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

by Jennifer Loring

  He stormed through the hall as fast as his limp carried him. “This is bullshit.”

  “You should be happy. We’re fighting like you wanted. Again.”

  Alex scrunched his fist and drew his arm back as if to punch the doorframe. Instead, he opened his hand and struck it against the wood, kicked the door, with infuriated growls. Cradling Anya in one arm, Stephanie shouldered the door in an attempt to close it and force him out. Her pulse thrummed. The darkness in him was not some vestigial relic of who he used to be; he had lived with it too long. It defined him.

  She glanced at the staircase. The floorboards creaked. “Do you want to wake up Jacob and Nicole? Leave!”

  “I came to see you. To apologize. For what, I don’t even fucking know, because you’ve been acting crazy. You won’t let me be with my daughter. You still don’t trust me. Are you ever going to trust anyone?” He gazed at the sky in some private entreaty. “After what happened at the house, I thought maybe you’d want to see me.”

  “Alex—”

  He held up a hand to silence her. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I just—I have to go.” His gaze fell on Anya, an emollient for the ominous mask his face had become. He drew in a shivering breath and smoothed her hair. “I’m sorry, baby girl. I love you.” Alex hopped down the steps to the motorcycle parked at the curb. He swung his leg over the seat, assumed a hostile riding position and, exhaust pipes snarling, vanished into the night.

  ***

  Alex

  He had to clear his head before returning to the house, though he’d dismissed the guests shortly after Stephanie left. A bright moon reigned over the warm, dry night. No better time for a ride, and out here in the suburbs there were plenty of back roads to explore.

  His unfamiliarity with them, however, led him to round a corner too tightly, too fast, and Alex planted the front tire into a gravel patch. He tried to correct and lean out of it but not quickly enough. The bike toppled to the left, dumping him onto the asphalt where he skidded several feet, the motorcycle careening into a bank of dirt and grass at the road’s edge. He’d forgotten his helmet. Flesh peeled away from his cheek and forearm like an onionskin, leaving a black smear of blood on the pavement.

  “Sukin syn!” he hissed and attempted to assess the damage in the limited light, once he’d dragged himself off the centerline. A long, nasty abrasion on his arm. Both it and his face blazed.

  He recovered the bike that, aside from the paint the crash had scraped away, seemed no worse for wear. The thought that he should get medical attention flitted into his head and out again. More fuel for the media. Bad enough they were circling the dying husk of his marriage. They’d do anything for clicks and ratings. A motorcycle accident would lead to substance abuse would lead to divorce rumors, however they had to spin the facts. He understood the game better than some of its players did.

  The impact had fractured his phone’s screen. The damned thing spurned his attempts to turn it on. He couldn’t call Stephanie to cancel any residual plans for dinner tomorrow until he replaced it in the morning, and he refused to communicate with her through something as impersonal as email.

  Probably for the best. Hearing her voice, he might wreck on purpose next time.

  ***

  His wounds stung. Though he’d swaddled his arm with gauze and taped a thick bandage to his cheek, he’d bled through both. The sheet and the pillow were sticking to him when he awoke.

  Alex reached for his phone on the nightstand, then remembered it was in his jeans, broken. He swung his legs out of bed, stretched his arms and back, scratched his balls. For half a second, he expected to hear Anya crying. His shoulders sagged. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and trudged down the hall to his office. It was peaceful without a phone, actually. Cut off from the world, the fantasy that none of this was happening became a vivid and seductive whimsy.

  Until he turned on his laptop.

  The morning’s top headline screeched from the sources in his news feed:

  Russian Pop Star Found Dead in Hotel Room.

  “No,” he whispered, shaking his head at the screen. He sucked in his upper lip and tasted sweat, his body racked with violent shivers. He shouldn’t have left her like that. Should have called to check on her if nothing else. Tried to get her some help.

