither of them was on their own.

“Tell me what I did wrong,” he said, “so I never do it again.”

“You did absolutely nothing wrong, Alex. It was
my
problem.”

The last of the dying sun’s rays dissolved behind the trees. Infinite pinpoints of light winked on above the patio, glittering in the pool. He kissed the tip of her nose. Then his warm, chocolatey breath caressed her ear, prickled her skin. “In sickness and in health,” he whispered. “For better or worse. I’ll take care of both of you. I’m wearing this ring,
da
? This is what I signed up for.”

She held on tighter. “I’m terrified.”

“You have the best doctors. And a husband and daughter who adore you and need you. I know that fighter is still in there. She’s had to fight a
lot
, and she’s tired, but after this last battle, she won’t have to anymore. And she doesn’t have to do it by herself. Ever.” Alex pressed his lips to her forehead. “Sometimes, being strong means asking for help. We’re a team. You and me against the world, remember?”

Her tenuous poise disintegrated, and she melted into his arms. He said nothing more, just let her cry and held her until, spent, she could do nothing more than cling to him and listen to his heartbeat.

When she had collected herself enough to speak again, she cocked her head toward her messenger bag hanging on the coat rack. “I need you to sign something. For the hospital. Technically, you were supposed to sign it with Jacob, but Nicole is going to notarize it anyway.” She wiped her face and, after grudgingly prying herself from his arms, pulled the Living Will from her bag.

Alex put on his glasses and examined the document, his brow furrowing with each line, each word. His response did not exactly shock her. “Don’t you think we should talk about this?”

“They’re my wishes, Alex. If something goes wrong, I don’t want to be a vegetable. I don’t want to be alive only because of machines. Would you want Anya to see me like that? To know me as nothing else?”

“Better than not knowing you at all.”

“Do you really think that?”

“You’re asking me to sign your life away, as if it’s that easy. You
are
my life. You have been since the day we met. I know you don’t want to hear that, but…” He sniffed and lowered his head to his hand. “We shouldn’t have to have this conversation. We’re too young.”

“If something happens, that’s not how I want you and Anya to remember me. Especially you.” She tilted up his chin. “Someday, all the other memories will have faded, and that will be the only one left. And you’ll wonder why you didn’t let me go sooner, so that your last memory of me could have been a better one.”

He shook his head, the tears rising. “I’ll never forget anything.”

“You will, because that’s how memories work. We keep reconstructing them until the real memory doesn’t exist anymore, and what we do remember never really happened at all.”

Alex let out a heavy sigh and clicked the pen. “You’re going to be fine anyway.” He scribbled his signature on the bottom of the second page. “This whole thing is for nothing.”

“Alex, it’s okay for you to be scared too.”

“Just tell me you’re going to be all right. And believe it, so that I believe it.”

She wrapped her hands around his and kissed his scarred knuckles. “I’m going to be all right.”

“Our first anniversary is coming up, and I have to take you to Europe like I said I would. We have so much to do together. We have Anya. We’ll see her first steps together, and hear her first word. We’ll see her graduate from kindergarten. Teach her to ride a bike and ice skate.” Alex removed his glasses, then swiped at his eyes. “Teach her to drive and all that other crap I don’t want to think about, because I want her to be a baby forever.” His attempted smile broke apart. A tear slipped down each cheek, and Stephanie wiped them away with her thumbs.

“If—
if
—something did happen, I know you’d give Anya the best life she could ever have. I was right, you know. You would’ve been an amazing father, because you
are
an amazing father.”

“Please promise me you’ll wake up.” His voice was cracking, taking her heart with it. “I don’t want to do this without you.”

“I’ll wake up. Of course I will.” She rotated Alex’s wrist to see his watch face. Time forever slipped away more quickly with him than with anyone else. “It’s getting late.”

What he longed to ask her was scrawled on the lines of his face. One last night together while she was still whole, whether they made love or simply lay in each other’s arms, neither one able to sleep with their latest ordeal bearing down on them.

No, not tonight. She was too frightened of what was to come, too afraid that if she stayed, she would only let him down tomorrow. She couldn’t promise him something so beyond her control, and he knew it.

