Chapter 18
Stevie isn’t just my bass player. He’s my oldest friend and he’s called in a favor, which is how I find myself in the VIP area of a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach. I haven’t been to one of these dives in years. Not since I stopped searching for Vadim.
Stevie cradles the guitar like it’s an extension of his anatomy, fingering the strings and peering into the crowd below. Looks like fun down there. The DJ mixes an anonymous club track with a bit of old-school pop, and the crowd downstairs goes wild. Two hundred arms shoot into the air simultaneously as the beat drops and Madonna’s nasal vocals ring out. She sings about the people coming together. There’s a shout of joy, and the track speeds up.
It doesn’t surprise me that no one on the top level jumps up and down. They’re all pretending to be cool or they’re too jaded to have fun. But like it or not, these are my people now. Rich, successful, too bored to enjoy themselves.
I miss the old days when we were broke, but we had fun trying to get noticed. I wish I could disappear into the crowd and lose myself in the music, but I’d get mobbed for selfies by people who probably aren’t even fans and just want a picture for their social media.
In the middle of the crowd, I spot a pretty blond girl in a plastic tiara and sash that says 21 TODAY. She bounces up and down in the middle of a crowd of friends.
I guess this is Stevie’s new conquest—only just old enough to drink and not interested in anything more than a private gig from someone famous.
She hasn’t glanced up here once since we came off stage. Yet again, Stevie has picked the wrong girl, but I’m not one to talk. I haven’t gotten laid in so long I’ve almost forgotten what sex feels like.
I sink down on the leather bench next to him, nursing my soda water with lime. “Ready to head off? I can give you a ride back to Manhattan.” I reach over and twang one of the strings to get his attention. “I’ll take this back with me if you’re going out clubbing.”
He grins, his forehead shining under his thinning hair, and nods as I stand to shrug into my jacket. He doesn’t stand a chance with this chick, but no one likes to hear that shit from their friends, and I’m not gonna be the one to break it to him.
Rising to his feet, Stevie slings an arm around my shoulders. He’s too thin, probably from snorting too much coke, but I’ve given up lecturing him about that too. I lean into him as we pick our way through the chairs to the exit, but he crashes into me from behind as I stop short and stare across the room.
It can’t be.
Not Vadim.
Not after all this time.
But I can’t help looking.
Stevie follows my eyes to the booths at the back of the VIP area. “Not that guy. Please tell me you’re wrong.”
He pulls on my elbow and drags me toward the velvet rope separating the high-rollers and poseurs from the people actually having a good time downstairs.
I stare at the corner where I thought I saw the man who is the subject of a hundred song lyrics I’ve written. I’ve spotted Vadim’s shadow in nightclubs, on street corners. Once I even thought I saw him at my daughter’s school drop-off. I must have had a particularly poor night’s sleep before that imaginary sighting.
Stevie pulls me around to face him and spits out his next words. “I thought you were over all this nonsense. You stopped taking these crazy gigs. You’re not still looking for him, are you?” He tilts his head toward the corner of the balcony, eyes narrowing.
“Don’t patronize me, Stevie. I only came tonight because you asked me to give you a bit of moral support. I stopped searching years ago, and I’ll probably be wrong this time too, but...”
“You promised me.” His biting tone sinks through my skin as he looks at the crowd of men standing close to the balcony. “Everyone knows who you are, Sera. If that bastard had really wanted to find you, he’d have found a way.”
“Don’t talk about him like that. It’s harder when you’re famous. I’m not always easy to reach.”
I look at the men in the corner. There are five of them, laughing and joking with one another in a tight huddle. They’re all muscular and vaguely threatening, but one of the men stands apart.
His back faces us, and I can only see the wide set of his shoulders and the way he bends his head to his friend, but there’s something familiar about the way he moves, even when I can’t see his face. The strength and the silence. No drama. Just an implicit threat.
“He’s had ten years. Trust me, if he didn’t come for you, it’s because he didn’t want to.” My best friend looks at me with pity in his eyes. “It’s not like he didn’t hear the songs. They had constant airplay for two whole summers.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, babe. I know men. If he’d wanted?—”
I hold my hand up to stop him, lips tight. I know what he’s going to say. I’m the one who wrote a whole album about a man whose last name I didn’t know in the hope he’d seek me out. I don’t need another reminder that it didn’t work.
I glance back to the other side of the balcony. Most of the other customers have given the men a wide berth—there are two empty tables next to the group—but a huddle of girls who look barely out of their teens flutters around them like butterflies in short dresses. The man I’m watching is the only one who doesn’t put his hand on the girls.
