“Yes.” But then he shook his head. “But I want to be there when she wakes up. I want to—I think I can—should—do more!”
“Just that you’re aware that you’re thinking those thoughts, makes me sure that you’re doing all you can, Alek.” She smiled. “Don’t confuse being there with being present. With time, it’s the quality, not the quantity. And besides, these night meetings with Ava took place when Olivia was sleeping, right? So don’t be so hard on yourself. You haven’t denied her your time or your presence when she’s needed you.”
He swallowed and pressed his lips together, his expression turning abstract.
“The time for mourning and grieving may eventually come. But now is the time for joy, for laughter and for dancing, for life and for love,” Dr. Medley charged on noticing his withdrawing. “Your mind is in the right place, Alek. A body is like an engine that can rev itself without the driver’s consent. Ava stimulates that reaction. But that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to take off like a rocket. Acknowledge the power of the engine, but remember your resolve to idle for now. You’re doing well.”
Body…Ava… Two words sure to arouse him when used in the same sentence. He heaved a long breath.
“I’m interested in knowing more, Alek, about this woman.”
He shook his head slowly—not a denial to her request, but a thorough rejection on what he was hearing as her permission.
And he told her. Luminous as Ava was—and with that mysterious sadness that drove him crazy with need to erase it from her—she was a walking contradiction to his black-and-white world. She was every fantasy he’d ever had come to life and he planned to sate himself inside her, over and over again, taking her in every position imaginable—and even some that weren’t. But how he felt it was the wrong moment, how he felt he was betraying his daughter, and how worried he was about the ethical rules governing their relationship.
And he finished by reasoning, “It’s actually an ongoing struggle to not dwell on her and how she makes me feel. I need to focus on Olivia for as long as she’s here to be focused on. Then…maybe Ava…later.”
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s rational: Olivia now, Ava later.
Yet he was not prepared for Dr. Medley’s question. “Even if later turns out to be too late?”
He was speechless for a moment for there it was again: the permission. “Well, yes. I think it’s counter-productive to tell you more about her right now.”
“But you were not telling me about her—Ava. You were telling me about yourself,” said the doctor with a chuckle. “How much you are in need of an infusion of life now. And how much this makes you human.”
“Yeah. I’m human. And that, being human, makes it right to bend the rules? To Olivia? To Ava?” He let out an impatient breath, a headache beginning to brew behind his eyes. “To society in general?”
“There is no right or wrong, in this specific case.” Dr. Medley shook her head. “There is what you are feeling. And your loyalty—the only loyalty in which you must dwell now—is to behave accordingly to your feelings. I would even call them primal, irrational instincts—”
“We, human beings, aren’t—or at least, we shouldn’t be—irrational. That’s what differs us from animals.”
“Since our session is ending, for the time being, let’s agree to disagree on this point,” said Dr. Medley with a smile. “What is nagging you, Alek, are scruples, caution. Those are an intrinsic part of what you are. That is good, great, yet there is this fear you’re avoiding to acknowledge. Eros and Thanatos; love and death. Passions are necessary to the human spirit. To allow yourself to feel any amount of passion now as Olivia is dying, to integrate it all inside of you, may feel a kind of betrayal, wrong, but—”
“Immoral,” he snarled.
“Immoral? By whose standards?” She raised a hand when he opened his mouth to argue. “Olivia’s? I doubt it. Children don’t have those concepts. She might even be happier to see you happy. Ava’s? Perhaps, but then you’ll have to ask her, won’t you? Society’s? Oh, pooh. You two are adults, you met and connected before you knew any of those rules would be working against you. There is nothing immoral in acting on those feelings, much the opposite.”
This feels like permission. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples.
All his reasonable walls were crumbling down and his hopes on finding in Dr. Medley a last bastion was gone. He had assumed that as a doctor, Dr. Medley would condemn his desire and would help him find more reasons not to engage in any relationship with Ava. Yet, she was giving him the permission he’d been so ardently seeking. The thought of it made him want Ava all the more. Still, he mumbled, “Charity, it’s just…impossibly complicated.”
“But—and how great and beautiful is this but—it’s not insurmountable. In fact, I would say it’s inescapable.”
Ava leaned back on the reclining chair of the veranda, eyes shut.
She was slipping into desperation.
Nothing seemed to be going the way she’d envisioned when she’d started her research on the new experimental methods of brain cancer surgery.
She had gone over all of Olivia’s last exams, but there was still a batch of results she had not been able to access and that might be exactly what she was looking for.
Why did I think Dr. Follett—and the hundreds of doctors consulted—had not gone over all the possibilities?
Because she knew Dr. Follett’s style. He was cautious, too cautious, and if he didn’t think a procedure was at least fifty percent certain, he would bypass it.
But the tumor inside the little girl’s brain was a ticking time-bomb and caution and certainty were the last remedies she would recommend now.
So many, many ways to fail.
She calmed herself by taking long, slow Yoga breaths and opened her eyes to continue to forge on.
Somewhere there was someone who knew how to extirpate Olivia’s tumor without killing the girl, or worse, turning her into a vegetable.