“All right. I’ll drive you. You won’t be using your car for a couple of months anyway.” Alex unbuckled the swing harness and scooped Anya into his arms. She remained sound asleep on his shoulder as Stephanie scooped up the tote and travel bed and they left the house. Alex tucked their baby girl into the BMW’s car seat, then pulled Stephanie close, his eyes empyreal. Afraid to ask because he feared her rejection, even now.

“Tonight,” she said, “it’s for the best.”

“
Da.
You’re probably right. Big day tomorrow.”

Alex opened the door for her. She laid his hand over his on the gearshift and watched the house fade away in the side mirror.

He walked them to the Whites’ front door and bent to kiss the top of Anya’s head. “Good night,
vozlyublennaya
.”

Stephanie gently brushed her lips over the road rash on his cheek. “Don’t hurt yourself anymore. And thank you for dinner.”

“My pleasure. You know, Steph, everything
is
going to be okay.” Silently appended to that statement:
Isn’t it?

“I think it will be. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He kissed the corner of her mouth, his lips lingering. She should have turned her head, drawn his silken tongue between her lips, spoken to him with the passion words did not possess.

But as she thought these things, he had already climbed into her BMW, its gleaming gray paint reflecting the sidereal sky, and driven away.

Chapter Fourteen

At four-thirty the next morning, Stephanie’s phone beeped.

Alex: Come to the front door.

She rubbed the crust from her eyes and picked her way through a hall and living room not yet familiar enough that she trusted herself not to crash into something. She peered through the glass, then opened the door.

“Come for a ride with me.” Alex grasped her hands. “Please.”

“I—What? I’m not dressed, and Anya—”

“I texted Jacob. He’ll take care of her. Go get dressed.”

“All right. I guess.” She crept back toward the guest room and yelped as she collided with Jacob. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry. Your date’s here, I assume?”

“Were you in on this?”

“My lips are sealed.” He gave her a good-natured slap on the shoulder, as though she’d just executed a goal-saving defensive play. “Have fun.”

She tossed on a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, combed her fingers through her hair, and returned to the front door, where she grabbed her jacket from the closet. Alex handed her a helmet.

“I’ve never been on a motorcycle, you know.”

“What better day than today?”

“Since I’m going to the hospital anyway?”

He laughed as she climbed onto the back seat and locked her arms around his waist. She leaned into him while they rode south through the darkness on the desolate interstate and into one of the county’s largest parks. Alex parked in a lot just off a hiking trail. He collected a blanket and two brown paper bags from the tank bag. Facing east, he spread the blanket and gestured for her to sit, then set the bag between them.

“Dig in.”

She unpacked rye bread sandwiches with butter and sausage, and bottled iced tea. He frequently made the sandwiches, a Russian breakfast staple, on weekends. Another small comfort she’d increasingly missed during their time apart, because there was no replacement for him.

The undersides of silhouetted clouds glowed pink and amber. Rose and golden orange rays brightened the sky, torches chasing away the night, their flames growing more brilliant until even the treetops were alight and shimmering. Birdsong saluted the new day as the stars flickered out. Water rushed over rocks nearby. The last sunrise she’d witnessed had been with Alex too, their final night together before he returned to Russia. They had sneaked out of their houses and from one of the hills surrounding LA watched the sun climbing through the sky. They’d shared the same sickening sadness, though he tried to be heroic in the face of their mutual grief. Dawn had kissed the slopes and the shadowed skyscrapers, whose windows mirrored the lightening sky, and he had kissed her until kissing wasn’t enough.

She closed her eyes as the fresh, brisk scent of night surrendered to sun-warmed earth and dew-damp grass. Alex scooted over until he was behind her, his legs cradling her. She rested against him. His arms made a loose circle around her waist.

“I don’t know what your plan is after you’re discharged,” he said, “but I was hoping you’d want to recover at home. Although I’m sure I haven’t inspired much confidence in my ability to take care of my family.” A cool, damp breeze gusted over them. Alex nestled his face in her hair and strengthened his embrace. “You don’t have to decide now. Anyway, there’s something I want to show you.”

“Here?”

