Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) Read online

  “Thank you.” Stephanie raced down the hallway, her shoes squealing on the tiles, until she reached the surgical unit’s waiting room. A flat-screen TV droned the news from a corner between the ceiling and the wall. A handful of people sat there, some dabbing their eyes with tissues but most sitting in stone-faced silence.

  “Turning to sports now, tragedy struck the Seattle Earthquakes tonight when hockey superstar Aleksandr Volynsky was injured in a collision with the Kansas City Tornadoes’ Connor Talbot. The following footage is graphic, so viewer discretion is advised.”

  The video jumped to the hit, the camera trained on Alex lying in his own blood, writhing in agony before shock incapacitated him. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Talbot’s skate cut the back of Volynsky’s leg, resulting in severe damage to his Achilles’ tendon and at least one artery. Volynsky was rushed into emergency surgery. We’ll keep you updated as this story develops.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks in a steady torrent. She braced herself against the unit clerk’s desk, her legs inadequate for supporting her any longer. “I’m Aleksandr Volynsky’s girlfriend. Can you tell me anything?”

  “We had to rush him in immediately. He was in hypovolemic shock.”

  Her insides twisted into a knot. She noted the bathroom’s location and breathed deeply to quell the nausea.

  “A doctor should be with you soon. They’ll be able to tell you more.”

  “Thanks.” Stephanie sank into a chair with wooden arms and faded floral upholstery. Her eyes ached. She let them slip shut for what felt like minutes but, according to her phone, was nearly three hours. Lindquist was sitting beside her.

  “You okay, sweetheart? Need some coffee?”

  “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  “Any updates yet?”

  “No.” She swallowed hard, her face breaking apart into another sob. Lindquist rubbed her shoulder.

  The unit nurse was pointing them out to a doctor. The man walked over and extended his hand. “Ms. Hartwell, I’m Dr. Ellison. Aleksandr is out of surgery but not awake yet. We were able to stabilize him with transfusions, and we performed two surgeries to repair the tendon and arteries. I assume you’ll be his caretaker? Tomorrow, once he’s rested, I’d like to go over some things with both of you.”

  “Can I see him?” she croaked.

  “Of course. He’s in critical care right now. I’ll take you up.”

  She glanced back at Lindquist, who waved her off. “I’ve got calls to make to the coaching staff and front office. He needs you more than he needs me.”

  She and the doctor rode the elevator up one floor in silence. Dr. Ellison directed her to Alex’s room and with a compassionate pat of her shoulder deserted her.

  Stephanie cracked the door open in a room silent but for the heart monitor. Alex, connected to an IV drip, was a faded black-and-white photo. Stephanie’s lips trembled, the tears unstoppable.

  He almost died.

  She sank into the chair beside the bed and held his papery hand. The thin blanket clung to the ugly, lumpen shape of a cast on his right leg. She kissed his fingers. “I’m here, honey. I’m here now. Wake up and let me know you’re okay.”

  But he did not.

  Several hours passed. She nodded off again. When she woke, it was to a soft whimpering. “Tak bol′no,” Alex murmured. He groaned a little and winced, and his long lashes fluttered. “Devochka?” He opened his eyes and turned his head without lifting it from the pillow.

  “I’m right here.”

  He licked his chapped lips. Stephanie poured a cup of water from a pitcher.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he rasped.

  “Alex, no. You’re okay. That’s all that matters.” She kissed his cheek.

  “Stephanie…” His chin quivered, and tears spilled down his cheeks. “I can’t feel my foot anymore.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dr. Ellison pulled up a stool and folded his hands. “Aleksandr, seventy percent of your Achilles’ tendon was severed, along with the complete severance of two other tendons and seventy percent of your posterior tibial artery. We will need to perform a third surgery to stabilize the tendons, but in the meantime, you’ll be on six months’ bed rest. You’ll get the cast off in about six weeks so we can start you on physical therapy.”