  Nataliya Pisarenkova, better known as Natasha Pisare, was found dead of an apparent drug overdose in her downtown Buffalo hotel room late last night. There were no indications of foul play, and investigators have not ruled out a suicide. Pisare was twenty-seven years old.

  Already popular in her native Russia, Pisare’s music had cultivated an enthusiastic following in the US, where she was poised to become the next breakout star. Sources close to Pisare say she had been visiting former hockey star Aleksandr Volynsky, a childhood friend and the subject of an investigation into an alleged sexual assault that occurred at his home two years ago. Pisare and Volynsky have been romantically linked in the past, though police have thus far been unable to reach Volynsky, whose number they say was among the last dialed from her phone. He was also seen leaving the same hotel two days earlier, though investigators do not believe he has any involvement in her death.

  Though the results of Pisare’s toxicology report will take four to six weeks, investigators found drugs—including MDMA, more commonly known as “ecstasy”, and amyl nitrate, also known as “poppers”—near the body, as well as bottles of alcohol.

  Authorities have contacted the Russian Embassy to arrange for Pisare’s body to be returned to her hometown of Saint Petersburg.

  He stared at the screen, anesthetized, and prayed he would wake from this unending nightmare.

  Minutes crawled by. Getting a new phone as soon as possible was an imperative, but he could scarcely raise himself from the chair. Finally, he plodded into the en suite and showered, then dressed, each mundane task performed with robotic enthusiasm and ponderous limbs. Alex peered out the window; several reporters had gathered on the sidewalk. He entertained the idea of backing the Mercedes into the lot of them. Stephanie wasn’t here to suffer the aftermath of yet another potential scandal. Maybe she had seen it coming all along. Spared herself and Anya further damage. Hard to remain angry with her when he looked at it that way.

  Alex shook out one of each pill and went downstairs to take them with food as instructed. Those particular wolves, for now, had not returned to the door, though medication never fully subdued them. With their distant but resolute howls in his ears, he called upon his centering statement and shut himself in the Mercedes before he registered a single shout directed at him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Stephanie

  With Anya in the travel bed and the tote slung over one shoulder, Stephanie knocked on the door. Part of her hoped he wasn’t home or wouldn’t answer. Before she could change her mind and leave, Alex appeared in the doorway, his posture loose and his head down, arms crossed. His left cheek and forearm sported fresh road rash in lengthy red abrasions, several layers of skin flayed. His eyes were red—had he been crying?—and he stank of booze. She didn’t fault him for that, despite the potential interactions with his meds. She’d read the news that morning. What more might life hurl at him before he decided it was simpler to bail out for good? She had been no help in that regard.

  “You don’t have to knock. It’s your house too.”

  “I tried calling this morning, but you didn’t answer. Alex, what happened?”

  “Had to get a new phone. I’m fine.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  He extended his arms. Her hesitancy to let her own husband hold their child appalled her, and she handed Anya over.

  “I fell on the bike,” he said as they walked into the great room. The fragrances of herbs and browning beef drifted in from the kitchen. “I went for a ride after everyone left. It’s nothing.” He tucked Anya into the Simple Sway beside the sectional, secured the harness, and turned on the swing. Rocking side to side, Anya giggl
ed and swatted at the plush-toy mobile. He kissed the top of her head.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “What do you care?” He scowled at her, his eyes too pale, too crinkled at the corners, to be her husband’s. He jerked a hand through his tangled hair.

  Stephanie reached for the tote she’d set on the counter. “Maybe this was a bad idea—”

  “What is that?” Alex jerked his chin toward the wooden box sticking out from the bag.

  “Oh.” She pulled it out and set it on the granite countertop. “It’s for you. A tea sampler.”

  “Presents don’t make anything better.” Yet he had opened the box and was examining each tin. She’d customized it with his favorites: Russian Caravan, masala chai, Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, and oolong. A small conciliatory gesture, as if tea could erase the past couple of months or Alex’s ongoing ordeals, which she was about to compound with more bad news.

