Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) (21 page)

***

A few days later, a package wrapped in many layers of tape and insured for one thousand dollars, addressed again to her old Seattle apartment, arrived in another act of attempted emotional murder. Inside the small Priority Mail box lay the velvet ring box. Stephanie thumbed it open and plucked the ring from its satin bed. Tears streaked down her face, but she ignored them. She placed the diamond-studded white gold on her left ring finger, from which people once believed a vein ran directly to the heart.

Then she slid it off, set it back in its cradle, and hid the ring with the rest of her keepsakes in the memory box stashed in the back of the closet. She had to make a genuine effort this time. Not stand in her own way any longer.

The box must go.

Stephanie carried it to the kitchen and set it in the sink. She dug her candle lighter out of the junk drawer and touched the nozzle to the box, her finger on the trigger. Her hand was shaking. She could not bear to part with what little of him remained.

“Oh, god
damm
it!” She scooped it up and hurled it down the hallway, where it disgorged its contents like spiritual vomit all over her carpet. Too disgusted to clean it up, she kicked it out of her way and in a fit of tears slammed her bedroom door on it.

***

Aleksandr

Alex picked up his jangling cell phone. “
Da.
”

“Hey, man. It’s Jacob. You up for a drink? Figured you needed to get out of the house.”

“Sure. Where?”

“The Keg and Barrel, half an hour?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He couldn’t drive, so the Mercedes had been sitting under a tarp in the garage since the accident. Alex requested the security guard call him a cab. When he arrived at the bar, Jacob was already sitting on one of the stools, a pint of dark beer before him. Alex propped his crutches against the counter and hopped onto the stool next to him.

“Good to see you, man.” Jacob stuck out his hand. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Just got the cast off, so PT starts soon. Third surgery coming up. One day at a time, I guess.” He ordered a double Jack and Coke. “Trying to walk again before I think about anything else.”

“You okay? I mean personally.”

Alex knocked back half the drink. No point in deception. “No. I ruined her life, she left town, not much else to say.”

Jacob shook his head. “It’s okay to talk about it, you know? I don’t mean in some emo bullshit way, just…if you need to talk. That’s all.”

“She even told me, ‘You could have any woman you want.’
Blya
, I know that. I’ve been doing that shit since I was eighteen. But none of them is her. Not the girl I’ve been in love with since I was sixteen.”

“Wow, dude. Really?”

He took another swig. “Put me out of my fucking misery.”

“I gotta say you’re starting to make a lot more sense now.”

Alex gave him a sidelong look. “What do you mean?”

“The image, right? Letting everyone think you fuck ’em and leave ’em, but it’s all because you can’t be with the girl you love. The media loves a bad boy. You’ll always give them something to feed on. A hopeless romantic is a nice feel-good story, but it doesn’t have legs.”

Alex chewed on an ice cube. Few understood what a romantic truly was, the torment of such passion. “No shit.”

“Nicole and I met when we were kids, so I get it. That’s rare as hell these days, and you’re the last person anyone would expect to be holding out for his high school sweetheart. So the real question is what the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you wherever she is?”

“Well, there’s my injury, and my dead career.”

“You can’t get that back. You
can
get her back. That’s what you want, right?”

Alex stared at the bar’s dark, polished hardwood, studied the whorls in it as though it held some message to decode. The key to why he’d been so cruel to her, because he sure as hell couldn’t figure it out. He hadn’t wanted her to see him so weak, so helpless. But his viciousness to her of all people, when she only meant to help, after she’d given him the one thing he’d have sacrificed everything for…“More than anything.”

“Then don’t let her slip away again. Maybe you don’t get another chance after this.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said after a few moments.

“For what?”

“For thinking you belonged in the AHL.”

Jacob laughed. “We must all look like a bunch of talentless shits next to you. Fucking Mites on Ice. I felt like we were turning a corner, though, before…And it was all you, man. You would’ve been a great captain, like you were in Buffalo. You don’t let anyone get away with anything.”

“The perks of being an asshole.”

