Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (37 page)

PETRO’S MOTHER SPOKE
a broken form of English that was only moderately worse than my own, so she’d been acting as an interpreter for Svetka and Alexei Petrov’s mother throughout the trip. The three of them had been having a blast together. For both Svetka and Mrs. Dragomirov, this was their first time ever in America, and they were doing it in style.

Svetka hadn’t had a passport when we’d had our accident, so she’d had to stay at home and worry from halfway around the world. We’d made sure she got one as soon as possible after that, but this was her first opportunity to use it.

I’d hardly had time to talk to London at all since we’d left. I called her when I could, but she seemed distant and the team was keeping us busy. Plus, Svetka was occupying the remainder of my free time, and since I rarely got the opportunity to do anything for her, I was trying to make the most of it.

I couldn’t help but worry that I’d made a huge mistake with London before leaving, though. Maybe her tears had been more than I’d thought they were. Maybe I hadn’t made it clear enough that she should stop me if she needed me to stop. Maybe she hadn’t really wanted what she’d said she wanted. Maybe… There were a thousand maybes racing through my head, but until I got home and was able to see her again, face-to-face, I doubted I’d know just how bad things were.

In the meantime, the Thunderbirds had gone all out to make sure this trip was special for all of the moms, and for the guys, as well. There was a dinner at an expensive restaurant in LA, a shopping trip one afternoon on Rodeo Drive, a bus tour of all the celebrity mansions, a stop at the Walk of Fame, and even a day at the spa getting massages, facials, and pedicures. In the middle of all that, we’d lost a game to the Ducks by an embarrassing margin and lost another to the Kings in overtime. Now we were flying up to San Jose for the final game of this trip against the Sharks.

Razor and his mother were facing me and Svetka, which I supposed was fitting since Razor had married a Russian bride. Drago, Petro, and their mothers were across the aisle from us, so we formed a bit of a Russian contingency.

“You’re the one Tori’s been telling me about, then?” Mrs. Chambers said, eyeing me.

“What Viktoriya’s been telling you?” I asked cautiously.

Svetka perked up upon hearing Viktoriya’s name. She had apparently decided to adopt Viktoriya as a daughter, even if she couldn’t arrange for either Sergei or me to marry her.
She’s a good Russian girl,
Svetka had told me after their garage sale excursion.
She’d make a good Russian wife.
I had to remind her she was already someone’s wife. She’d waved a hand like it was nothing, but she’d let it go. Probably because she knew enough about London to know I had someone else I wanted in my life, anyway.

“Just that you look out for her,” Mrs. C said. “Treat her like a sister.”

“Just do what’s right,” I mumbled. I didn’t like this kind of attention. I didn’t want people treating me like I was doing something special when, really, I was only doing what a decent human being would do.

“There aren’t a lot of people in this world who would do what’s right for someone who’s walked a few miles in Tori’s shoes. So that means I like you.”

I tried to shrug her comment off, but she didn’t seem ready to let it go.

“She tells me your girlfriend is in a wheelchair.”

Svetka perked up again at hearing
girlfriend
. That was one of the words she’d had Petro’s mother teach her, apparently. She sat up straighter in her seat. “You know Dmitri’s girlfriend?” she asked Mrs. C, speaking in Russian.

Mrs. C looked at me expectantly, waiting for translation.

“She wants to know about Dmitri’s girlfriend,” Mrs. Petrov put in before I could respond. “Is she good girl? Will she cook for him? Be good mother for his babies?”

I blanched at the word
babies
, hoping no one would notice my reaction, since I hadn’t told a living soul that London was pregnant with my child. The last thing I needed right now was for Svetka to learn about the pregnancy, since London and I were still working out what kind of relationship we were going to have going forward. Nothing was settled. Nothing was a given.

“I haven’t met her yet,” Mrs. C said, smiling at Svetka.

“He’s hiding her from everyone,” Mrs. Petrov translated in Russian. “Maybe he’s embarrassed because she’s in a wheelchair.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “That’s not what she—”

Svetka swatted my hand like I was a naughty boy sneaking sweets from the kitchen and hoping she wouldn’t notice. “You shouldn’t hide your girlfriend. Let your friends meet her. Let your Svetka meet her. Don’t be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” How the fuck was I supposed to take her around and introduce her to my friends when, until the night before we’d left on this road trip, she hadn’t even allowed
me
to see her?

Mrs. Petrov wasn’t helping at all. I glanced over and noticed both Drago and Petro were snickering at my situation.

“You went to her last night instead of bringing her to me,” Svetka pointed out.

“London is in a wheelchair. My house is full of stairs.”

She gave me a look that plainly said she didn’t think that was a good enough excuse, and that Mrs. Petrov was correct in thinking I was embarrassed and hiding London.

“She’s not even my girlfriend!” I argued, then immediately wished I hadn’t. Especially once I realized that Mrs. Petrov was “translating” some more for both Razor and Mrs. C, and both Petro and Drago were adding commentary here and there. Lord only knew how they were spinning this, but I doubted it was good.

