The Pieces Of Us (The Firebird Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

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  The Pieces of Us

  The Firebird Trilogy, Book 3

  By Jennifer Loring

  The Pieces of Us

  Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Loring.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: April 2017

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-038-1

  ISBN-10: 1-64034-038-6

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To the readers who have shared this journey with me.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

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  Chapter One

  Anya

  Being an only child had afforded Anya Volynsky a unique vantage point from which to observe her parents’ relationship. At friends’ houses, where most of those friends had siblings, adults rarely dropped the parental façade and acted like normal people. In her home, however, her parents often assumed they were alone, and so Anya witnessed the secret glances and stolen kisses, the way they nudged each other and giggled over inside jokes. At dinner, they sat across from her instead of at the ends of the table. They claimed conversations felt more intimate that way. She suspected it was to play footsie. She had grown up believing in true love because she saw it every day, each time her parents looked at each other.

  Now her father was a mirror in an abandoned house, reflecting nothing but the sad artifacts left behind. Today was the worst of anniversaries. One year since he lost the love of his life, and she had left him no breadcrumbs with which to find his way through the dark forest of his grief.

  He was sitting on the deck as he often did in the mornings during warm weather, with his ubiquitous cup of tea and a cigarette. He gazed at the creek marking the edge of their property, the cigarette burning in a ceramic ashtray of Anya’s haphazard creation when she was seven or eight and decided she was going to be an artist, which lasted about a week. Dad covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook.

  Her father had been renowned in his youth for his looks almost as much as for his hockey career. When the latter came to an abrupt end, leaving him with a permanent limp, he’d done a good deal of modeling. Mom had kept the sexier pictures, Dad’s ESPN Body Issue cover and his underwear shoots, in their bedroom and her office as though she’d forgotten the internet’s existence. Anya’s friends were all too happy to tease her with old photos of her nearly-naked father.

  At forty-four, he was still striking—six feet five, with the physique of a man fifteen years younger, his black hair graying at the temples and in a streak sweeping up from his brow. His undercut and pierced ears helped maintain the illusion. Anya had feared he’d let himself go after Mom died; if anything, he had redoubled his workouts. Most of Anya’s friends were crushing on him hard, and barely a weekend went by that guests didn’t stay over, especially in the summer when they’d catch him shirtless and lounging by the pool. Mom had found it hilarious and adorable that even bikini-clad teenagers couldn’t tear his attention from his wife.

  Today he was just Daddy, vulnerable and mourning and something less than he had been one year and one day ago.

  Anya slid open the patio door. Standing behind him, she wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders. “I miss her too, Dad. But she would be so proud of you.” Mom’s face smiled back at her from his inner right forearm. He’d gotten the tattoo the day after her funeral, so she would still be available any time he needed her strength.

  He closed his fingers around Anya’s arm and leaned against her. “Thank you, baby girl.” Dad smeared the back of his hand over his eyes. “Have a seat. It’s such a beautiful morning.”

  It wasn’t, not at all, but he was trying to protect her from his own feelings. Anya sank onto the Adirondack chair beside him.

  “Do you want some tea?”

  He had prepared a cup for her already. She smiled and accepted it.

  “They don’t tell you it never stops hurting. You just learn to live with the pain.” Dad smirked and shook his head. “That’s some cynical crap to lay on a seventeen-year-old, da?”

  “You have every right to miss her, Dad. And every right to show it. Most people don’t find what you and Mom had. Now that’s cynical.”

  He laughed, his crow’s feet deepening. “You’re too young to think you won’t have the same thing. When I was your age…” He slouched forward and let out a shivering sigh. His eyes reddened again. “I was already in love with her,” he finished.

  She held it together for now. For him. Tonight, she’d cry herself to sleep in her room, thinking about all the milestones Mom was missing. Graduations, first love, a boundary-breaking professional hockey career. Mom had been an excellent hockey player in her own right, before her first cancer surgery. That thought alone forced tears into Anya’s eyes. “After breakfast, let’s go spend some time with Mom, and then…I don’t know, get some ice cream or something.”

  “She promised it would be forever.” Dad bowed his head. His tears spattered the deck. He ran his hands down his thighs, then stood up. “Come on. I’ll make breakfast.” He opened the door halfway before turning to her. “She couldn’t always do the things she wanted to with you because of her lung. I just didn’t want you to think…”

  “I know she loved me.” Anya squeezed his hand. “I always knew.”

