Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (15 page)

He shrugged again like him believing her crazy story was no big deal at all, but then he frowned when he saw the expression on her face. Soft as the summer day.

“Why do you look this way at me now, Siren?”

“Because,” she answered, unable to wipe the cheesy grin off her face. “You just told me something about yourself. A lot of something about yourself.”

Now he shifted, looking more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him. “We both did.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a teasing smile. “We
both
did. It was almost like we were a real couple, without a fucked up power dynamic, for a second or two.”

But then her smile faded. Because they weren’t that kind of couple, were they?

He looked at her. And she looked at him. Maybe thinking the same thing.

That too much had happened between them in the past.

That there was no way a man descended from a Siberian tiger and a woman descended from a Greek siren could ever be a normal couple.

That this was just temporary, and as soon as the opera’s run was over, they’d be done.

Thel thought all of this as she looked across the table at him. Then she asked, “So how would you feel about coming back to New Mexico with me for a little bit?”

I
T was
like inviting an actual Siberian tiger into her home. Bair wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to throw on a pair of sunglasses and go see about all the turquoise jewelry at one of the seemingly daily arts festivals in Santa Fe’s Historic Downtown plaza. A guard was now permanently stationed outside her door, and the entire condo had been turned into his office, complete with several laptops and takeout containers. A state of the art coffeemaker had appeared out of nowhere. Also a maid, who she had absolutely no hand in hiring, suddenly started arriving daily to tidy up after them.

Within a day of getting there, Bair had completely taken over her space. To the point where four weeks later, Thel could barely remember a time when she’d lived in the condo alone, drinking mostly tea and washing her own clothes once a week.

Now her clothes reappeared in her drawer less than twenty-four hours after she put them in the hamper. And she was quickly regaining all the weight she’d lost during her years of dealing with cancer because she found delicious takeout meals waiting for her when she got home from long days of rehearsal.

The truth was, she loved it. Loved sharing her space with someone who wasn’t her sister. Loved being in the same bedroom with him again, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. Loved that this Russian billionaire had actually taken her up on her invitation to stay at her relatively humble condo in New Mexico. Loved that their lives fit so well together.

They both had a strong work ethic and did so tirelessly until she got home. Then, if there wasn’t an opera for them attend together, Bair powered down his laptop and she set her smartphone to silent and for the rest of the night, they were all about each other. Pleasuring each other. Remembering each other. Getting used to the thirty-something versions of the people they used to know.

It felt like that well-known Goyte song in reverse. A newer, happier arrangement, even better than the first.

Thel was rehearsing the role of a lifetime, and she came home to a man who dropped everything and fucked her silly as soon as she walked in the door. She’d never been as happy as the weeks Bair spent with her.

She even went so far as to make them a dinner reservation at The Georgia Santa Fe the day of their seventh anniversary. Silly, she knew, and she doubted Bair had even kept track of the date like she had, but still, she’d spent her lunch hour scouring little knick-knack shops, until she found a small copper Buddha to give him as an anniversary gift.

Which was why her heart sank when she walked through the door with her small gift bag to find Alexei paying Bair a visit. She’d seen Alexei around the opera house’s complex that Friday. Seen and avoided him, which made finding him here, talking to Bair in Russian with his head dipped low, even more disappointing.

Alexei wore a suit, but Bair seemed just as much the businessman in his fighting shorts. The look on his face was very serious, and both men were so wrapped up in their tense conversation, they didn’t even notice her arrival.

“Hi,” she said, feeling like she was intruding on something even though this was technically her condo.

Bair glanced at her, then his black eyes swung back to his brother. “I need to explain things to her. Then I will do as I’ve promised.”

Alexei gave him a terse nod. And with that, he walked out, simply saying, “I will see you tomorrow at the first dress rehearsal, Sirena.”

“Yeah, see you then,” she muttered, more than happy to see Alexei the Awful let himself out of the little piece of paradise she’d created here with Bair.

When the door closed behind him, she turned and found Bair at the stove in the open plan kitchen. Shoulders hunched as he set a teakettle to boil.

“I can do that,” she said, setting the small bag with the statue on the dining room table and coming into the kitchen. The tea had to be for her, since he only drank coffee out of the oversized chrome contraption that now took up most of her counter space.

“
Nyet
, this job I like doing for you.”

