The Pieces Of Us (The Firebird Trilogy Book 3)

by Jennifer Loring

  “Anya, there is no letting me down. I’m your father. I love you no matter what.” Chuckling, he tucked her hair behind her ear. “When I was about your age, I got your mother’s name tattooed on me, and I didn’t even know if I was ever going to see her again.”

  “That’s romantic. I’m just embarrassing.”

  “No you’re not. And if the team can’t function without you, it says more about coaching and player skill than it does about you. You left them with a three-nothing lead. Blowing that is a defensive issue.”

  She relaxed, and Alex pulled her into a hug.

  “Come on. Let’s get you home so we can take care of that ankle. You know what this means, pravil'no?”

  She gazed up at him with those questioning blue eyes, Stephanie’s eyes. “You’re going to spoil me all weekend?”

  He ruffled her hair. Whatever she wanted was hers. “Exactly.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alex

  Alex had sung in front of hundreds of people but nothing that approached nineteen thousand. In no way did it resemble the nervous excitement before a game, nor even the jitters prior to his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. People judged more harshly what they could not do themselves; such was the nature of criticism. As most people had no talent for singing, they picked out each flaw, real or perceived.

  “You’re a little pale, Sasha.” Hannah set her hand on the small of his back.

  He thought of her hands elsewhere, which settled his nerves about singing but aroused new ones regarding the inescapable next step, now that they’d gone on a number of dates and engaged in make-out sessions to rival any sixteen-year-old. “There’s something I want to say before we do this. It probably seems like a small thing, but I’ve only ever let one person call me ‘Alex.’ And…I’d like it if you did too.” A thing’s name was its power, and he had taken back a bit more of his from the disabling cruelty of Stephanie’s death. Another shift, seismic in its personal significance. A leap away from the black chasm bisecting his life: before Stephanie and after. Away from the isolation of wondering whether anyone would find him again.

  He gazed down at Hannah and knew she had.

  They walked down the tunnel together and onto a red carpet. The sight of those full stands—the blue and gold Gladiators shirts and the painted faces, the handmade signs, the camera flashes and air horn blasts—sent a twinge through his chest. Too old to play now even without the injury, but the phantom of those squandered years, what more he could’ve achieved, dogged him. So many things did.

  The Jumbotron zoomed in on Hannah’s easy, practiced smile as the PA announcer declared Aleksandr Volynsky and Hannah Kent would be performing “God Bless America,” so please stand and remove your caps.

  Smile again. Really smile. Because you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  Thanks, Steph.

  Alex blinked back tears and offered the cameras a cheek-cracking smile. The arena organist played their intro. He inhaled a steadying breath, the clean, cold scent of the ice stinging his nose. Then he sang the first few lines, drawing from the dwindling pool of confidence that had propelled his hockey career. Her free hand closed around his. She raised her microphone to her lips and belted out the next few lines with her usual exuberant embellishments, her powerful yet melodic voice carrying to the rafters.

  They sang the last two together, the noise of the crowd swelling, vibrating the arena and he and Hannah holding the final note as long as possible to exploit the fans’ excitement. The passion was contagious and had made him its vector. As soon as they handed off their mics, Alex pulled an astonished Hannah into his arms, dipped her, and planted on her a long, hard kiss.

  She gasped and clung to his arms as she righted herself. They departed back down the red carpet, Alex noting for the first time the jersey she wore. Good old number nineteen, which he’d carried over to his brief gig in Seattle. His name patch between her shoulders, not the number’s current owner. Good enough for the Hall of Fame but not quite enough for a retired jersey.

  “Nice sweater.”

  “Seemed fitting.” She stilled him with a hand around his wrist in the empty tunnel, an ugly space of fluorescent lights and yellow-painted cinderblock walls with a huge Gladiators logo ornamenting one of them.