  “How long until I can play again? A year? What?”

  The doctor sighed, the kind of drawn-out exhalation that preceded bad news. “Aleksandr, you will have permanent nerve pain. There’s nothing we can do about that. Right now, making sure you walk again is our priority.”

  Alex accepted the news in stoic silence, his face an impassive mask. The dull blankness of eyes normally so communicative frightened Stephanie more than the suggestion of permanent disability.

  “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but your hockey career is most likely over.”

  Alex gave him a slow nod. The doctor shook their hands before stepping out without another word.

  Once he did, Alex’s expression crumpled. He buried his face against Stephanie’s shoulder to muffle the sobs racking his body. “I’m twenty-five years old,” he managed before dissolving into tears again.

  “I know, baby,” she whispered. “Has someone called your parents?”

  “I told them not to fly out since I’m not dead after all.”

  A pall fell over the room. “Don’t talk like that, Alex. I have to go to work, but I’ll be back later, okay?”

  He said nothing.

  ***

  Aleksandr

  “I didn’t even know, man. I didn’t know until I saw you lying there and saw the blood on my skate, and…”

  Alex gazed out the window. Rain battered the glass. Connor Talbot had skipped the team flight back to Kansas City so he could apologize in person, though apologizing for an accident benefitted no one. Alex let him speak. He was too tired to argue, and at least one of them might leave the room feeling better about himself.

  “Now I’ll be remembered as the guy that ended the career of one of the best players in the world. I don’t know how to live with that. I’m thinking about retiring after this season. Guess it’s good they only signed me to a one-year contract.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, monotone, not looking at him.

  “You’re sorry? Fuck.” The chair breathed when Talbot rose. Connor’s hand was hovering before him. He shook it to be polite. “I feel like shit, man. I really do.”

  “It was an accident.” He recited what he had rehearsed in his head, what he was expected to say. “No one could’ve seen it coming.”

  “Yeah, well…ah, shit. I’m sorry, Aleksandr. I hope it’s not as bad as they think and you’re back out there kicking ass.”

  The door snicked shut.

  His phone filled with voice mails, text messages, all wishing him a speedy recovery and dancing around the truth. His general manager had placed him on long-term injury reserve, until he fully healed and they could make a proper assessment. Code for “Please don’t retire and make us take the hit against our salary cap.” But he could not bear the thought of being an active player who was not in fact playing. He could not exist in limbo, even if bed rest spared him the singular torture of sitting in the press box for the first six months.

  He lay back against the pillows. On TV, a sportscaster told him the extent of his injuries and that he would likely never set foot on the ice again.

  ***

  Stephanie

  Alex was staring out the window again, his dinner untouched on the bed tray. They had transferred him to a private patient room bursting with get-well cards and kaleidoscopic floral bouquets.

  “Alex.”

  He ignored her.

  “Aleksandr!”

  Alex flinched and met her stare with reddened eyes swollen from crying.

  “You have to eat.”

  He swept his arm across the tray, splattering cold meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and gravy all over the tile floor. Stephanie leaped back. “Yo
u eat it!”

  “Alex, stop it!”

  He clenched his jaw. He was shaking. “What am I now, Stephanie? Who am I? Without hockey, I’m just that Russian guy who drinks and fucks a lot. I always assumed I’d play into my forties like Jagr. Almost twenty more years, gone. Now what?”

  “You’re still Aleksandr Volynsky. You played seven amazing seasons in the NHL. You’re a three-time All Star. An Olympian. You’ve won the Hart Trophy, the Art Ross, the Conn Smythe, and the goddamned Stanley Cup. You’ll be in the Gladiators’ Hall of Fame soon enough. You’ve set records. This isn’t the end. You could become an analyst or commentator. Work in a front office. Coach. Hockey isn’t over for you; it’s just changing form.”

  “I’m not one of your stories anymore, Stephanie. This is my fucking life!”

  “I know you’re hurting, but you never give up on anything. I don’t even know you right now.”