Fixing Stevie with a hot stare, I set my jaw. “It’s not for me, okay? I have to ask. If there’s a chance, then I need to know.”
I start toward the men, my friend trailing in my wake and muttering under his breath as he follows me. I don’t need to hear what he’s saying to get the gist of where he’s going with this, but if it ends with embarrassment and me apologizing and buying a round of drinks, then it’s nothing I haven’t done before and it won’t kill me.
I tap the tallest of the six men on the shoulder and put on my brightest, most confident voice. “Excuse me. You look like someone...”
He turns. There are a few more lines around the eyes, but...
It’s him.
I can’t stop the smile from bursting across my face. “Vadim,” I whisper, and reach for him. My hand freezes in mid-air as I wait for him to smile back, for his face to mirror the joy I feel.
His lip curls and his brows pull together in a frown. He’s looking at me like I’m something he scraped from the bottom of his shoe as he mutters something too low for me to catch. And I’m still smiling at him like an idiot, my arm held aloft and the grin frozen on my face. To let the smile slip would be to admit that Stevie was right all along.
I’d know him anywhere. I always knew I would. Cheekbones so sharp they cast shadows on the planes of his face, wide shoulders, and a body that moves through air like a knife cutting through flesh. His whole being is a study in perfect geometry, and his eyes are a pale blue that makes me think of ice flows.
His stare is just as cold.
It’s galling to admit to myself that the pity on Stevie’s face was justified when Vadim repeats the phrase I didn’t quite catch the first time.
“This is all I fucking need.” His eyes roll to the ceiling, and he clenches his fists.
The force of his words pushes me backward, and I trip over my feet in my haste to recover my pride. I suppose I’d never really admitted to myself just how much I still hoped Vadim had been waiting for us, hoping to find me the way I’d been dreaming of finding him.
Stevie steps closer behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I think we should get out of here.”
I remain frozen like an animal in front of a predator, watching to see if the hands that Vadim has balled into fists at his sides will unfurl and reach out to me.
“Come on, Sera. It’s time to go,” Stevie begs, tugging me, but I’m rooted to the spot, as if a few more moments will change the reality in front of me.
Hope is the cruelest drug.I should know. I’ve been mainlining the stuff for years.
Vadim leans down to the redheaded girl. She’s a few years older than my daughter, but she’s not too old to wear the same convent-school uniform. I’d ground Nadia for life if I found her in a place like this in six years’ time. The kid is curled up between him and his friend on the sofa, and Vadim leans down and strokes the hair away from her forehead, looking concerned. She nods, gazing up at him with a dazed expression.
That small act of tenderness stabs at a raw place under my breastbone. I didn’t publicly admit to dreams of a happily ever after, but Stevie knows.
“Poor, poor Sera,” he says, rubbing my shoulder.
I don’t need to turn around to see the expression on his face. My band knew the album I wrote must have been about the man I met in Moscow, but Stevie was the only one who knew how many gigs I’d booked at private parties in mafia nightclubs until Nadia was three. I finally had to concede that spending nights away from my daughter so I could chase a shadow was stupid. She needed stability, and that had meant getting a grip on myself and only touring when it was absolutely necessary.
No more private gigs for Russian billionaires, which did nothing to burnish my reputation. No more chasing shadows.
“I’m fine, Stevie. It’s just us. We’re all the family we need,” I lie, swallowing down the stone of hope that’s lodged in my throat. My eyes sting so I turn to the side, hoping Stevie can’t see me as I drag my sleeve across my face.
I watch Vadim as he pats the girl’s red hair absentmindedly and turns back to me with an empty stare. I don’t know if he’s sleeping with her or just watching out for her, but he’s not giving me a fraction of the care he’s doling out to the younger woman. The gesture makes me nauseous enough to admit I’ve spent ten years in love with a man who doesn’t exist. A phantom I’d conjured out of one part wishes and two parts desperation and stupidity.
Vadim turns to a younger man standing in the shadows and tilts his chin at me. The skinny boy with a neck tattoo, sunken cheeks, and a mess of dark blond curls walks over.
“Andrei, take her out back to the Night Governor’s office. I’ll deal with this situation later,” Vadim says.
I keep my eyes on the boy’s bony hands as he pushes a security bar on a fire exit next to the bar and beckons me over. My back straightens and I don’t turn back toward Stevie as I hear him tell Vadim, “I’ll come with her.”
But I hear Vadim’s response. “I know exactly who you are. You’re the guy who’s always wanted to fuck her, and you can stay right here.”
I let the door slam behind me on the knowledge that if he knows who Stevie is, then he’s known who I am for a long time. And he didn’t come to find me.