  “I know. I thought we could have some and talk. Or do dinner, if you still wanted to. But…”

  Alex closed the box. “I don’t want you to go. I’ve already started dinner, actually. ”

  “Is that what smells so good?”

  “It does? Whew.” His smile wavered, flickered in and out of existence as though incapable of sustaining its momentum. “I just…I need a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He grabbed his pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the counter and slid open the patio door, then, lighting up, sank onto one of the Adirondack chairs. That didn’t last long before he popped back up and paced before finally going unnaturally motionless as he looked out over the pool, his face pensive. They had hired people to do most of the other household chores, but Alex reserved cleaning the pool for himself. He claimed to find it relaxing precisely because it was so tedious. It quieted his overloaded mind.

  Stephanie glanced back at Anya cooing at the mobile’s fabric stars. She stepped out onto the patio. “I’m sorry I’m so hard on you. Especially when I’ve been anything but loveable lately.”

  “I want us to watch Anya grow up into someone amazing together. I want…” Alex smirked and scuffed his shoe against the stones. “I want to be that old couple sitting on the patio reading together. I used to think that being forgotten for what I did on the ice was the worst thing that could ever happen. The one thing I didn’t get to do was prove I am the greatest Russian ever to play in the NHL. I know I could’ve beaten Ovechkin and Fedorov. Now, I can’t wait for the day when no one knows who I am anymore.” He flicked ashes and drew in another drag. “I’ll never be the person I was when we were kids. He was the one you wanted to marry. What about me?”

  “You’re still him.” Her voice trembled, and she laid a hand on the small of his back, her chin on his shoulder. “Everyone changes, but who you are at your most fundamental level hasn’t.”

  “Is that enough? Because I don’t want our relationship to be constantly defined by how much pain we’re in. You’re slipping away from me, and you know why but you won’t give me the courtesy of telling me.” He puffed on the cigarette. Stephanie flinched at each whorl of smoke, envisioning black spots spreading like mold through his lungs and airways. If only her cancer had such an easily identified source. Or any logic to its existence whatsoever.

  “I never meant to make you feel that way. Honestly, I…” Her insides knotted. Her lungs were heavy and full, refusing to accept the air she tried to force into them. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I did things I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry.” She tightened her arm around his waist. “We have a lot to talk about. Let’s go inside, and you can make me some tea.”

  A corner of his mouth quirked up. “You hate tea.”

  “I’m willing to suffer.” She held out her hand, and Alex closed his around it. Whatever paths they traveled and lives they led, their roots were inextricably twined. They had gotten inside each other on a cellular level. A psychic level. And now they had Anya, who bore the blessing and the burden of this quixotic love.

  Anya had dozed off to the swing’s chiming music. Alex brewed chai in a small teapot, then poured some of the concentrated tea into each cup and mixed it with hot water. Along with the cups balanced on his tea tray, he brought an assortment of sugar, lemon, and honey. “In Russia,” he’d told her, “we take our tea seriously.”

  He sat beside her on the couch and watched Anya, her lips puckering as she slept. “She’s so beautiful.”

  “She has good genes.”

  “Da. She does.” He cleared his throat. “So. Johansson. You like him?”

  “Alex, I—it’s not like that at all. We’ve never done anything. I didn’t even know he was going to kiss me. I’m not sure he did, either.”

  “Regardless, I don’t have a right to be angry, do I? I used to fuck other women every time we were apart. That was my intention with Natasha. I thought I just enjoyed being around people, but now I think it’s that I hate having myself for company.”

  “You’re a good man, Alex, whether you believe that or not.” Stephanie rested her chin on her hand and regarded him, the resignation to his unhappiness clothing him like one of his designer suits. “I’m sorry about Natasha, by the way. I don’t really know what to say.”

  “The cops wanted to confirm I wasn’t there when it happened. Can you believe that?” He slumped forward, his eyes wet but dull. “Her label is going to rush the single out to cash in. I don’t even want to hear it.” Alex set his teacup on the end table. He twisted his wedding ring and stared at the floor. “A good man wouldn’t be sitting here wondering if his wife is going to leave him because his shitty reputation finally bit him in the ass.”

