Chapter 45
Nikolai
Isabelle spreads the blanket on the cold sand, smoothing the corners. She gives me a faint smile as she pulls another blanket
out of her tote bag. “Are you going to sit down?”
I sit, carefully, shoving my bare hands into my pockets. She drapes the blanket over my shoulders. When she suggested ditching
her family’s New Year’s plans, I thought we’d hang out in her room, but she had the sliver of beach attached to her parents’
property in mind. The Long Island Sound is flat and dark, moonlight dancing across the surface.
Since that night at thirteen, I’ve spent every New Year’s Eve alone. I thought I’d spend this one alone, too, but instead
of going back to the city after Christmas Day, I’ve stayed with Isabelle and her family. I should have expected Dad’s phone
call today, of all days, and yet I fooled myself into thinking he’d drop it after our last argument. Visiting me. What a fucking
joke.
She nestles into my side, sharing the blanket. The tip of her nose is red.
I slide my arm around her. “Are you too cold?”
“It’s a pretty night,” she says. “And we’re alone here.”
I’m pretty sure that means she’s freezing, but she just raises an eyebrow, as if daring me to call the whole night off. I swallow around the block in my throat. When I promised her the truth, I didn’t think about how I would give it—and what it would feel like to be faced with it. I never envisioned sharing these pieces of myself with someone. Cricket and I have never spoken about it in depth. When I confided in John, I told him the barest details. But Isabelle deserves more, even if I don’t deserve her .
“But you’re cold,” I say, flicking her nose.
She doesn’t smile. “Who were you on the phone with? Your dad?”
I look at the water. “Yes.”
“He still lives in Russia, right?”
“Yeah. He coaches a hockey team in St. Petersburg. He’s been doing it since he retired from playing.”
“Is that where you grew up? Before you moved here?”
“No.” A wave laps in our direction gently. I look at it instead of Isabelle; I know the pain is showing on my face. “I grew
up in Moscow.”
“But your dad played for the NHL.”
“For a few seasons.” Her hand finds mine, lacing our fingers together. I finally look over, steeling myself with a breath.
The last time we were on a beach together, she convinced me to chase her into the waves. “It’s a long story.”
“I figured.” She squeezes my hand. “Talk to me, okay? Trust me, baby, please.”
I stretch out on the blanket, taking her with me. It’s a clear night, with a nearly full moon overhead. She curls against
my side, a welcome warmth. Her fuzzy pink knit cap tickles my cheek.
I haven’t found many reasons to trust in my life, but I do trust her.
“My parents met in Europe,” I say, watching a cloud drift over the moon. “My mom took a gap year after high school. My dad was in the KHL farm system, playing some exhibition game in Sweden. Somehow, they ran into each other, and apparently it was... instantaneous, whatever connection they shared. Dad was interested in playing for the NHL, and Mom encouraged that. Even though my grandfather hated it, she brought him back to America with her, and he worked his way onto the Penguins.”
“Why did he hate it?”
“Pretty sure he thought my dad was a douche. Maybe he thought my dad wanted his money. I don’t know.” I laugh shortly. If
Grandfather is anything, he’s a good judge of character. “My mom didn’t care. I haven’t spoken about it with her that much,
but my dad was—is—this really charismatic guy. He’s funny, he’s confident, he’s easy to get along with when he’s in a good
mood. She fell in love, and eloped with him when she got pregnant with me. But the NHL didn’t go well. He had a few rough
injuries, and things never really took off. So when I was three, he went back to Russia.”
“And your mom went, too?”
“Yeah. We both did. Obviously, I don’t remember what it was like when they lived in Pittsburgh. But all my early memories
are in Russia. I started hockey pretty soon after we moved, and my dad coached me personally.”
“That must have been intense for your mom. A huge difference in culture.”
“I’m sure she would have hated it even if my dad didn’t start hitting her.”
I say it without thinking, without filtering. A beat, and then Isabelle gasps. My heart stutters. Even though I meant to tell
her, it’s one thing to think it, and another for it to leave my lips.
“I thought it would be something like that.” She’s quiet for a moment. “What you said earlier, I figured... Oh, Nik.”
I shut my eyes. My chest feels tight. Not as bad as earlier, but not comfortable, either. “Yeah.”
“Poor Katherine,” she whispers.
“I don’t know when it happened for the first time.” I drag my teeth over my lower lip. “We’ve never really spoken about it. But it was always there. Always a possibility. They’d be fine for months, and then something would happen, Dad would get drunk and lose his temper, and Mom would just... act like things were normal, after. She’d cover up the marks with makeup and bring me to school. They argued about me a lot. I figured that out early on. She didn’t like how hard he pushed me in hockey.”
“Like with your diet?”