She just needed time to find this someone.
She could not—would not—fail.
Not again.
Even after answering all his emails, revising the Russian deal for Blackthorn Corporation, and having a Skype meeting with his partners, Aleksander was still shaken by his therapy session, and his headache was on full throttle inside his skull.
Don’t wallow, don’t sulk. Unable to stay seated a minute more, brooding over life and death—ethics and sex—he stood and went to the small refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. Finding an Excedrin in one of his desk drawers, he took it and went to his bedroom.
Even though the wind was whistling outside, he changed into running clothes and shoes, and went down side stairs of the veranda which circled the east side of the house.
As he stretched he noticed the snow lay thick and heavy on the tree branches and buried the trail to the lake. He saw not a single footprint, yet the world outside wasn’t empty. Far out in that gray forever, he saw something leap—just a blur of shape and movement. Here now, then gone.
Instinctively, he veered upward, toward the wild solitude of the trail he had walked with Ava.
Fueled by doubts, he ran with all the strength and endurance at his command, his mind holding nothing so clear as a thought, only raw emotions, agony as acute as lust.
When he reached the clearing, he slowed to a jog and sank to the ground, resting his back against a tree.
The winter-white sun blasted down, bounced off the waters, the snow, and sent them both sparkling alive.
In the calm of the forest, as he listened to the silken rustle of the pine branches complaining under the wind force, he closed his eyes and scrutinized his life.
He’d had friends, interests, ambitions. He’d had a beautiful wife and a healthy, lovely daughter. He’d had fucking passion.
Yet, he couldn’t seem to remember what it felt like to be carefree and happy. But he knew he had been. And his heart traitorously whispered: You can be once agai
n.
In the snow-muffled quiet, he thought of Ava. And Olivia.
And his head and heart, working in accordance for once, conjured an improbable future where Ava, Olivia, and him were happy.
He snapped his eyes open and stared a moment at the transparent lake waters. He had the feeling that he’d fallen into a world where down was up and right was left. Struggling between annoyance and acceptance, he decided both worked.
He had to do something, however incidental, however ordinary. He couldn’t just lie there on the snowy ground in a sweaty, sulking heap.
Ignoring the voice that urged him to just lie down and keep daydreaming, until the feeling of happiness became a reality, he pushed to his feet and ran back to his house.
In his fractured heart, he knew he was trying to escape the precipice yawing beneath him.
Chapter 19
After a hot shower, checking on a sleeping Olivia, and another Excedrin, Aleksander wandered through the quiet house, searching for—but not finding—Ava, and ended again on the veranda.
As if his thoughts had conjured her, he spotted her sitting on a reclining chair in the farthest corner of the veranda with her laptop perched on a pillow over her lap, and some papers, a notebook, and a pencil by her thigh.
He realized that unconsciously he had put her in the only bedroom with a connecting veranda to his rooms.
She had the kind of fascinating face that made a man want to look twice, and the midday light, which made rainbows dance over the snow, glittered on her glorious unbound blonde mane framing her face, falling around her shoulders and over her breasts.
Christ, she’s beautiful. And many kinds of wonderful. She was an appealing yet confounding sight.
He leaned on the wall, content to watch as she tapped furiously on her laptop. From time to time, she paused to read something, her forehead frowning in concentration, and she would mutter something in Norwegian under her breath.
And then to his astonishment, she muttered something that sounded like a threat and a dark promise and shook her fist at the screen in a gesture between exasperation and anger.
“Problems?”
Startled, Ava closed the computer with a snap and looked up to see Aleksander standing a few feet away from her. “Ah, hi. The…hmm…wi-fi is spotty today.”
“Is it? Must be your rotator, I’ll take a look at it later,” Aleksander said to her. “Come with me.”
He wore the faintest smile—of mockery or amusement at her blatant lie, she couldn’t tell.
“Where?”
He raised a brow. “To where the wi-fi is working perfectly.”
He led her to a room she’d never been in before. It was a large office with an enormous oak desk where a 27” iMac was the center piece. He pushed a few files to one side and motioned for her to sit in his large black leather armchair. “Be my guest.”
“Thank you.” She settled into the chair, set her notebook and laptop down, but opened neither, just looked around. “This is nice.”
It was a beautiful room, somehow not made stuffy or pretentious by the large desk, floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books on every wall, and wingback leather armchairs situated around the fireplace.
Aleksander added another log in the hearth.
She watched the firelight dance over his strong forearm as he prodded the quiet flames into a roar. His strong profile was to her, his hair falling over his brow, curling above the collar of his shirt.
He sat back on his heels and looked up at her. “Mind if I stay here while you work?”
She looked past him, into the fire, where the flames were rising, crackling, supplying a soothing music. Her work was usually solitary and often bleak, she could think of nothing she’d like more than a little company. She shook her head. “Not at all.”
Aleksander sat in one of the armchairs, a hardcover book in his hands, and grabbed his reading glasses. One ankle rested on the opposite knee and his chin rested again his fist.
