Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ALEKSANDR
My time in the penalty box is up with three minutes still left before the buzzer sounds to end the second period.
To no one’s surprise, Coach doesn’t put me back on the ice.
He also doesn’t even look at me when I get back to the bench, so I know how pissed off he is.
I’m the steady one, the player he can always depend on, the one who’s a role model for the other players. Until these last two games.
After this last penalty, I can’t afford to let my temper get the best of me. With a new contract on the line, I also can’t afford to make these kinds of mistakes.
I keep my head down as we march through the hallway toward the locker room.
No one speaks to me, and I don’t blame them.
Anaheim scored two more goals during the power play, so we’re down three to one right now.
I can’t even convince myself it isn’t my fault, and my own guilt and my teammates’ silent accusations hang heavy in the stale air outside the locker room.
There’s a holdup at the locker room entrance as we enter single file, each player’s shoulder pads taking up the full width of the doorway.
At the end of the line, I’m a couple players away from the door when Thompson steps out of the way and Coach steps through the door.
He’s followed by my agent, Jameson Flynn, who was apparently in the locker room. Shit, this is not good.
Jameson has never once come to see me during a game. I can’t imagine why he’s even down here unless it’s to rip me a new asshole and remind me that I’m costing him a lot of money right now by not getting my shit together. At this moment, that’s the last thing I need.
“Ivanov,” Coach barks. “Go with Flynn.” My agent turns to head down the hallway.
“Wait, what?” I ask, glancing between my agent and my coach, and eyeing the locker room behind him. “I need to know what the plan of attack is, I need to come back into this game with my head on straight.”
Coach reaches up and puts his hand on my shoulder. “There’s a family emergency, son. Go with Flynn.”
My stomach roils and I feel like I could throw up on the spot. Stella. What’s wrong with Stella?
I turn toward Jameson, the question poised on my lips.
“It’s not Stella,” he says, his voice level and firm. “Let’s go.”
I dip my head toward his as we walk down the hall together. “What the hell is going on? I don’t have any family aside from Stella.”
He stops in front of a conference room. There’s a window, but the shades are down so I can’t see inside. “This is about you getting your shit together. You’ve got five minutes.” He opens the door and with a strength I wasn’t expecting, he pushes me inside.
I stumble as my skate slides along the carpeted floor, but I right myself with my hand on the back of an office chair that’s sitting at a table. I toss my helmet and gloves on the table and turn back toward the door to demand Jameson explain himself, and that’s when I catch sight of her.
Petra, my heart screams. She came back!
She fucking left you, my brain argues.
I’m so dumbfounded with the fight that’s happening inside me—the tangible need to grab her and hold her is at odds with the instinct to protect myself—that I just stare at her stupidly.
“What the actual hell do you think you’re doing out there?” she asks as she pushes her chair back and stands.
“I’m having a crappy game.” It’s a struggle to keep the emotions I’m feeling—the anger, the sadness, the hopelessness—out of my voice. I’m good at being unreadable, so I school my face into the neutral mask I usually wear and make sure there’s a solid layer of armor around my broken heart.
“This is not a crappy game. This is a career ending performance when it should be the pinnacle of your year: another Stanley Cup championship and your choice of where you want to go when your contract is up.” Why the fuck does she sound mad?
“Instead, you’re showing all these clubs that you’re not serious about your game, that you can’t keep it together when the pressure’s on. ”
“And why do you think that is? Why do you think I’m struggling to keep my shit together right now, Petra?” I prop my stick up against the corner of the walls nearest me.
“I assume that you’re trying to blame your utterly piss-poor performance”—she shakes her head—“on me leaving you last weekend.”
My eyes rake over her. She said she wanted to make this marriage work, then she left me and Stella. Of course I’m pissed and my performance is suffering—Stella and I are both heartbroken and I’m still trying to figure out how long it will be before she stops crying herself to sleep every night.
A scoff bubbles up out of the back of my throat. “And now what? You think showing up at my game and yelling at me about my game is somehow going to make things better?”