  “A good woman, who knows her husband is innocent, wouldn’t have left him to deal with it on his own.” Stephanie fortified herself with a sip of chai. Not bad, actually. Notes of cardamom and cinnamon chased away some of the coldness in her belly. She bowed her face to the cup, the rising steam like a warm hug. “I talked to the woman with the video. I gave her the money. Her mother is in hospice; that’s why she tried to blackmail you. She was desperate for a way to pay the bills.” She ran a palm down her denim-clad thigh. “Alex, I watched it. I had to know.”

  His eyes glazed over. He gulped his tea.

  “She didn’t want to show me, but I insisted.”

  “That explains why she suddenly disappeared.” Alex furrowed his brow. “Why, Steph? I could never see you with someone else.”

  “That’s not the part that bothers me, and you know it.”

  “I never…That was the only time I’ve ever done anything like that. It was a bad night, with the trade news coming in, and I must have been hypomanic. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I—I wanted to hurt something. One thing I’ve learned: You can be mentally ill and still be an asshole.” He rubbed his wrists; the skin around his eyes crimped. “I just spread my misery around,” he murmured. “Like a disease. Like cancer.”

  Stephanie winced.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I have something else to tell you. The big thing. The thing that’s been making me”—she fluttered her hands around her head—“crazy.” She crossed her legs and clutched the teacup, her tiny shield. “I’ve been sick.”

  Alex’s mouth fell open. “Bozhe moy.” He set down his cup and scooted closer to her so he could clasp her free hand. Logically, he wanted to jump to the best conclusion; forget the cough, the X-rays, and the shortness of breath. It was human nature, and he so longed for that big family. “Are you…”

  “Oh. No, nothing like that. I’m sorry.” She shut her eyes, searching inside for some kind of courage to call upon. “Remember the chest X-rays? The spot on my lung that was aspirated?”

  He gripped her hand tighter.

  “I have bronchioloalveolar carcinoma.”

  “I don’t…” Alex jerked his head in half a shake. “Isn’t carcinoma cancer?”

  “Yes. I have lung cancer.”

  “No,” he declared, as if that settled it.
As if by the sheer force of his will, he’d disintegrate those renegade cells and they’d never trouble her again. “You’re twenty-seven years old. You don’t even smoke.”

  “Funny thing about this cancer. It targets young, non-smoking women.”

  “There’s some fucking irony. Not to mention why Courtney wanted money in the first place.” Alex hunched forward, his eyes sparkling with tears he did not allow to fall. He rubbed his fingers over his lips. Then, after many silent minutes, he rose from the couch. “I need to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

  Stephanie walked into the kitchen. Farther from the hall, from the muffled, heartbreaking sobs behind the bathroom door and the breadth of a love unjustified in the face of her recent behavior. Her eyes watering, she sifted through the mail, opened and closed the cabinets, peered into the garbage. She knew what she was looking for if it involved drugs, thanks to her father’s twenty-three years in narcotics, and hoped she didn’t find it. Alex had to be strong enough to take care of all three of them when she could not.

  Empty bottle of Jack in the recycling bin. She sighed.

  “Looking for something?” He was watching her from the doorway, his cheeks blotchy and his eyelids pink, puffy.

  “You know you’re not supposed to drink, Alex. It could kill you.”

  “Haven’t much cared about living recently. But I’m not actively trying to kill myself.” He flopped back onto the sectional and stared, glassy-eyed, across the room at nothing in particular. “Do you want some more tea?” he asked absently, politely.

  “Not really. Alex, the surgery is on Monday morning. I started coughing up blood, so they got me in as soon as possible.”

  “That’s in two days.”

  “They want me to check in tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Ah, blya.” He tipped his head back and slid his palms down his face. “Am I going to lose you?”