So she settled for coming to stand behind him, resting her head on his Siberian tiger tattoo, and running her fingers over the scar at the top of his heavily yoked waist. Alexis must have arrived while Bair was still doing his usual mid-afternoon workout, because his body was clammy with recently dried sweat.

They stood like that until he broke the silence with, “I must go back to Russia tomorrow morning.”

She stilled, knowing she should have been expecting this moment, but hating it had finally come. “How long until you come back?”

“I do not know exactly. Month. Maybe two. Something bad has happened back in Moscow and I must go on plane tomorrow and fix it.”

“Fix it like Olivia Pope?”

He grunted. As close as Bair ever got to laughing. But he must have been paying attention to all the episodes of
Scandal
she’d been binge-watching while he handled early morning business in Russia on his laptop. Because he replied, “Fix it more like her associate, Huck.”

“But I thought your family was done with that life?”

She hadn’t been told, so much as gleaned during her time with Bair, that the Rustanovs used to be more of a crime family than a business empire. In fact, during a few of his Germany visits, she’d overheard Alexei lamenting that a particularly aggressive competitor could not be handled in the old way.

“We are done with that, as you say. But sometimes people forget and must be reminded. It is Alexei’s job to remind our family. It is mine to remind everyone else—and for that we must sometimes use the old ways.”

Thel found herself squeezing him tighter, unconsciously trying to hold on to him, to the paradise they’d made of this apartment over the last few weeks.

“I will try my best to be back for your last performance,” he said, rubbing her arm.

“No, it’s not that. That doesn’t matter.”

He took her arms from around his waist then, but only so he could turn and face her.

“It matters to me,” he insisted, taking her chin between his thumb and bent index finger. “It is very important to me to see you sing in this role, Siren.”

Really? Her heart melted, thinking about how he used to go out of his way to see her performances when she’d been in school. Skipping classes, and sometimes rearranging presentations. Partly to let her and everyone else know he was always watching her. He never quite trusted any of the men in her program not to try to make a pass. But also to watch her in a way that had felt to Thel’s twisted heart a lot like support.

“I want you to be there, too,” she told him truthfully. “But that’s not why I’m so upset. It just that…I’ve liked this. Liked us over the past month, and I only get to be Sirena until the end of August. What if you…?”

She peeped up at him with sorrowful eyes. “What if you don’t handle all your Huck business before I go back to being Thel?”

His brow bunched, mouth twisting into a displeased sneer at the mention of her other name. “You do not have to go back.”

“Yeah…yeah I do,” she answered just as seriously. “I’ve got another round of tests coming up soon to make sure I’m still cancer-free. Plus, some other stuff…”

Her mind turned to the one thing she wanted more than her opera career. The desire that had been chewing a new kind of hole in her chest since spring.

He opened his mouth to argue some more, but was interrupted by the sound of the kettle going off behind him.

“Seriously, I can make my own tea,” she insisted, reaching around him to turn off the flame. “You go take a shower. I made us dinner reservations for tonight.”

Approval lit up his eyes, softening his face. “I had same idea. For our wedding anniversary.”

And she couldn’t help but smile up at him. “I didn’t think you’d remember.”

He gave her a very solemn look. “Of course I remembered. I always remember.”

“Me too,” she said in a whisper.

And they stood there like that, tea getting cold. Probably both wondering why this moment was making them so sad.

S
omehow they managed
to make the dinner not feel like a good-bye. When they got home, she gave him the little Buddha statue.

“You said your grandma was a Buddhist, and it’s copper…” she said by way of explanation.

He tucked the small Buddha in his inside suit pocket, “Thank you, Siren. I will keep it with me right here, close to heart, until I return from Russia.”

She gave him a wry smile, thinking this was as close as he’d ever come to saying he loved her.

“I also have gift for you.” He took her by the hand and guided her toward the doorway.

“No, you
didn’t
!” she yelled when she saw the Audi A5 convertible sitting in the designated parking space she never used. “Oh my God, Beast. Oh my God…!”

“It is copper colored,” he pointed out quite seriously. “So perfect for our seven-year anniversary gift.”

She was still laughing over the ridiculously uneven gift exchange the next morning as she drove to work in her new car. Of course Dexter was trailing behind her in his black car, but she still couldn’t help but feel optimistic.

Maybe they could make it work after the production was over, she thought to herself, thinking of how they’d made love the night before. Gentle and grateful. Like two grown-ups who weren’t completely toxic.