I notice Petra is wearing a black form-fitting dress that hits at her knee.
She’s got black heels with those red soles that I know matter to lots of women.
She’s sexy and sophisticated and looks like she came straight here from a business meeting.
Meanwhile, my hockey uniform is practically stiff with dried sweat and my beard is damp.
“No, I think that you accepting that I needed a few days to sort out my emotions is what’s going to make things better.
Yes, I left last weekend. But what did you expect me to do when you told me that you’d lied to me, repeatedly, basically as long as we’ve been friends?
That’s an almost impossible piece of news to get over, Aleksandr.”
My heart sinks. She’s not wrong. “Yes, I kept something huge from you, and I should have come clean much earlier. I own that, and I am deeply sorry. I should have told you from the beginning, or at least when we reconnected in Tom’s office.
I know it will take time to rebuild that trust. I’ve been committed to rebuilding that trust, Petra—everything I’ve done since you’ve been back is geared toward that.
But you didn’t even give me a chance to explain my reasons. You just left.”
“You can’t be committed to rebuilding trust while continuing to lie.”
I let that sobering thought sink in. As usual, she’s right.
“I had been planning on telling you, I was just trying to find the right time. I didn’t know how to say that my own father might be responsible for the death of your mom and brother.
Or explain your dad’s role in this arranged marriage.
I just wanted to save you the pain of having to deal with those facts, because they’ve been eating me alive for a decade and a half. ”
“Sasha,” she says, stepping forward. “You are not responsible for your father’s actions—”
“But if I hadn’t stayed home sick that day—”
“You are not responsible for what happened to my mom and Victor, just like you are not responsible for our fathers’ choices. And I already know why my dad made that decision.”
“You do?” This whole time, I’ve been trying to protect her from the truth of her father’s involvement, and she’s known why he did this? How is that possible?
“The last thing he said to me when I left to go to boarding school in Switzerland was, ‘I would do anything to make sure you have the life you deserve.’” She takes a deep breath. “In hindsight, I think he did what he thought he needed to do in order to help me have the life I wanted.”
Her eyes are watering, and I close the distance between us with one large step so I can cup her face in my hand.
“Petra, I am so sorry that I lied. I swear on all that’s holy—it won’t happen again. Everything I’ve ever done is to protect you, to make sure you have the life you deserved.”
“You have to trust that you can tell me hard things, and that I will be able to deal with them,” she says.
“You are the strongest person I know,” I admit. “I didn’t keep this from you because I thought you couldn’t handle it. I kept it from you because I didn’t want you to have another terrible truth to deal with.”
Her voice is firm when she says, “I can handle the hard truths, Sasha. I can’t handle lies.”
I rest my lips against the top of her head, then mumble, “I know, and I’m so, so sorry,” into her hair.
Then I pull back, drop my hand from her face, and look her in the eye.
“I am one hundred percent committed to this relationship, and I will do whatever it takes to make this—to make us—work. I know it will take time for you to trust me again, and I’m willing to work for that.
But also, I need to know you aren’t going to run the moment things get hard. ”
“You don’t get to be mad that I needed a few days to think things through. You left, and you didn’t come back for fourteen years. I just needed a little time to work things out in my head. I didn’t wait fourteen years.”
“The two situations are not the same, Petra. We were children back then. We’re adults now, and there’s a child involved.
How do you think Stella took it when I had to explain to her that you left?
And then when Avery came to get your bags and Stella began to understand that you weren’t coming back? ”
“But I was coming back.”
“Well, how were we supposed to know that? You leaving broke Stella’s heart…and mine.” Of course my voice has to go and crack on the word mine. Now there’s a lump in my throat, and I’m having trouble swallowing it down.
She looks up at me, her face as open and unguarded as I’ve ever seen it. And all I see there is hope. “I was in Laguna Beach tonight when I saw the game on the TV at a restaurant as I was leaving,” she says, her voice low, and soft, and husky.
I just stare at her, then raise my eyebrows in question, because what the hell does this have to do with breaking my and Stella’s hearts?