I can hear the distaste in her voice. Small, needle-sharp memories flash through my mind. Skating laps when I messed up in
practice. Hours and hours of ice time, working until I nearly puked. Picking over every mistake I made in a game. He couldn’t
be the best, but I could be, and I wanted to be. For him, for myself, and for the future in the NHL that he always expected
me to have.
“Stuff like that. But I didn’t care. I loved hockey, and I loved his approval.” My voice breaks. “Years went by, and I didn’t
say anything. I didn’t protect her.”
“You were a child.”
“All the same.”
“You were a child ,” she repeats. She presses her lips together, shaking her head. “You weren’t responsible for any of it.”
I blink, looking away. “I could have said something, Isabelle.”
My teachers, my other coaches, even the couple that lived in the apartment next door. I could have said something , but I didn’t. I acted like everything was fine, even though I heard the shouting, the crying, the slammed doors and breaking
glass. I convinced myself that the charismatic version of my father—someone who bought my mother extravagant gifts and surprised
her with date nights and told me how proud he was of how I played—was the real version. Maybe that’s what Mom did, too.
“Nik, did he ever... hurt you like that?” The question hangs in the air like our breath.
I sit up, the blanket slipping away. I’ve hardly felt the cold, but now I shiver. “Not like that. He could be mean, and he pushed me too hard in training too often, but he took out his drunken anger on her.”
“But something did happen.” She hesitates. “On New Year’s Eve?”
I ease away from her, swallowing as I focus again on the surf. I know I have to keep going—I can’t tell half the story, not
with her—but each sentence feels heavy. The exhaustion from the panic attack earlier hasn’t gone away. I sift through the
memory to find the words to describe it.
“They were getting ready for a party,” I say eventually. “The team was having an event for the holiday. I don’t know why they
started arguing, and Mom’s never said, but I think it had something to do with me. Dad had been talking about maybe sending
me to a hockey training program—a boarding school in Chelyabinsk. But whatever it was, it was bad. Both of them had been drinking,
and I remember Mom shouting back at him, which she didn’t always do.”
“You were thirteen?”
I nod. Thirteen. Old enough to push back on Dad, just a little. I remember our own arguments from back then. My devotion to
hockey never wavered, but I wanted more privacy. More time with my friends. I’d started to understand that not everyone lived
the way we lived, and that while not everyone’s father was a hockey star, they weren’t all bad-tempered alcoholics, either.
“Usually, I tried to stay out of their way.” I ball my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms. Coward. “But I had
a bad feeling. I... I made it to their room in time to see him throw her to the floor.”
A tear runs down Isabelle’s cheek.
“She worked hard to learn Russian, you know. And it’s not an easy language to get the hang of if you’re not a native speaker.” I shake my head slightly, remembering how she’d read the newspaper out loud for practice. “She wasn’t that great at it, but she lived there for years and didn’t want to be left out when Dad and I spoke to each other. All the same, I never really heard her try. Until then. She was pleading with him, utterly terrified, and there was something about the way he stood over her, like she was nothing, that made me just... I was afraid he’d kill her.”
My voice cracks on the last sentence. If he’d done it, it would have been just me and him, alone. Utterly alone.
“Nik,” Isabelle whispers.
I shake my head again, rougher this time. “I started getting into it with him, finally, but I wasn’t that big at thirteen.
He slammed me against the wall, broke my arm. And threw his drink at my face.”
“Is that how you—”
“Yeah.”
She sniffles, wiping her eyes. “Fuck.”
I huff out a ghost of laughter. “Yeah. Fuck.”
“But you left after, right?”
“Neighbors heard us and called the police. I guess that night, at the hospital, Mom finally got in touch with her father.
They were estranged for most of her marriage, but in the end, he helped us leave. I haven’t been back since.”
Isabelle leans in, slowly and carefully. I’m expecting a kiss on the lips, but she presses a chaste one to my scar instead.
I blink. This time, when she puts her arms around me, I hug back.
“I’m sorry, Nikolai,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not like you had anything to do with it.”
“You know I don’t mean it like that.” She squeezes me tightly. “None of it was your fault.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s really not,” she says, a firm note in her voice. “You deserved better.”
I’m too tired to argue the point right now. It’s a nice thought, anyway.
“It’s okay.”
“No. It’s not.”
We breathe in tandem for a few shiver-filled minutes. She slips into my lap and gives me a proper kiss. Comfort. Reassurance.
A signal to come back to the present, with her. I should take her to the house, get her warmed up, but I don’t know if I could
face seeing any of her family right now. I kiss her hard enough our teeth clash, feeling something wild take flight in my
chest.
I haven’t shared my future with her—not yet, even though I know I need to sooner rather than later—but now she knows my past.
“No,” I agree, my breath against her ear making her shiver anew. “It’s not.”