But then as if on cue, her phone rang. “Hello?” she said breathlessly when she finally managed to route the call through the car’s Bluetooth system.

“Hello, is this Thel-shee-ope Oki…” the woman on the other end of the line trailed off. “Oh my, I am just massacring your name.”

“That’s totally fine,” Thel answered, letting the poor woman off with a chuckle. “Most people call me Thel.”

“Okay, Thel, this is Anna calling from Dr. Rosenthal’s office. He’s had something come up on the afternoon of your appointment, and we were hoping to reschedule you for that morning.”

Thel had very nearly forgotten she’d even made the appointment. But just like that, she was easily reminded of the myriad reasons Bair and Thel couldn’t keep this Bair and Sirena 2.0. act going on after the opera ended.

“Yeah, that’s cool,” she said to the receptionist on the other side of the phone. She glanced over her shoulder. Glad Dexter hadn’t been in the car when she received this call. “I can do that morning.”

So they rescheduled the appointment for Monday morning—the day after her last show. Or as Thel thought of it, the performance she’d use to put Sirena Gale to rest and let Thelxiope Okeanos start living.

N
INE weeks later
, Chrysanthemum “Santhe” Brown stood trembling in the small garden of the little house she’d inherited from the kind older Quaker who’d taken her in after she’d escaped from the South.

She and the man she’d come to love had just gotten into a terrible fight. He wanted to go west and seek out opportunities there. But she begged him to stay with her in the Quaker woman’s house. This was the last known address anyone back on her old plantation had for her, and she couldn’t possibly leave.

But as her man pointed out in a stern second verse, it had been two years since her brother was freed. Even if he were still alive, her husband wondered, how was she to know he’d come here? How did she know he wasn’t off somewhere living his dream, while she put theirs on hold awaiting his return?

He loved her, he proclaimed in a rousing final verse. But she would need to choose between the waiting and the dream. He’d then left her alone with that ultimatum, which brought on a solo aria with Santhe wretchedly wondering how she could choose between her man and the brother she’d vowed to meet again.

At least she thought it was a solo aria. But halfway through her tortured wondering, she is interrupted by someone calling her name.

She turns, trembles. It can’t be…

But it is! Her brother. Her brother, now much older than when they sang to each other before her escape. He has found her at last!

With tears in their eyes and holding hands, they sing a soul-melting final number together with the rest of the chorus. For the waiting is over. And the dream of a new day… For her. For him. For their people…

The orchestra and chorus stops as Santhe’s voice fills up the entire venue with two words, sung in a potent mix of gospel and opera, “HAS BEGUN.”

Santhe holds the audience there for a full minute with her declarative cry. And by the time the siren lets them go, most of the audience is on its feet, clapping wildly with tears in their eyes.

T
hel herself had
trouble keeping the tears out of her eyes a few minutes later as she and the rest of the cast took their final bow. It was just the beginning for quite a few of them. The run had gone spectacularly, making both national and local news for its subject matter and its teenage wunderkind writers.

If she’d been interested in continuing on as Sirena, this role would have made an amazing launch pad for the rest of her career. But this would be her last performance as Sirena Gale.

So it was farewell kisses she threw back at the adoring audience, tossing flowers and programs on to the stage. Farewell kisses, even though she could already feel the one-of-a-kind work burning a permanent hole into her heart, where it would always reside.

The only thing she regretted more than the loss of this role was the empty seat directly behind the orchestra. Prime real estate she’d kept blocked off every night of the show’s run, just in case. But he’d never made it.

She guessed she really had come to start thinking of him as family, she thought ruefully a little while later. Backstage, she watched Dana get swarmed with hugs from her own family: her sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law, an insanely hot Latino hotel magnate who, despite being a billionaire, had flown out with her sister for every single one of Dana’s weekend performances.

Now that was love
, Thel thought with a bittersweet heart. Though her own sister and brother-in-law had come out for her opening performance, she felt virtually alone now at her last. As if the most important performance of her life had been missed by everyone she loved.

It also didn’t help that it was her birthday. A day she never celebrated because of what had come after. But the sharp pain of Trevor’s death had faded into something a little more warm and bittersweet since her San Francisco trip. And this morning she’d found herself making a birthday wish that he’d make it back in time to see her last performance.