  ***

 
; Alex

  “Dad, I’ve been thinking. I’m worried about you, and I don’t want you to be here all alone.”

  “I’ll be fine, sweetheart.” Alex flipped the blini. “What do you want on yours?”

  “I just don’t want you to…”

  Clenching his jaw, he shut off the stove. “It happened almost twenty years ago, Anya. Before you were even conceived. You should’ve never found out, and I haven’t done it again, not even when—” He caught himself and gritted his teeth. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “‘Not even when’ what? What happened?”

  He failed to resist the smile only his daughter was capable of inspiring. “You and your questions. You’re so much like her.”

  “Tell me, Dad. I’m seventeen. You were a pro hockey player when you were a year older than I am now. I’m practically an adult.”

  He’d never be ready for her to grow up. Alex set a plate of blini and fruit jam before her on the kitchen table. “Your mother and I separated once, briefly, when you were a baby. Some bad rumors were going around, she was dealing with her lung cancer, and she needed time away for a little while. After that, we were never apart again.”

  “I’m not going to Boston College.”

  Alex slouched forward and rubbed his forehead. “Khristos, Anya, we’ve talked about this—”

  “I’m staying here with you. Besides, Canisius is a Division I school. I’d get in, no problem.”

  “Nyet. Absolutely not.”

  “Dad!” Anya pinched her lips together.

  “No! You’re on track to become the first woman on a starting NHL roster. I will not let you throw that away. Not for me.”

  She grabbed two fistfuls of her hair and stared at the ceiling. “You gave up everything when Mom got sick so you could take care of us. Why can’t I do this for you?”

  “Because I’m not worth it!” The words flowed with ease, even now. Alex, his cheeks tingling, dropped his chin to his chest.

  “You are!” Her blue eyes brimmed with tears. “You don’t believe that, but you are!”

  He curled his hand into a fist and dug his knuckles into his forehead. “And then what? You sit in this house taking care of your old man while life passes you by? You have to leave sometime, Anya, even if I’m not quite ready for it. And I’m not going to be the reason your life never gets off the ground. Besides, you have a scholarship, so you’re damn well going to Boston College. They’ve already accepted you—”

  “I’ll pay for it myself.”

  “Ah, blya!” He tipped back in his chair and raked his fingers through his hair. “How? You know how much time you have to invest if you want to play pro. You’re already doing it. You can’t have some little job on the side.”

  “I love you, Dad. And it’s too soon for you to be all alone.”

  He let out a deep sigh. “She would kill me if I didn’t do what’s best for you.”

  “And she’d kill me if I didn’t take care of you.”

  “That’s not your job, baby. It’s mine.” Alex nodded at the blini. “Eat up, and we’ll go. I’d like to get some flowers on the way.”

  Anya did as instructed. Alex picked at his but it, like all else, had lost its flavor.

  ***

  They stopped at the florist for a bouquet of wildflowers, Alex’s stomach tightening the closer they drew to the cemetery. He navigated the BMW along narrow, tree-lined roads until they reached the section where Stephanie lay. Alex parked, then sat for a moment, his hands shaking in his lap. He’d avoided this place for too long, unable to cope with the emotions the reality of her death dredged up. They had spent years apart before. He could pretend she was somewhere else, alive and healthy, as long as he didn’t have to confront that stone.

  Black marble adorned with her photo, her name, and her birth and death dates gleamed in the sun. Actuality. Inscribed along with her favorite Winnie-the-Pooh quote:

  Beloved wife and mother

  “If there comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”

  The necklace he’d given her long ago with those same words belonged to Anya now.

  Alex knelt before the marker and laid down the bouquet. Anya joined him. The mundane chirp of birds and thrum of a distant lawnmower intruded on a moment anything but trivial. His wife, his world, had been gone a year already. How dare life continue as though she’d never been there at all, when the void where she had existed lay in wait no matter where he looked?

  He inhaled the aroma of sweet, fresh-cut grass and ran his hand over the stone’s polished edge. Rested his forehead on the cold marble, near her photo, and remembered what it was like when their faces touched. When he smelled the fragrance of her shampoo and her clean, sun-kissed skin. Later, he had detected the subtle alteration in her natural scent, a symptom of the unspoken dread they’d half-buried for sixteen years. A different kind of cancer, more aggressive. Then the foul odors in her urine and the vomit caused by chemotherapy. She complained everything tasted and smelled wrong after she started treatment. She cried more nights than not out of sheer frustration.