  There was nothing ugly about the way she kissed him, the way she pushed him to that wall and pressed her petite body to his as though they were a couple of kids making out under the bleachers. He’d believed himself too old, too jaded, to be surprised by what life might hurl at him anymore. He had endured the worst and celebrated the best. “My turn to be speechless.”

  She tugged on the lapels of his sport coat. “So are you sticking around for the game, or…”

  “Ms. Kent, are you suggesting something?”

  “I’m not trying to rush you, Alex, I swear. But if you’d like to come over for a drink…” She slapped a palm to her forehead and shook her head. “You don’t drink. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for. But I’d love to join you for…”

  “Coffee?” she offered.

  “Tea?”

  “Tea it is.”

  Alex held out his hand. It was trembling, but he hoped she didn’t notice. “And we’ll see where the night takes us.”

  ***

  It took them first to Hannah’s couch in a spacious, three-bedroom townhome her youngest son had vacated for the night to stay with a friend. Above a marble fireplace taking the chill off an early March night, Hannah scrolled through movie selections on the flat-screen until she located an eye-rolling adaptation of a bestselling women’s fiction novel. Reminiscent of his younger days, before Stephanie returned to his life, when he’d tolerated chick flicks and Adele in the expectation of getting laid. Never before had it taken him four months to bed a woman. Nor had he been so frightened to do so.

  “What kind of tea do you like?”

  “Oh, let me show you how tea is done, lyubimaya.” Alex yanked Hannah into the kitchen. “I’ll need black tea and strawberry jam.”

  She set the requested items on the black walnut island, the kitchen’s centerpiece.

  “I don’t suppose you have a samovar.”

  She cocked her head. “A what?”

  “A traditional Russian teapot.”

  “Sorry. Fresh out.”

  He laughed and filled a saucepan with water to boil. “First step: Prepare the kipyatok.”

  “I feel like I need the team translator.”

  “It’s just boiling water.” He turned up the heat on the gas stovetop. “Anya is going to major in Slavic Studies, so I try to keep speaking Russian around the house.”

  “You’re cute when you speak Russian.”

  “Ya milo vse vremya.”

  Hannah crinkled her nose.

  “I said, ‘I’m cute all the time.’”

  She poked her tongue out between her teeth. “Can’t argue that. Oh—did you see?” She held up her phone, which displayed a local news app and a headline less than two hours old: Buffalo’s New Power Couple? Below it, the on-ice kiss.

  “And my years of relative obscurity have ended.” Alex rinsed the teapot on the stove with boiling water, added three tablespoons of black tea, and replaced the lid to steam the leaves. He counted to ten, successively folding his fingers into his fists the way he’d assumed all people did until the first time a baffled Stephanie watched him count. We do it like this, she’d said, and stuck out each lovely finger one by one.

  He introduced the boiling water and stirred in two tablespoons of jam. “Now we let it steep for fifteen minutes. This creates a concentrate you’ll pour into your cup, along with more hot water and jam.”

  “Quite the process. By the way, you were never obscure.”

  “Hard to be when you’re a six-foot-five Russian.”

  Hannah jabbed her elbow into his ribs. “And stunningly handsome.”

  “Well, naturally.”

  “Mmm, those dimples.”
<
br />   His grin widened. “So that’s a case against growing the beard back.”

  “I’ll take you any way I can get you.”

  “Is that so?” Alex wrapped his arms around her waist, his body hungering for what his brain remained unsure he was ready for. “I, um…I haven’t…been with a woman since before my wife died.”

  “That does explain some things. But you know…” She tipped up her chin and flashed a coy smile. “As long as everything is working—”

  “I have erectile dysfunction,” he blurted. Not how he’d planned to open discussion on the topic, and all the heat in his body rushed straight to his face. “I mean…I’ve been on medication for it for years. Sometimes I still have…issues. It’s because of my bipolar medication…” Alex broke away to make the two cups of tea. “More sweetener in yours?”

  “I know you’re bipolar, Alex. Everyone does.”