It matters to me. It is very important to me to see you sing in this role, Siren,
he’d told her. But obviously, he hadn’t been able to make it back in time.

She found three missed calls from him when she went into her dressing room. But she didn’t bother returning them until she was all the way out of her costume and had removed her heavy make-up.

“Where are you?” he asked in lieu of a hello.

“Coming out of my dressing room,” she answered. “Where are you?”

“I just arrived at hotel.”

“Oh,” she said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice. So he had tried to make it, but hadn’t gotten here on time.

“You didn’t go back to the condo?”

“You never gave me key,” he reminded her.

“You never came off as the kind of guy who needed one,” she shot back, not bothering to mask her irritation.

A moment of quiet, then, “I tried to get here sooner, Sirena.”

She knew he had. “Sorry, I just wish…” she trailed off, not having the words for everything she wished. That he’d made it back in time for her performance. That he was different. That she was different. That they were two totally un-fucked up people who’d met under better circumstances and actually had a chance at the kind of love her sister and brother-in-law shared.

“Dexter knows where I am. Tell him to bring you to me. We will make paradise again.”

She once again opened her mouth to say a number of things:
“I think I should just go home. This isn’t good for either of us. You know I’m officially not Sirena anymore. I’m Thel. In fact today is both literally and figuratively her birthday.”

But instead she heard herself say, “Okay.” Not quite ready to give up paradise just yet.

Which was why she nearly had a heart attack when a restaurant full of people yelled, “Happy Birthday!!!!” right as she walked in.

Her hand clasped her chest when she saw Bair standing at the front of the crowd.

“How did you know?” she demanded after she’d pulled him down and thoroughly kissed him. She’d never told him the exact date of her birthday, just that it was in August.

He answered with a Rustanov sneer. “You know already about me and my ways, Siren. I make Olivia Pope look like amateur.”

“Is this why you didn’t come to my last performance?” she asked laughing,

“I was there,” he answered. “But high in balcony with Alexei. He was right about you in this role, Sirena. You were only siren for it.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, wondering how many ways Bair would melt her heart before they were through.

“Would you like drink?” he asked.

She blinked. “Seriously?”

Another of his psycho rules floated up between them. She must never be sad when he is hungry. She must always be wet for him. She must never drink.

“I have changed,” he said, his black eyes solemn. “I know this is hard for you to believe, Siren, but I have changed.”

And there went her cynical heart, melting all over again.

“Maybe I’ll truly believe it after I’ve had a glass of champagne,” she said with a teasing grin.

“I will be back,” he said, giving Sirena a couple of ideas about who should be tapped to play the part in the next inevitable
Terminator
reboot.

Almost as soon as he disappeared into the crowd, though, Alexei appeared beside her. Like an evil cloud of smoke.

“I would like to know what your intentions are with my brother,” he said without so much as a hello.

Thel blinked up at him. “
My
intentions? I don’t have any intentions in our relationship. I’ve never been allowed to—us American black girls being so untrustworthy and all that.”

At least Alexei had the grace to look a little ashamed of himself. His jaw tightened and he said, “About that…I still would like to explain—”

Thel cut him off with a shake of her head. “I don’t think there’s an explanation on Earth that would help me figure out why you goaded him into treating me like a piece of fuckable property. I know that’s all Rustanov pets are to you guys, but you—”

“You think back then…what he did…was about you being a Rustanov pet?” Now Alexei cut her off, squinting at her with seemingly genuine confusion.

Before she could answer, Bair came back with two flutes of champagne.

“Alexei, perhaps you do not know it is Sirena’s birthday,” he said, handing one of the flutes to Thel while taking note of the tense, confrontational way she and his brother were standing across from each other.

Mouth drawing back into an unhappy snarl, he said something more to Alexei in terse Russian.

To which Alexei responded with a stream of way more vehement Russian. What looked like a good two-minute argument then ensued, each brother cutting the other off several times, before Alexei ended up throwing his hands in the air with a bunch of Russian even Thel recognized as curse words.

“What was that all about?” she asked, watching Alexei leave.

Bair dead-eyed his brother’s retreating form as he took a sip of champagne. “My brother wishes to give me relationship advice. I told him I did not need it, so he is leaving your party now,” he answered.

Then he blinked when he saw the expression on her face. “Why does our argument bring smile to your face?”

“Because,” she answered, her grin just stupid with happiness. “You really have changed.”