Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lauren
What the hell was I doing? Was I so desperate for affection that I would turn to the worst possible person for me?
So sex with someone who knew what they were doing was never a bad thing. But this was not what I needed after ending things with Thad so recently.
Okay, shut up. I know it was only last night.
We hadn’t even made it under the covers, but Alexei, Mr. Aftercare himself, had wrapped the top sheet around me as soon as he slipped out of my body to take care of the condom. Now those Arctic blues gazed at me, urging me to give up. Give in.
Never.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I blurted.
“Okay.” He sounded amused.
“The divorce is still happening. I’m an agent, you’re a player, not to mention all the other stuff. Too messy.”
“Okay.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I am acknowledging what you said.”
“You’re not taking me seriously.” I sat up and reached for my hoodie.
“I take you very seriously. I always have.”
Sure. “There’s obviously history between us, reasons to get it out of our systems, but we’re no longer a thing.”
“I don’t need to get you out of my system. I am happy to have you in there, running roughshod through my veins, the energy that fuels me.”
I stared at him, waiting for the smirk. The punchline never came. Damn this oh-so-serious Russian!
“I have to go.” I pulled on my sweatpants. “Gunnar’s coming over to help me paint.”
“Perhaps I can see you later. I would like to talk about what happened all those years ago.”
N to the nope. “What’s the point? It’s the distant past.”
“It’s about my father’s work in Russia.”
I was ready to bolt, but his statement sparked my curiosity. “What about it?”
“All those years ago, when I told you that there was no future for us, I did it for your safety.”
“My safety?”
“My father’s work was in anti-corruption, challenging the people who are desperate to hold onto their money, power, influence. People who will do anything to maintain it. Who would hurt people. Even kill them.”
I was lost for words. Was he saying he did this to protect me from shady politicos or shadowy figures in the Russian underworld? What was I supposed to do with this information?
“I’ve heard a lot of excuses for not wanting to date someone, but this takes the cake.” I pulled my hoodie on and picked up my Lululemon sports top, stuffing it in my pocket.
“The day we graduated, I found out he had been arrested.”
I snapped my head back. “You said he was ill.”
“It was easier to explain it that way. I had to return to Russia, and I did not know what the future held. For him. For me. For us. It seemed best to let you go.”
Seemed best? This was too much. Instead of confiding in me, he had decided deceit and lies were the better strategy.
When I didn’t respond, he said, “Stay for breakfast, Lauren. We can talk about it more.”
The man had never told me a thing, and now he wanted to debrief over a plate of pancakes?
“I don’t think so, Alexei. I’ve had it with all this talking that says nothing.”
After stabbing feet into my sneakers, I headed downstairs. As I reached the last step, the front door opened, and an elderly man was led in by a dark-haired woman dressed in scrubs.
Mr. Nazarov.
He had aged considerably since the last time I saw him, but more than that, he looked forlorn, as if the entire world had beaten him down.
“Oh, hello,” I said, conscious of how I looked. Half-dressed with sex hair and the guilty flush of a great orgasm.
He squinted at me. “I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t. I’m Lauren, a friend of your son’s.” I held out my hand and he shook it.
“You have a good handshake.”
“So I’ve been told. I used to play hockey, so the hand grip has always been strong.”
Something flickered in his eyes, a flame coming to life. “My son plays hockey.”
“I know. He’s a superstar.” To the nurse, I said, “Sorry, I’m Lauren. I didn’t mean to hold you up.”
She smiled. “Oh, it’s fine. I’m Maya. We had a nice walk around the park, fed the ducks. Now we’re going to have a snack.”
“A snack,” Mr. Nazarov said. “We don’t know each other, do we?”
“No, we don’t. We just met.”
He nodded again as the nurse led him into the kitchen. I turned to find Alexei standing behind me on the stairs, staring at me.
“He was glad he hadn’t met you before.”
“Because it means he hasn’t had time to forget me.”
“Yes. It will happen eventually, though. He will forget us all.” He descended a couple more steps until he was level with me. “But I didn’t forget you, Silver Eyes. And what happened in Vegas and what’s happening now tells me you didn’t forget either.”
This might have been true, but it didn’t give me any comfort. “No, I didn’t forget. And that’s what’ll keep me from repeating my mistakes.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
Gunnar stood on my stoop surrounded by paint cans, brushes, and equipment. He rubbed a hand through his beard.
“Is this what the kids call a walk of shame?”
“What? Oh, God, no! I was out getting coffee and ran into someone, and you know how it goes.” I picked up a paint can and shoved my key in the door. Gunnar had one of his own, so I assumed he had just arrived. “I completely lost track of time.”