“Ah, you’ve never been here before, have you? It’s not far.” Alex jerked his chin at the muddy trail whose gate a park ranger had opened. “That’s the trail over there.” He stood up, holding out his hand, and glanced at his right foot. “I’m not as agile as I used to be, you know.”

She linked their fingers. They threw away the paper bags, returned the blanket to the tank bag, and began the hike. Alex kept his head down for fallen trees, exposed roots, and rocks slick with lichens, leaves, and rain, clutching her tighter when he faced them. The scent of minerals and petrichor, and of things growing, invigorated the air. The trail darkened as they passed beneath the canopies of hemlocks and various hardwoods. At several points, they crossed a stream swollen from recent rains. Soaking their shoes and laughing like children, they splashed through the water, until Stephanie caught the rotten-egg stench of sulfur.

“What stinks?”

“Just wait.”

At the bottom of the precipitous gorge into which they’d descended along the winding, sandy path, they stood before a thirty-foot tiered waterfall cascading over alternating shale strata. In a grotto at its base, a bright orange flame burned with no apparent source. Alex hopped onto an outcropping of sunbaked rock and untied his sneakers. He dumped water out of them and set them in a patch of sunlight, then peeled off his socks. Stephanie followed suit.

“This is beautiful.”

“There’s a pocket of natural gas seeping from the chamber. They say the Indians first lit it thousands of years ago, and it’s been burning ever since.” Alex dangled his feet over the water. Torrents from recent heavy rains plummeted in a frothing white cascade over the hollow and into the stream, their mist diluting the fire’s light.

“Jacob called this a date.”

“He’s such a
zhopa
.” Alex chuckled. “I wanted to do something nice for you before…” He dry washed his hands, then tapped a fist to his lips as he stared across the gorge, at the trees overhanging the pool, his eyes glistening.

“Thank you.”

“It’s weird, trying to win back my wife.”

“I think that’s because it should be reversed. I’m the one who made a mess of things.”

“Steph, you spent months helping me get my shit together. When you were pregnant, no less. I don’t blame you for melting down when you did, even if I felt a little betrayed at the time.”

“It’s just…” Stephanie chucked a pebble into the pool beneath the waterfall, where bubbles rose from the bedrock. She searched their pattern for some kind of resolution. “Ugh. I don’t know. I’m afraid of letting you down. Letting
u
s down. Too late for that, I guess.”

“You said that on Father’s Day too. What’s really going on?”

Her pulse ticked with increased adrenaline, with the urge to flee before she spoiled the rest of her marriage by opening her mouth again. “I can’t give you what you wanted, Alex. You wanted more kids. A big family. After this surgery, I don’t think I’d survive labor again.”

He narrowed his eyes until his heavy brows squished together. “I wanted
you
, Stefania. I wanted you whether or not we ever had kids. But you gave me Anya, and the three of us are a family. All the family I need.”

She sagged against him and reached for his hand, seeking the profundity of touch and the exquisite devotion only he supplied.

That captivating smile, though it was never without a melancholic shadow. Nothing in the world spared him his private mental scourging. Medication had reduced his self-loathing to a murmur but an intransigent one, only regulated and never cured. “So many times, I’ve felt like it’s all going to be taken away from me. Now that feeling is a little too real, so I want to make the most of every second the three of us have together. I want to be there for you, and show you I can be what I said I would.”

Stephanie nuzzled his cheek. He smelled so damned good. Versace this time, vibrant fruit notes accented with virile, carnal elements meant to embody the power and potency of the forest. Clever. “Remember our first kiss?”

“How could I ever forget? We’d known each other for seven hours and thirty-four minutes.”

“And somehow, even though it seemed impossible, I knew we’d be together forever someday.”

“Not quite what you imagined, I’m sure.” He scratched a fingernail against a slimy patch of lichen. “Mentally ill, unable to play hockey anymore, accused of rape…”

“A wonderful and amazingly patient husband. An even better father. A coach. A musician. I didn’t marry Aleksandr Volynsky the hockey star.” She cupped Alex’s hair-coarsened face, his eyes her only home. “I married Alex, the boy I’ve always loved. And I’m sorry I keep punishing you when you’ve worked so hard.”