“You’re not half as bad as you think you are. And Stephanie loves you—”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“She does. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have left town. You wouldn’t matter, and she wouldn’t care if she saw you around or not.”

He had a point.

“So you go after her. You do whatever you have to do.”

“Every time I think I’m doing what’s best for her, I completely fuck it up.”

“There are times when you need to stop thinking so much and just follow your heart. This is one of those times.”

Alex twisted the glass between his palms. “The things I said to her…I don’t even know why. She deserves better.”

Jacob chuckled. “They
all
deserve better. Shit, I don’t know what the hell Nicole sees in me half the time.”

“I don’t know what to say to her.”

“Start with the hardest thing: ‘I’m sorry.’ After that, everything is easy.”

“I don’t know if it’s so simple.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“Maybe she’s better off.”

“That’s her choice, but do you want to leave it like this? At least show her you’re willing to put the effort into making it work.”

“Yeah. I guess. Thank you. I, uh, don’t have a lot of people to talk to, you know.”

“No one gives you a fair chance, but I think you’re a good guy deep down.” He extended his hand. “And I’m happy to call you a friend.”

A friend.
He could almost believe Jacob meant it.

Chapter Twenty

The first couple of weeks of therapy had involved massage, stretching, and joint mobilization to help him regain range of motion. Alex did little in those sessions except lie there and fight through the inexorable pain, though PT was meant to mitigate it.

The first actual exercise, as simple as it was, convinced him he would never walk again.

The physical therapist helped him to a set of two steps. “Stand on the bottom step with your heels off the edge.”

Alex did as instructed, staring with scorn at his shriveled leg and putting most of his weight on his left foot.

“Now push up on your toes, then count slowly to ten and lower yourself back down. You can use your arms for balance if you need to. We’re going to do this four times with your knees straight and four times with your knees bent.”

He held out his arms, his tendons already protesting.

“Ready? Go.”

Alex rose on his toes. His Achilles’ screamed, and beads of sweat popped out on his brow, his upper lip.

“Aleksandr, you went very pale. If it hurts, you need to tell me.”

He had to walk. He
had
to. She wouldn’t want a cripple.

“One,” he grunted. “Two…”

“Don’t push too hard. You don’t want to rupture the tendon again.”

“It’s been two and a half months.”

“And it can take a year to fully heal. You need to slow down if it hurts too much.”

“Three…Ah,
blya
.” He hopped off the step, into the therapist’s arms.

“I’m recommending a brace for you. It’ll help stabilize your foot and strengthen the tendon.”

“I have to walk.”

“Even when you’re done with therapy and off crutches, you’ll probably need to walk with support for a while.”

“Like with a cane?”

“Yes.”

“Like a fucking old man. I’m not even twenty-six.”

“It’s not forever. Not if you take care of yourself and avoid reinjuring the tendons.”

How could he face her like that? With a cane. Broken.

“Let’s work on some more stretching and mobilization. We’ll come back to this next week. We’ll get you there, Aleksandr. I promise.”

You can’t promise me anything.
He lay back on the table, and the therapist endeavored to manipulate him into a functioning human being once more.

***

He had to get out of the condo, whose capaciousness reminded him not of his wealth but of his solitude. Going to the gym downstairs wasn’t cutting it, either. Where he used to work out four and a half hours a day, he managed an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon. Bench presses, lat pulldowns, arm curls, whatever he could do sitting or lying down and which did not require use of his right foot. In an ironic twist, the abeyance of his normal activities exhausted him, and he napped for hours at a time.

Every day he checked his mail, his email, his voice mails and text messages, hoping. Then despairing when Stephanie’s silence confronted him. She had moved on. Found a good man, constructed a new life. Sometimes she co-anchored the Gladiators’ pre- and postgame shows as a substitute and contributed to the podcasts on their website. Had he not been traded, she’d be talking about him. He would be playing, able to walk.