  He poured the tea concentrate into each cup and topped it with hot water. No extra jam for him. “I’m a lot of work.”

  “Your wife didn’t think so. Or at least, she thought the effort was worth it.”

  “My wife was…” He shook his head. He might as well walk away now. What woman wanted to compete with a ghost? Could? Death, in its perverted way, had granted Stephanie eternal perfection. Scrubbed clean the handful of bad memories, agitated them out until the shiniest golden bits endured.

  “We don’t have to do this tonight, Alex. We didn’t have to do anything anyway, but…” Hannah rested her elbows on the island and leaned into them. “Believe me, I know it’s safer to be alone. The only person you have to answer to is yourself, and that pain is at least predictable.”

  Alex gave each cup a halfhearted stir, his shoulders sagging. “I like you, Hannah. A lot. I’m just afraid…I won’t be able to love you. You’re beautiful and talented, and I don’t want you to waste your time on someone like me if I can’t—”

  “Someone like you?” She lowered his hand to the counter and left hers over it. “Is that supposed to be a bad thing?”

  “It hasn’t always been a good thing.”

  “I’m not asking you to love me, Alex. I’m asking you to give us a fair chance. If you can.” Hannah’s lips trembled. But she was a proud woman, and few deserved the privilege of her tears. He had not yet verified if he was one of them.

  He kissed her quivering mouth, ran his hands down her arms and back up her sides. Held her face, not gently, surrendering to the animal that had lain dormant inside him as he demanded her tongue.

  “If you want to go to the—”

  “Nyet,” he growled, his cock unexpectedly, savagely hard. The old alpha inside him wasn’t dead yet. “Here.” He turned her around and bent her over the island, clawed at her jeans and shoved them down to her knees. The view, her ass clad in black-lace panties revealing her succulent cheeks, was worth savoring. Alex opened his pants and the fly of his boxer briefs and rubbed his swollen cock against the fabric, between the bare silk of her toned thighs, afraid he’d spill too soon. Hannah, moaning and digging her fingers into the counter, shivered. She rolled her hips, swayed, her thighs shaking as if unable to restrain what had awakened inside her too. Alex slipped his hands beneath the waistband of her panties and worked them down her legs. A thread of lubrication he wanted to sop up with his tongue drizzled from her pussy.

  “I want you to,” she said in a throaty whisper. “I want you to fuck me.”

  He stroked her opening with the head of his cock. Popped it in slowly. She slouched forward, her back arched, lifting her ass and pushing herself all the way down his shaft. Groaning, he slapped against her. So tight. So tragic that no one had fucked Hannah in a long, long time. Alex moved one hand from her waist up her ribs, over her shoulder. He rested it on her throat and tilted her head back as he pounded her, his tongue as hungry as his cock. He was no longer a husk animated by muscle memory. Worse. He was a vampire absorbing her life force, his means of sustenance his ability to take from others. She only thought she wanted it, no matter how she worked him deeper into her tight, slick pussy. He was a middle-aged man doggy-styling a woman in her kitchen in a pathetic attempt to recapture the ability to feel anything. His grief, acute as it was, offered no novel insights into the human condition. It was an old standard played chord for chord, with nothing to set it apart but for being his unexceptional version of it.

  Hannah should have roses; he should be writing songs for her to sing, and making love to her. Not a dirty fuck befitting a Grant Street whore. He shut his eyes against the sight of his name patch emblazoned on her back. But Bozhe, the noises she was making. There was something beautiful in that kind of abandon, the surrender to one’s baser instincts, to the inner beast. The bucking and the shivering thighs and his cock sheathed inside her. Her ass in his hands; her ass bouncing up and down. Khristos, he was going to explode.

  “Just like that.” Her voice had gone hoarse. “Oh, God. Make me come, Alex. I’m so close…” She draped one arm over the island and folded forward, fingering her clit with her other hand. Her ripe, rich scent swelled his cock even more. He hammered into her, plundered the juicy core clamped around him until she was thrashing and squealing, and he was pumping every drop into her with all the volume and intensity of someone who hadn’t had sex in almost two years. His moans eclipsed hers as the orgasm split him in two.

