“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 us 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 pea
ce 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.”
“Did you hurt anything else?”
He snatched the front of her shirt and pulled her to him. “I bit my lip when I fell. See?” He pouted. Two bloody indentations marred his bottom lip where his teeth had sunk in. “Maybe a little kiss would help.”
“I don’t know,” she said, drawn to those lips like a magnet.
“It’s a terrible idea, of course. You’re checking into the hospital today. And you’ll be recovering for weeks.”
“On the other hand, my husband is hurt.” She sifted his wet hair through her fingers. Tiny droplets sparkled in his lashes.
“You’re going to catch cold in those wet clothes.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“We find a sunny spot off the trail.” Alex tipped up her chin. “I take them off you. And”—he grazed his lips over her ear, her neck, skimmed them along her jaw—“I make love to you until they dry.”
A shiver swept through her. Equipped with the fresh memories of their kitchen encounter, her body was already in supplication. “That’s awfully tempting.”
“Good.” Alex led the way back to the motorcycle. Rather than get on the interstate, he hooked a right onto another park road and drove until they reached a large, tree-lined pond. A deserted cabin sat at the end of the road. The fishing pier stood empty. Sunlight coaxed out the herbaceous aromas of fresh grass and damp earth, of lemon zest from the hemlocks and algae from the motionless water. Birds trilled and squawked in the trees and over the pond as they plucked water striders from the surface. A bullfrog rumbled in the reeds and mannagrass, through which the wind whisked unseen fingers, at the water’s muddy edge. Each detail crisp and vivid as if frozen in time, meaning everything and nothing. A memory through which some future version of herself—assuming there would be a future version after tomorrow—was walking.
Alex doffed every stitch of his clothing. Tattoos and bitterly acquired scars combined to express his story in the language of pain. Stephanie, entranced by the interaction of light and shadow on his skin and the contours of his muscles, absorbed the sight for the simple, stunning marvel it was. How fragile and grand everything had become when confronted with life’s transience. How inconsequential and ultimately heartbreaking. But she had been here, she had lived, and it didn’t have to signify anything to anyone but her. Her moment with the world had granted her many things, this man and their daughter above all. That was value enough.
Alex hung his damp clothing over the pier’s railing and held out his hand. A blue dasher dragonfly alighted on his arm. He let his smile speak for him as he cocked his head, encouraging Stephanie to join him. The dragonfly flitted away. She shed her clothes and stood with him on the edge of the pier, the wood warm beneath her feet. The possibility that someone might catch them imbued the environment with an even deeper lushness, connecting them to each leaf, each water droplet, each shaft of sunlight.
She twined her fingers in his hair, drawing him closer. His eyes already half-closed, he smiled and tilted his head, bit his lip. Stephanie kissed his eyelashes first, tiny, feathery kisses she fluttered down to the corner of his mouth, over his bristly jaw, his collarbone. She traced the shape of his mouth with the tip of her tongue. Trembling, Alex gasped softly and lunged forward as if to gobble her up; she laid a finger over his lips, then awarded him an open-mouthed kiss. He roamed his hands from her hair to her cheeks to her breasts, whose nipples his skillful fingers pinched just short of painfully, and back again. When he sneaked his tongue between her lips, she pulled away and gave him a playful slap on the chest.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll behave.”
His burgeoning erection said otherwise. In between kisses, she interspersed gentle sucks and nibbles on his lower lip, which he enthusiastically returned. He glided his hands down her back, her ass, bringing her close to him. His body, her wondrous shelter.
Empty space opened beneath her. Tangled together, they toppled off the pier and into the water, the cold sting slapping her back into reality. So did a fish slipping past her thigh. “Ew!” Stephanie smacked at the water and frog-legged to reduce the chances of further contact. “You did that on purpose.”
Alex’s rich, resonant laugh pealed bell-like across the pond, and her heart expanded, if it were possible, with even more love for him. “We haven’t gone skinny-dipping in a long time.”
She flicked a spray of water at him.