No. If they hadn’t traded him, she would be in Seattle, married to someone wrong for her and thus who couldn’t hurt her as badly as he had. And they might never have crossed paths again. Better for her, perhaps, if they hadn’t. He had watched her online, saw the glow in her face, the confirmation that what she had needed most to find happiness was to be as far away from him as possible.

Alex iced his foot, then wrapped the brace around it and encased it in a thick sock. Putting pants on was the most difficult task. Unable to bear weight on his right foot, he had to sit on the edge of the bed and wriggle into his jeans like a caterpillar. He limped to the dresser and selected a plain, dark blue T-shirt that drooped from his leaner frame. In the mirror, the scar on his face seemed more pronounced. He’d grown so pallid, even with naturally fair Eastern Slavic skin with ruddy undertones, prone to sunburn. Where others with a face like his—opposing players had hurled epithets questioning his sexuality at least once a night—might have gone to great lengths to fix the damage, he wore the recessed, puce-colored welt as a badge of honor. Sixteen stitches, and four implants to replace his shattered teeth. He was a hockey player, not a fucking model.

He hadn’t shaved in days, and he needed a haircut. His hair had started curling over the tips of his ears, flopping onto his forehead. Dark circles smeared the thin skin under his eyes. Subtle warnings to others to stay away. Still, he craved human contact. For all of his infamous churlishness, he was, like anyone, a social animal.

Alex shambled to the lobby, where the security guard was more than happy to call a cab for him in expectation of a tip. Whatever. Alex tossed him a twenty. He might as well start unloading some of the millions coming to him for something he couldn’t do anymore.

He directed the cab driver to The Den, though why the fuck he’d revisit the first place in Seattle he and Stephanie had kissed was anyone’s guess. Closet masochist. Glutton for punishment.

Despite the loud music, a noticeable hush fell over the place when he hobbled in. His first public appearance since drinks with Jacob a month earlier. Three more months of bed rest was going to drive him right out of his goddamned mind, though it was already preferable to being under the microscope again.

The bartender saw him immediately. Not hard; Alex dwarfed most men by a good four or five inches even on crutches. “On the house, Aleksandr. Anything you want. It’s good to see you back.”

“Thanks. Your best vodka, straight up.” He’d graduated from morphine to Tylenol with codeine a month ago, but his liver could explode for all he cared. He sat on a stool cleared for him in a display of brownnosing and propped his crutches against the bar. Once settled, he raised the glass to his lips, savored the burn slipping its warm fingers down his throat and into his stomach.

A man he didn’t recognize slinked up to him and held out his hand. He sported the barrel chest of a former athlete and the beer gut to confirm his glory days were a good decade in the rearview mirror. “Nice to finally meet you, Aleksandr.”

As much as he hated being called “mister,” he hated more the people who assumed they were on a first-name basis with him due to his celebrity.

“My name is Shawn Nichols. I write for
King County Today
.”

Something about the guy’s name struck a negative chord. Something Stephanie had said. Alex offered an unenthusiastic shake. The crutches’ constant pressure had bruised his armpits, and he just wanted a fucking drink.

Then it clicked. “You’re the asshole who kept harassing Stephanie Hartwell.”

Nichols’s eyes blazed. “She’s the one who compromised her ethics.”

“And how do you know, exactly? I’m guessing she didn’t tell you a fucking thing. So here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth: I gave her the story
before
I had sex with her.” A technicality but true. Giving her
piz′da
a few licks and fucking her weren’t even in the same ballpark. “Are you mad because she wouldn’t go out with you or something?”

Nichols let it roll off him, but his face was straining to maintain its calm. “I’d like to get a follow-up story with you. Talk about your future.”

“No.” Alex pushed his glass forward and signaled for another. “Fuck you and everybody at the magazine. Fuck this city.”

“Come on, man.” Nichols offered a convivial bros-before-hos chuckle, revealing a cringe-worthy gap between his front teeth. “You’ve had plenty of pussy—”

Alex spun around, heedless of the pain spiking through his foot. “She is not ‘pussy.’ You refer to her as anything other than ‘Stephanie,’ and I will kick your ass so hard you’ll be chewing on your fucking intestines. Do we understand each other?”