I needed to shower off the scent of sex and Alexei, but first to get Gunnar set up in the living room. “Thanks for picking up the supplies. That’s so helpful.”
“Said I would. No Thad?”
As Thad had never once helped out, that was quite the loaded question. Also, given the way the gossip mill worked around here, it was more than loaded: it was cocked and ready.
“What have you heard?”
“Hatch told Jason who told Theo who told Elle who told Sadie. You know how it goes.”
I certainly did. And then I slept with my old crush-slash-husband. I knew exactly how it went.
“Thad and I are no more.” I filled him in on the basics. “I’m sure you’re thrilled about it.”
He eyed me from under one thick eyebrow. Man, those brows did a lot of heavy lifting.
“Sorry, I’m just a bit testy.”
“It’s okay. If he made you happy, then that was all I needed to hear.”
And if he didn’t … “Can you tell me why you didn’t like him?”
He rubbed his beard, thought a moment. I loved that about Gunnar. He took his time. “He didn’t help around here.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s enough.”
So Thad didn’t enjoy getting splinters in his hands or paint on his Ferragamo shoes. He had other qualities. Only, now I was hard pressed to name them. Neither was I interested in defending him after we were no longer together.
What I would really be defending was myself.
My judgment of character. I had assumed I was good at that.
It was the X factor I used in my business, whether it was deciding on which client to sign or advising which businesses with which they should collaborate.
If my gut was so off, then what good was I to anyone, never mind myself?
This morning’s events just compounded my self-loathing.
Bad decisions abounded, and here I was feeling as unmoored as ever.
On the way back from Alexei’s, I had texted Thad to tell him we couldn’t meet, though I left out the fact I was too busy having sex with my husband.
I had received no response—as if he knew I had already moved on.
I took a quick shower, hoping it would wash that man right out of my hair, but not a chance.
Alexei was embedded under my skin yet again, though this time I wondered if I was feeling more tender toward him because of his personal situation.
Nazarov Senior had seemed a little muddled, but not quite at the level of decline I expected. No doubt he had his good and bad days.
Gunnar was in the living room, opening a can of Berrington Blue from Farrow and Ball. After working in companionable silence for ten minutes, my brother-in-law turned to me.
“What about Nazarov?”
What about him, indeed. “I’m taking care of that.”
Enjoying my conjugal rights before I kick him to the curb.
“This divorce is still going ahead, then?”
“Of course it is. It started as a joke, and I find it hard to see it as anything but that.”
Gunnar did that Wild West gunslinger squint thing for which he was famous.
“Don’t keep it to yourself, G.”
“What happened back in college?”
“I had a big crush on him and we, uh, got together. Then at graduation, he told me not to expect anything.”
“Around the time your dad died.”
“Just before.”
“Tough time for you.”
It was. A week after graduation and being dumped, and the day before my father’s sentencing, the one I had vowed not to attend, Jonah Yates had keeled over on the golf course from a massive coronary.
We had fallen out because of his inability to change his path, but part of me had assumed we would eventually reconcile. That there would always be more time.
Maybe his heart broke, knowing I wouldn’t speak up for him in court. But he had broken mine first.
“It was a long time ago, and Alexei and I haven’t kept in touch.” Though he had come to my games. Should I have sensed that he was in the crowd, cheering me on? If he meant so much to me, shouldn’t I have known that?
Having him back in my life had completely upended me, and not in a good way.
“Maybe I made a mistake breaking it off with Thad. Maybe I’m letting this business with Alexei influence things.” For all his dullness, I had chosen Thad for a reason. I couldn’t trust big personalities like my father, like Alexei. Too much excitement was never a good thing.
“Do you really think that?”
I slapped some paint on the wall and caught Gunnar’s disapproving look.
“I just know that everything was fine before he came along.”
“That’s what we like to think, don’t we?”
I halted my slapdash paint job and turned to him. “You can’t not follow up there.”
“You know how I met your sister. I thought everything was fine until she answered that text.”
Sadie had received Gunnar’s late wife’s phone number after it was recycled. He was still texting the woman he loved when my sister chimed in with “hello, wrong number.” That text led to conversations and a journey that both hurt and healed.
“But everything wasn’t fine. Your family was gone and you needed someone to pull you out of the quicksand. That’s not what’s happening with me.”
“No.”
“This marriage happened before I met Thad.” When I was neck-deep in a man rut.
“Okay. How did you feel when you heard you weren’t married?”
Disappointed. “Puck dodged.”
“And when he showed up telling you the good news?”
Excited. “Annoyed as fuck.”
“Is it possible that as soon as Nazarov showed his face, it made you think ‘what if’ and wonder why you took this out-of-character step?”
La la la, I don’t want to hear this!
“It all sucks.”
“Change typically does.”
No truer words spoken.