  He pulled out immediately, shame eating him from the inside, and tucked himself into his pants. Hannah slumped against the island, still recovering, panting. She didn’t notice him edging toward the door. He repressed the urge to hold her, kiss her, make love to her the right way. Caring about someone came with the risk of losing them, and he wasn’t strong enough. Not again. She would read that story written all over his body and rightfully close the book.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have…”

  Hannah pulled up her panties and jeans and faced him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining. He’d done it. Chemical bonding. Dopamine pathways forged in her brain convincing her all roads to happiness led to him. He couldn’t get out without hurting her. “Please stay.”

  It had never been about fucking. Fucking was easy. It was about spending the night. Breakfasts in bed. Unexpected kisses and uncontainable laughter. All the simple, beautiful moments woven together in the fabric of a relationship, the things he’d had once, until the thread with whom his life had interlocked unraveled and he with it.

  It was the fear of knitting himself back together, when being threadbare provided him such grim security.

  “I-I can’t. My daughter…”

  “Is almost eighteen. I think she can handle herself for one night.”

  “She was injured in her last game…” His eyes stung. He drummed his fingertips against his lips as if to coax forth the words that would salvage this, whatever it was.

  “If it helps, I haven’t been fucked like that in about twenty years.”

  Humor, the simplest of siege engines, and his wall collapsed beneath it. Alex, chuckling, raked a hand through his hair. “Well. I do need to call Anya first.”

  “Of course.”

  He dipped his hand into his pocket for his phone and dialed.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Ey, sweetie. I’m, uh…I think I might be staying at Hannah’s tonight. Will you be all right by yourself?”

  Silence.

  “Anya?”

  “Fine,” she said, her voice toneless. “See you in the morning.”

  “Sleep on the couch. I don’t want you trying to get up the stairs by yourself. And arm the…” Alex held the phone away. Anya’s cell number flashed, along with the length of the call. He was talking to dead air. “Great,” he muttered. I promised I’d take care of her this weekend.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Tonight may not have been the best night for me to stay.”

  A futile resistance. Hannah crooked a finger, then took his hand and led him through the townhouse, upstairs and into the master bedroom. She
set the dimmer lights to a luminescence resembling candlelight. “I’ve seen pictures of you a little…less clothed.” The corner of her mouth quirked up.

  “I was a lot better looking twenty years ago.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She ran a fingertip along the buttons of Alex’s shirt. “May I?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  She undressed him with a tantalizing deliberateness. He shrugged out of the shirt, and she caressed his chest, his shoulders, his biceps. “You still have one hell of a body, Aleksandr Volynsky.” She combed her fingers through his chest hair, danced them along each of his tattoos. His scars.

  “I like the way you feel,” he said, because it was true, and for now, it was all he could give her.

  Hannah cupped his face and brought it to hers for a kiss. “I can live with that.”

  ***

  He’d been right about her breasts. Alex explored them as dawn limned the edges of the windows. Full, soft, beginning to yield to gravity. Beautifully mature. Pale stretch marks from her pregnancies latticed the sides of each mound, and with one hand in the damp curls between her legs, he traced them with his tongue to her nipple.

  “Not the worst wake-up call I’ve ever had.” Hannah reached beneath the covers for his stiffening cock. “Nor the worst reason I’ve ever lost sleep.”

  Alex pushed her legs apart and entered her slick, wet warmth. She let out a surprised gasp but squeezed her thighs around him and sank her manicured nails into his hips. He lost track of anything but the friction of his cock sliding in and out, of her fearless maintaining of eye contact, the artful creation of an unspoken bond between them almost without his realizing it. He needed this, needed her to buttress him, to remind him of his many transformations and that he was not finished. The one moment marking a new epoch with an event no more earth-shattering than letting someone care for him again.