Nichols opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and skulked away. Even in his current state, Alex could have laid the
mudak
out.

The bartender shook his head. “That guy’s the biggest scumbag in Seattle media. Is that why Hartwell left? The story she wrote about you was amazing.”

Alex shrugged. He hoped it appeared nonchalant, but the more people said her name, the harder it was to pretend he wasn’t falling apart. “She’s better off. Now she can cover a real team.”

“Ouch. How’s the foot?”

“I may or may not walk again. Three months and I still can’t put weight on it. The prognosis isn’t good right now.”

“Sorry to hear that, man. We were all hoping for a comeback.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”
It’s my new talent.
“Hey, open a tab, would you? I’m gonna be here a while.”

“You got it.”

Alex pushed his credit card across the bar, and the bartender rewarded him with another glass of vodka.

***

“Hi there.”

Jesus, what the fuck now?
Alex, having drunk enough that his facial muscles were slacking, swiveled around. A redhead helped herself to the stool beside him. Short and shading toward plumpness, she bore no resemblance to Stephanie whatsoever. A small mercy.

He hung his head and stared at his drink.
Stephanie.
Her absence had become his personal phantom haunting both his dreams and his waking hours. A crow pecking at his brain, where it had built a comfortable nest. A vampire hovering outside his window. His personal Hell, the space between them a shapeless, cold gray where once there had been so much light. So much love.

“What’s wrong, Sasha?”

He grunted something intended to be a question: “How do you know me?” The better question was why she felt comfortable enough to call him by his nickname.

“I watch all your games. I’m sorry about what happened.”

Great. A fucking puck bunny.

Her voluptuous red lips smeared lipstick around the edge of her glass. “Need help getting home?”

“I’m fine,” he slurred.

“You don’t look fine. Well, that’s not entirely true.” She twirled a lock of her auburn hair around her finger. “Come on. Let me help.”

“Fine, whatever.” Alex half-hopped, half-slid off the stool and grabbed his crutches. Outside, the woman—he didn’t know her name—hailed a cab. They piled into the backseat, and she gave the driver an address Alex didn’t recognize. “You got a name or what?”

“Megan.”

Of course, it would be something cutesy. Fucking puck bunnies.

He wished it would for one second plug the gaping hole in his heart.

***

Alex awoke with a headache cracking his skull in two and red lipstick streaked on his dick. A vague recollection of her riding him at some point, then blowing him again, tainted his brain. She had reapplied her lipstick in between.

He sat up, inched his legs over the side of the bed, and cradled his head in his hands.

“Good morning, sunshine.” A hand on his arm. Nails that matched her lips. Stephanie never painted her nails. He liked them better natural, the same way he liked her hair short, because having nothing to hide behind gave her a confidence most women feigned. He hadn’t shared enough things like that with her. That he loved her exactly how she was.

“Get the fuck off me.”

“So grouchy.”

Alex dressed, then retrieved his crutches. “
Poka.
”

“Do you think she knows what you’re doing to yourself? Cares? She thinks you’re doing what
everyone
thinks you’re doing. So why put yourself through this?”

“Because I want to be a better man. Thanks for helping me fuck that up.”

“God. A martyr complex. Go before you kill my good mood.”

Alex limped out of the house, into the rainy morning, and caught a cab.

In the condo, he hobbled to the bathroom and swallowed four ibuprofen. He stripped off his clothes and showered to get the woman’s residue off him, then dried, squirmed into a pair of Earthquakes lounge pants, and hopped into the kitchen to start a pot of tea.

While the small teapot brewed Russian Caravan, he crossed the living room and gazed at the soggy city. Fog shrouded the mountains. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, his eyes, as his shoulders shook. He was an unparalleled, unmitigated catastrophe. He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. And the pain whose cure had fled over two thousand miles to escape him was clawing him apart from the inside.

Take responsibility for your own pain.

He had designed this labyrinth, had set all its traps, and now he was lost in its black heart. Condemned to hell for loving too much.