What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (13 page)

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 giggled 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?”

“The survival rate is good. I’ll be okay.”

“I don’t just mean the cancer.”

She tried to divine their future in his eyes, to see a paradise at the end of this Pyrrhic journey together despite the storms that yet lay ahead. The temptation to collapse into those strong arms and lose themselves in each other the way they used to, the act of love healing any adversity at least for a little while, overwhelmed her. It had been too easy to plunge back into old habits. To rely on love alone serving as their glue until Anya arrived to carry that albatross herself. “Let’s take it one day at a time, okay?”

“
Da.
I’m sorry. That’s not—I mean it’s important, but not…” Alex wrinkled his nose. “Why is this happening?”

“I keep hoping it means there’s something amazing waiting for us at the end of it all.”

“It was supposed to be…” He swallowed repeatedly, as though something was trapped in his throat. “Better than this.”

She placed her hand over his. “Alex? Can you—would you—take me to the hospital tomorrow?”

He skimmed his thumb over her knuckles. “Of course. Anything you need. And what you need right now”—he stood up, bringing her with him—“is some wine.”

“Hear, hear.”

Alex towed her into the kitchen. He plucked her favorite wine glass from the cupboard, then poured a healthy serving of pinot noir. “There you are. The meatballs should be ready soon.”

“Can I do anything to help?” Naturally, she’d much rather observe. Alex’s lack of domestic skills never failed to amuse.

“No, no. Just relax.” From the pantry, he produced a black apron with ‘World’s Best Husband’ printed on the chest.

Stephanie nearly snorted her wine. “Oh my God. Did you buy that for yourself?”