Ava tried to focus on her laptop screen, but her eyes kept returning to him. She’d rather read him than the files which she was studying. The glasses and thoughtful expression made him look even sexier. And she noticed his fingers pressing his right temple.
She knew a headache when she saw one.
“Can I help?” she asked, standing and walking to his side.
He looked up from the book. “Hmm?”
“The headache?”
“I doubt anything can help, except another Excedrin. And I have taken two already,” he muttered.
She believed in instinct, so went with it. “Maybe I can bring you some relief. Let me try.”
He closed the book, took off his glasses, and put them on the side table. “The floor is all yours, doctor.”
Slowly, she stepped up and stood between his legs. She positioned his arms on the arms of the chair. “Relax. Close your eyes.”
When he did, her hands rested on his shoulders, and then stroked, pressed, and kneaded.
He nearly moaned from the glorious mix of pain and release.
Like breaking up rock, an inch at a time. She closed her eyes as she worked, visualized that rock softening, crumbling under her hands, turning into clay.
Ava felt him relax—a little. Not enough, but even that slight yield equaled a victory.
Then she slid her hands up along the column of his throat before she began a light facial massage.
A soft sigh left his lips—a sound of relief and pleasure—he couldn’t contain inside himself anymore.
It was hardly his first massage. Before his life had shattered he’d used a masseuse named Irma, a solidly built, muscular blonde whose strong, wide hands had worked out tensions built up from work, and strains generated from sports.
With his eyes closed, he could almost imagine he was back in the quiet treatment room of his club, having his muscles soothed after hours in a meeting room, or a couple of hours’ playing football.
“Breathe. Through your nose. Long in, long out.”
Her voice melted into him, fluid and soft, making him obey her command without thinking.
“That’s good. Just in, then out.”
Though she wasn’t the sturdy massager at his club—she had a gentle touch and a gentle voice—she did the trick. And not only that. Maybe it was because he’d been wanting to be close to her all morning, wanting to touch her, kiss her, or just talk to her, he found it infinitely arousing.
Her fingers stroked along his jaw, under his ears, and up, pressing at his temples and under his eyes at the same time.
And the screaming violence of the headache quieted.
At his long exhalation, Ava moved back to his shoulders, down his arms, kneading the muscles all the way down to his fingertips and back, now all the way into his hair, massaging his skull. She remembered the touch of his lips, the urges stirring. Stop that, Ava.
“Try another breath.” She breathed to show him how she wanted him to do it.
Zoned, half asleep, he simply did as he was told, following her instructions.
“In…now out.”
And as her fingertips pressed into—caressed—his face, aches he’d grown used to carrying rose to the surface and lifted out.
“Christ, you are magical,” he whispered, opening his eyes slowly, floating back to the present, light as a leaf on the wind. “The headache is gone.”
She studied him for a moment, then she smiled. “You look better, more relaxed.”
He took her hands in his and lightly squeezing them, brought them to his lips and kissed their backs. “Thank you.”
“Any time.” She sat in the facing armchair. “Aleksander?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you something?”
He decided to copy her. “You can ask. I might not answer.”
She smiled at that. “That’s fair. You’re in therapy?”
It was strange that she was asking that now, after he’d had such a breakthrough with Dr. Medley, one which distinctl
y involved her.
When he nodded, she asked, “Do you find that it’s helping you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because…it’s personal, really.” She looked at him, choosing her words carefully. “At one point of my life, I decided to take a different route toward curing my…existential dread, one that involved a delicate balance between medication and trying to think about my life as little as possible.”
He studied her, wanting to know more, wishing she wasn’t such a closed book. “And?”
Not giving away any details, but still wanting to help him with her own experience, she continued, “I was…repressing the whole thing until…death came creeping into the room and I…finally let it all out in a long, confused rant to my grandmother.”
So she has known death. He leaned forward, eager—and yet not—to hear the rest of the story. “That sounds unhealthy.”
“It was.” She sighed before adding, “I was given as a gift a remote session with a bibliotherapist at the London headquarters of the School of Life. I have to admit that at first I didn’t really like the idea of being given a reading prescription to help me deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence.”
So, confession time is over. He gazed into her eyes, those brilliant, exotic blue-greens that watched him so intently yet shut him out. But behind her shuttered eyes he sensed rather than saw the pain, and the shadow of sadness she hid so well.
“Yeah, it seems…odd.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “Or rather, like it was a High School assignment.”
“Is there a book that has really made a huge difference in your life?”
“To the Lighthouse, which I first read when I was 19 and I try to reread every year, because I think it’s different depending on the year or even the season you read it in.”
“I agree,” she said, nodding. “I loved John Updike’s stories about the Maples in my late teens, for example, and hated them in my late twenties, and I’m not even exactly sure why.”
That made him stop. Rachel had always indulged his love for reading, but she’d never been able to hold a conversation about it with him. Where is all of this coming from? “I’ve generally preferred to mimic Virginia Woolf’s passionate commitment to serendipity in my personal reading discoveries, delighting not only in the books themselves but in the randomly meaningful nature of how I came upon them. Plus, books mean different things to people—or different things to the same person—at various points in our lives.”
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