  Alex crumpled against the stone. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to breathe.

  Until his daughter, their wondrous creation, rubbed his back. “It’s okay, Daddy. It’s okay to cry.”

  “This isn’t fair to you, I know. I just…”

  “Dad, you don’t have to be strong for me. Especially not today.” Her compassionate tone was the same one he’d used to soothe her when she’d gotten hurt or had failed to meet her own, often unreasonable, expectations.

  “And you don’t have to be for me either. I know what you’re doing, Anya. You haven’t shed a single tear.”

  “I have, Dad. A lot. Just not in front of you.”

  Alex slumped with his back to the stone, legs splayed. Anya sat beside him, her hand around his. “I’m doing fine, milaya. It’s been under control for a long time.”

  When she laid her head on his shoulder, she was his little girl again, for whom no comfort compared to one of Daddy’s hugs. “Mom said you didn’t want me to know about it. You were embarrassed.”

  “I was, for a long time. When you’re Russian—”

  “I’m half-Russian, Dad.”

  Alex chuckled and tucked her closer to him. “When you’re from Russia, you see how different things are here. Mental illness is one of those things that in Russia isn’t understood or accepted yet. Not that it doesn’t have a long way to go here too. Your grandparents thought it was their fault. I thought it was mine. But I got help and learned what it was, and even though it hasn’t been easy, I’ve managed pretty well.”

  “Mom said you were kind of an ass in your twenties, but you were sick and didn’t know it.”

  The chuckle evolved into a full-blown laugh. “Da. I was. And I hope that’s all she told you.” He almost heard Stephanie giggling in the rustle of wind through the trees, the grass. Alex rubbed his palms against his eyes.

  “I think you need a minute alone. I’ll be in the car.” Anya pecked his cheek, then pressed her hand to the gravestone. “Bye, Mom. I love you.”

  She walked up a gentle slope to the road and climbed into the BMW. His breath snagged in his chest. One year in a lifetime stretching before him. “You promised me, Steph. You promised you wouldn’t let me do this alone. And once she leaves for college…”

  The cracks unsealed wider than before. She had been out there, somewhere, in their years apart. She had been a possibility, no matter how unattainable. Now, the gnawing emptiness, the sadness beyond depression for which no word existed in any language. He woke each morning to Death’s gleeful reminder he would never see her again, not even as a familiar face amongst the strangers passing in and out of his life. The initial shock of loss had diminished, but random and unexpected surges of anguish crashed over him like rogue waves out of the clear blue.

  He knew how it all turned out, and the part of him for whom grief was
an unshakeable demon wished to go back in time, warn that lovesick teenaged boy it was too late, no matter the illusion of infinite time entertained by the young. Always too late, and he’d been worse than a fool to let arrogance rob him of those eight lost years, when the years ahead of them had already been stolen.

  But she’d taught him so much in the nearly two decades that had passed in an eye blink. To accept defeat with an adult’s grace, as she had in the end, though for now he remained mired in a child’s sorrow. The future’s ground was too unstable to support plans beyond today. He must value himself, tend to his own gardens, honor his own spirit.

  “I have to do this,” he whispered. “For you. For her. I’m trying so hard, baby. Just…let me know I’m doing it right. Let me know I’m not pushing her too hard.”

  Alex lifted his face to the washed-out sky, the sun glaring and watery. Summer was hanging on with all its strength, but the cheerful trill of birdsong prodded at his last nerve. He pushed himself up, his heels sinking into the soft grass, and dusted off his pants. “I love you, Stefania.” He placed his hands over the marble, imagining her cool cheek on nights when they slept with the windows open, the breeze kissing skin for which fever soon became the default temperature.

  Not like that. Don’t remember her like that.

  The images stormed in, an invading army: exhausted, in pain, her mouth full of sores. Sobbing herself sick when the first clumps of her beautiful blond hair fell out. Alex gritted his teeth as a fresh round of tears blurred his vision. He choked them back in time to slide into the driver’s seat and offer Anya a smile full of false composure.

  She wasn’t buying it, and fixed him with a stare communicating as much.

  “Everything will be all right, milaya.” He patted her knee and started the car. One of them had to believe it.

  Chapter Two