“The people who are the hardest to love need it the most. Socrates said that. Maybe it was never just me who needed it.”

Stephanie touched his cheek beneath the abrasion. Another scar in the making, another war wound. His stubble glimmered with moisture from the billowing cloud of mist where falling water collided with the plunge pool. A small rainbow had formed in the spray. “Whatever happens, and despite these last couple of months, I have had a beautiful, incredible life with you. I got to marry my true love. Make sure Anya knows that.”

He winced but didn’t pull away. “She’s going to see it for herself, Steph. You’re going to be there, and she’ll grow up knowing she should never give up on anything.”

“I know. I plan to be. But just in case…” Stephanie dipped her chin, her ears aflame. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop ruining this.”

Alex kissed her cheek. “What did you really like about me when we first met? Aside from my stunning good looks and sexy-villain accent.”

Laughing, Stephanie jabbed an elbow at his ribs. “This. The way you always made me smile. And I thought you had a cute butt.”

He snickered. “I loved making you smile. You were so sad sometimes.” Alex pulled her against his shoulder and lightly stroked his fingers over her forearm. “What happened after I went back to Russia? I know something did. Aside from the miscarriage, I mean.”

The hair on the back of her neck rose as her spine went rigid. She scrunched up her legs to shrink herself. “Alex—”

“It’s why you left, isn’t it? Something about this whole mess…” His eyes darkened. The gears had clicked into place. “That sick motherfucker. He was your
father
.”

“For so long it was just him touching me, or making me touch him, I never thought he would…” She hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands to her burning cheeks, her throat thick with tears. “You were gone, and Matt was in his last year of college. I had no one, and he knew it. It was only once, but he wanted to make sure I understood that I belonged to him. He knew you and I had been having sex. He wanted to take that away from me. Erase my memory of it with you so that when I thought of it, I’d think of him instead.” She glanced up at him, knowing the darkness was manifesting. The shaking rage. Mottled skin and corded neck.

His heart hammered against her back. “I would have put him in the fucking ground.”

“I know, which is kind of why I never told you.”

Alex hugged her tightly and laid his chin on the top of her head. “I am so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything to get you out. Didn’t try to do anything.”

“No one was going to take the word of a foreign-exchange student against a veteran cop.”

“I should have brought you back with me.”

“You know that was impossible.”

“Then we should have gone somewhere else. You’re a citizen. We could’ve gotten married, and I’d have gotten my green card a long time ago.”

“We were still in high school. We didn’t have jobs. Where would we have lived? How would we have supported ourselves? Love isn’t always enough sometimes.”

Alex tipped her head back, his tea-sweetened breath susurrating over her lips. Wanting, and afraid to want. “Is it enough right now?”

We could have run away, couldn’t we? Maybe love
is
enough sometimes.
But she’d been too practical even as a child. Too afraid of uncertainty.

He let her go and pushed himself up. “Wait here.”

Stephanie peeked over her shoulder. Alex studied their surroundings and stroked his bristly chin, then crouched and gathered something from the ground. When he returned, he presented her with a bouquet of wildflowers—purple coneflower, black-eyed Susan, wild bergamot, blazing star liatris.

She breathed in the fragrance, her eyes unfocusing as she gazed inward. Remembering. “Alex, that’s so sweet.”

“I’ll take you back so you can get ready.” He enfolded her in his arms with the tacit fear he would never hold her again. That ghost had been present all morning.

They held hands on the trail back to the parking lot, and not only because Alex required assistance. He provided her the peace to face what tomorrow morning brought. The resolve to get well again. “This was so nice. Thank you. Oh!”

Alex lost his footing on a slick rock jutting from the middle of the stream and toppled backward into the water. He’d released her in time not to drag her down with him, but Stephanie dropped to her knees anyway. Alex, laughing, lay on his back with his arms outstretched, the water rushing over him. The wildflower bouquet broke apart and floated away. “Twenty years skating twenty miles an hour on steel blades. Now I can’t even cross a shallow stream without falling on my ass.”

Stephanie lifted each of his hands, which were bleeding from scraping over the creek bed’s rocks, and kissed them.

“Kisses do make it better.”