“You spend all night with a woman who’s not your girlfriend?” Svetka said. “You’re better than that, Dmitri. Your papa would roll over in his grave if he thought that—”

“I don’t know what we are. I want her to be my girlfriend.” I wanted London to be a hell of a lot more than just my girlfriend, actually. That night had opened my eyes to just how deep my need for her went.

Deep enough to scare the shit out of me.

“But she’s not?” Svetka asked, suspicion running rampant in her tone.

“Maybe?” Not my best answer ever.

“Why isn’t she your girlfriend?”

I shifted, more uncomfortable than I’d ever been on the team plane. I suddenly felt like I was too big for my seat by half, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to make myself smaller. “She says I need to get into counseling or something,” I bit off, glaring at Mrs. Petrov as she hurried to tell Mrs. C, “She won’t be girlfriend because he’s crazy man. Completely mad. Woo-woo bonkers.” The woman even added some arm waving and over-the-top facial expressions to emphasize her point.

“What do you need counseling for?” Svetka asked. “Because of the wreck?”

I shrugged. “She thinks I still blame myself for what happened to Sergei.”

Svetka patted my hand, looking at me the same way she had when I was a little boy who’d never known a mother’s love. “She’s right.”

“I know she’s right, but—”

“No buts. She wants you to let it go? She wants you to move on with your life? She wants you to look forward, not back?” Svetka didn’t wait for me to respond. Those were questions that clearly didn’t need a response. “She’s right, Dmitri.”

“I know she is.”

“But you don’t like it. You don’t know who you are if you’re not blaming yourself for something you did wrong.” She gave me a sad look. “Do you remember the first time Sergei brought you to my house? That was the day you told me you didn’t have a mama of your own because you hadn’t been a good enough baby. She left, and it was your fault, you said. You couldn’t blame her, even though she was the adult who’d made the decision. One time you told me something almost the same about your papa dying. You said if you’d only been less of a burden for your papa, he wouldn’t have had to work so hard, and he wouldn’t have gotten cancer from the paper mill. Now you blame yourself for Sergei losing his leg.”

“That one really
is
my fault, Svetka,” I argued.

“It’s his fault, too. He didn’t have to get in the car with you. He knew you’d had too much vodka.”

“But I was the one behind the wheel.”

“You were. But my Sergei, he has a wonderful life. He lost a leg, but he’s not letting it stop him from
living
.”

I slumped back in my seat, sulking like an overgrown child. Then Mrs. C caught my eye and gave me a look I didn’t want to interpret.

“She won’t be with you?” she asked.

“Kind of. She wants me to change.”

“Is she willing to change, too?”

Until that night before we’d left for this road trip, that would have been an easy question to answer. It had all been about me making changes up until then, but now London had gone out of her way to stop being so controlling. Something that wasn’t easy for her. Something I’d never thought she’d do.

“She’s making changes,” I muttered.

“But you’re still not?” Mrs. C said. “Sounds like you need to get over yourself. If you really want to be with her, that is.”

Damn all these women, thinking they knew what was best for me.

Svetka reached into her carry-on bag and dug out the last piece of the bread she’d baked the morning we left. “Here,” she said in Russian, passing it into my hands. “Eat this. You’ll feel better. You’re too skinny.”

JACK’S WORDS FROM
this afternoon were still ringing in my ears hours later, as I sat on my couch eating an overfull bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream and watching the Thunderbirds game. He’d stopped me on my way out of the office, wanting a word because I seemed to be in a funk.

Yeah. A funk. I supposed he could say I was in a funk, if that was what he called being pregnant, in love with a surly Russian who didn’t want to face his demons, and falling apart at the seams because I’d finally allowed myself to feel things again.

You know how it is
, he’d said to me that afternoon.
Counselors, therapists…we think we’ve got it all figured out. But that’s a load of crap. The truth is, we try to fix other people so we can avoid fixing ourselves. So if you want him to fix himself, maybe you should start by taking a hard look in the mirror.

I already
had
taken a hard look in the mirror. That was the problem. Now, all I could see was that Dima, Wade, and Gray were all right about me: I was a bitch who had to control everything around me at all times. It was my way or no way at all. Take it or leave it. I never allowed for any gray to fall between my black and white.

I hadn’t always been like this, either. Oh, sure, I’d grown up with a serious stubborn streak and the determination to prove I could do anything I set my mind to, but this went beyond simple confidence. It was arrogance. And it was ugly.

And I didn’t like it.

Jack had left me with a few choice things to ponder after our impromptu counseling session, the most difficult of which had to do with how far back this cocky attitude and need to be in control of every aspect of my life had started. I’d been thinking back the whole time I’d been watching this game, trying to pinpoint a time in my life when my attitude had changed.

The easy answer would be when my accident happened and I’d lost the use of my legs. But honestly, I didn’t think that was it.