  “Maybe you don’t know me at all.”

  It’s the morphine talking. Her chest tightened nevertheless.

  “Stephanie, please…” He closed his eyes. “Just go.”

  Her breath snagged on an incipient sob. “Do you want me to come back tomorrow?”

  He remained silent.

  In the BMW, Stephanie folded her arms on the steering wheel and laid her head on them. She cried until her sinuses ached. Possible permanent disability. The end of his career. He was grieving. Essentially mourning a death. The priority must be on his recovery. His future.

  Easier said than done. Especially if he didn’t want her in it anymore.

  ***

  Alex appeared, if possible, more haggard. Still not eating, Stephanie guessed, and not sleeping. This time he acknowledged her by looking up, then cast his sunken eyes downward.

  “You’re stronger than this. You’re the strongest man I know.”

  He kept his head down, a child in the midst of a scolding.

  “We’ll get through it, Alex.”

  “We?” The glare he shot her simmered with unspoken resentment, his voice like the year’s first frost. “What do you have to get through?”

  She would not let him see her cry. He wanted someone to feel worse than he did. “Apparently, I need to get through your shitty attitude. I’m trying to be here for you, Alex. Show a little fucking appreciation.”

  A strange thought passed through her mind, as though he’d planted it there: He’s goading me for a reason. He was used to getting his way, used to people giving it to him.

  “I asked for recommendations for a home-care nurse. I’ll need someone for at least six weeks while I’m in the cast.”

  Stephanie backed up toward the door. “But…I thought…”

  “What? Don’t like the idea of another woman seeing my cock? Dozens have already, da?” He gave her a malicious, tight-lipped smile more loathsome in a face so sallow and drawn. “Had it everywhere you can put one.”

  Her composure, held together by frayed threads, flew apart. “Why are you being like this?” she cried and mentally kicked herself for performing as he wished. “Has this whole thing been to punish me?”

  He stared at the shape of his casted leg hidden beneath the blanket. “Do you really think I had nothing better to do than plot my revenge against you? For someone who waited eight years to tell me she’d been pregnant with my fucking child? Who played her fiancé and me at the same time? Get over yourself.”

  She cracked her open palm against his face. He put a hand to his cheek and worked his jaw, poked his tongue around and spit into his palm a gob of blood with his bottom left bicuspid. It must have come loose when he’d hit the ice.

  “Suka! You fucking cunt!” he snarled with a voice not his own. All doubt erased. The man she loved had not survived the accident. “Did you learn that from your father?”

  “How dare you, Alex. How dare you fucking say that to me!”

  With his disheveled black hair and blazing, green eyes, a thin thread of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, he was a vampire fresh from a kill. He’d drained her of the ability to think clearly, of any emotion not centered on him.

  “Get the fuck out of my room,” he growled. “Ubiraysya!”

  “You make me sick.” Her entire body shuddered with rage and despair. “You took everything,” she shrieked. In the hall, the squeal of slip-resistant shoes warned her to leave before security threw her out.

  Alex opened his mouth but only a shaky sigh escaped.

  She ran from the room, down the hall, escaping the hospital as quickly as her feet and the elevator would carry her before she had a complete meltdown and ended up a patient herself. She ditched the BMW in the parking lot and took a cab home. She’d sell it, rid herself of everything he’d ever touched, everything he’d given her. Erase all traces of him from her life. Tear his image, each memory of him, out of her skull and her soul. Her father had taught her many things, though she had rejected until now his most costly lesson.

  Love was a lie, the cruelest lie of all.

  ***

  Aleksandr

  Alex picked up the phone for the fifth time, each time too afraid to dial let alone speak. His hand fell back to the blanket. She would not call this time nor should she. Shouldn’t show the sort of weakness he had. For once, he did not want to see himself mirrored in her.