“Ey!” He scrubbed a hand over his face then splashed her. “I will win this battle. I’m bigger than you.”
She laughed and leapt onto him, dunking him. He popped back up and pushed his hair back, his teeth gleaming in the dazzling sunlight. Water droplets glittered on his sun-dappled chest and arms.
“You cheated.” He looped his arms around her.
She let her feet sink back to the earth, muck squishing between her toes. She knew she would return to this moment often, if surgery granted her the gift of more time. To his wet, sensual mouth and the way it edged up at the corners before straddling hers, the way his tongue toyed with hers. To his rough, ragged breaths and the pucker of his lips during each kiss. How warmth engulfed her despite the cool water. How each touch, each movement of his mouth and the sensation of his tongue sliding along hers stirred her nerve endings, quickened her pulse, and awakened a different kind of appetite deep in her belly.
“I love you,” she said. “I need you to know that.”
Alex pressed his brow to hers. “I do, baby.” He closed his eyes, but the yearning expression remained. “As much as I want this to last all day, let’s get you back so you can spend a few hours with Anya.”
“Our clothes still look damp.”
He grinned and, tangling his fingers in her hair, brought her mouth to his. “I’ll definitely make it up to you.”
They dressed and mounted the motorcycle. The wind whipped them as they raced along the highway and she clung to Alex. She wished they could pick up Anya and keep going.
Half an hour later, however, Alex was walking her to the Whites’ front door. “Call me when you’re ready.”
“Thank you. Again.”
Alex clasped her chin between his thumb and index finger and tilted it up. “You’re my wife. I would never let you do this alone.”
“I know.” Stephanie gripped his sturdy hands, kissed his scraped palms again. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“I’ll bring the car this time.” He smiled and let go of her, finger by finger, until only their pinkies remained joined. “I love you. Always.”
“Always,” she whispered.
Chapter Fifteen
Alex
His heart was a bird thrashing against a window it had mistaken for an open space; to keep beating like this surely meant death. Anxiety sizzled in his chest and stomach, butter in a hot skillet. He hated being afraid, and that Stephanie was afraid, hated that she was lying in this hospital bed and he was powerless to make it better. She wasn’t allowed any makeup, not that she wore much anyway, and the freckles normally subdued by foundation spattered her pale face like paint flecks. Her blond lashes, unadorned with mascara, framed eyes more fulgent for their tears.
She couldn’t eat after eleven, so Alex ordered her favorites to keep her sated until after the surgery: creamy macaroni and cheese,
garlic butter breadsticks, black cherry soda, and molten chocolate cake. The feeling that it resembled a condemned inmate’s last meal, and the ancillary queasiness, put him off his own dinner.
He bought a bouquet of the brightest, happiest flowers in the gift shop, and set on her bed tray her Surface Pro and the book she’d packed. She was staying for about a week. Hospital protocol dictated that no children under sixteen could visit, and she was allowed only one visitor at a time. She might not even wake up; to deny her the right to see her child beforehand was a bureaucratic cruelty.
“We should write the book,” she said as she opened the computer. “Like we talked about. What do you think?”
The media had laid him bare so many times already, a book could hardly damage him more. And Stephanie’s writing of it wouldn’t be a mélange of rumors, half-truths, and outright lies. The funny thing was his reality trumped the lies, as truth usually did. His summers in Ibiza alone strained credibility, and yet not one printed or spoken word meant to paint him as a villain remotely resembled his actual life. Catharsis, maybe, but one Stephanie shouldn’t have to endure. He had been a villain, the worst kind, so lost in his own misery that it compelled him to contaminate anyone associated with him.
Alex pasted on a halcyon smile. “We’ll see.” He pulled out his phone to find two missed calls. A voicemail from Ed immediately followed one from the cops, both with the same message. More questions, call us at your earliest convenience.
“What’s wrong, Alex? And don’t bullshit me. I think we’re a bit past that.”
He smirked. “Da. I’m sorry. The cops want to interview me again. So, you’re losing a lobe of your lung. Are you going to be okay?”
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