  A nurse stopped by to give him morphine and turn off the lights. He showed her the tooth; they brought in someone to reattach it and asked if he wished to file battery charges. Little Stefania hitting big, bad Alex. He might have laughed if he didn’t want to go to sleep and not wake up. He was not the man she had fallen for, and the man he had become humiliated him. Disgusted him. The invisible cord bonding them all these years began to unravel. He could feel his heart unspooling, leaving in its stead a terrible black chasm.

  She knew he was scared. That he didn’t know what to do now. It would be all right.

  Won’t it?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stephanie

  Dave stared down his nose at her and pushed a copy of the City Paper across his desk. Opened to the sports section, the page flaunted a lurid headline: ‘Volynsky’s Dangerous Distraction?’, and a photo of her, from the back, as Alex pressed his glove to the glass.

  “Is this or is this not you?”

  “I was at the game.”

  He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled on his belly. “Let’s be straight with each other, Steph. It’s your right to be with whomever the hell you want. People spend too much time sticking their noses in other people’s business. But you know, journalistically, this is a huge conflict of interest. If you were having a relationship before your story came out, I should’ve known about it so I could reassign you.”

  “Dave, it’s a long story, but I can explain—”

  “Our whole reputation here is under fire. Every story we run from now on will be questioned because of this. Especially if the story comes from you. Is it true he bought you a car? A ring? Did you ask for the story just to get close to him?”

  “What?” She curled her fingers into fists. “Do you think he does that for every woman he’s involved with? He’d be fucking broke!”

  “It kills me to do this, Steph, but you’re fired. Please get your things and go.”

  Tears splashed her cheeks. Her entire world was crashing down around her. No point in trying to be strong anymore; she was human. “Yes, we had a relationship, and I meant to tell you—”

  “You need a letter of recommendation, I’ll write one for you in a heartbeat. Hell, I won’t even tell them you were fired. But we can’t have you here right now. I’m sorry.”

  Stephanie trudged to her office, staring at the floor and hyperaware of the whispers behind her like a toxic chemtrail. She put together a Priority Mail box lying beside her desk and scooped everything into it, glancing up when a shadow darkened her doorway.

  “Hope his big Russian dick was worth it.” Shawn smirked and sipped from his vintage Supersonics mug.

  “
Fuck you. Get out of my way.”

  He shrugged and leaned against the jamb. The need to cry had evaporated with her tears, supplanted by fury. Stephanie dropped the box, slapped the bottom of the mug so hot coffee splashed the front of his shirt, and drove her knee into his nutsack. Ceramic shattered as Shawn doubled over, screaming, “You crazy fucking bitch! I’ll file charges!”

  “Good luck with that. I’ve got so much sexual harassment evidence against you, even Grandpa can’t save your sorry ass.” She collected the box. “My lawyer will be in touch.”

  At the front desk, Rhonda shook her head. “Oh, Steph. Sweetie. I’m sorry, but this is bullshit.” She edged around the desk and enfolded Stephanie in her arms. “How come guys never seem to have their ethics questioned when they sleep with someone? Call me, okay? We need a girls’ night soon.”

  “We do. Bye, Rhonda.” Stephanie tucked the box under her arm and pushed through the glass doors.

  ***

  She should have expected the pack of hyenas outside his building, snuffling the carcass of their relationship, eager for the first bite. They flocked to her with digital recorders and smartphones, each trying to outshout the last as though any of them had a question she’d condescend to answer, a shred of dignity. Waiting for her to collapse so they could pick her bones clean before reconstructing her into some grotesque tabloid sideshow.

  “Let me quote the person you really want to talk to,” she said, elbowing through them to the intercom. “ʻGo fuck yourselves.’ˮ Stephanie slammed the button with the side of her fist despite the keys in her hand. This was not her home, and she did not know the man who lived in it.

  “Volynsky residence.” A young woman’s voice.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m Alex’s…I’m Stephanie Hartwell, from King County Today.” Until that morning, anyway. “I need to speak with him, please.”