One Last Shot: Chapter 13

It’s early afternoon when the doors to the elevator open into my apartment. I step into the entryway and am met with . . . nothing.

What did you expect, a fucking welcoming party?

When I first bought this place, it was my refuge. My calm oasis in the busy city. I could open the door and walk into silence, leaving the stress of practice, the chaos of the streets below, and the pressure of the game all behind me. When I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone, which was most of the time honestly, I could hide out here. But over the past few months, I guess I’ve gotten used to Stella being here, usually with a nanny, sometimes also with a housecleaner or a private chef.

So today’s silence is leaves me feeling, I don’t know . . . alone? But not in the good way.

I’ve finished getting my bags out of the elevator when Petra’s text comes in.

For some reason, a couple hours feels like an eternity. I’ve been away from them for nearly four days. I miss Stella like crazy, and Petra, well, I always want more time with her.

Why does her comment have me wondering if she has a voracious sexual appetite as well? I bet she does. She strikes me as someone entirely comfortable with her own body, who wouldn’t let feelings or relationship status get in the way of satisfying her needs. Which makes her all that much more dangerous to be around. Because it doesn’t matter that I’ve wanted her since I was seventeen. I can never have her, even if it’s what she wants. I don’t know why she would want that, given that I made it abundantly clear when we were teenagers that I did not see her like that. And since she’s been back, I’ve continued with that charade, plus I’ve lied to her, basing our whole arrangement on partial truths. She can’t, and shouldn’t, trust me. Not to mention she’s working for me planning our end of season celebration in addition to being responsible for Stella. Having sex with her would be wrong on every level.

I shake my head. How did I even go down that path? There is no indication Petra is even interested in a sexual relationship. Except, the way she was looking at me that day in the kitchen when I took my shirt off, and that moment we shared right before that frigid witch Irina showed up. The way she looked at me when I got out of the shower the other day, and her voice grew even more husky on the phone last night when I told her I was getting into the bath. I’d be lying to myself if I couldn’t admit that there was some heat in those moments. But most of the “heat” has come in the moments she’s mad at me, which far outnumber the moments she looks like she’s undressing me with her eyes. Where she’s concerned, I can’t seem to do anything right.

A couple hours later, they still aren’t home, and I’m heading downstairs to grab the food delivery when Tom calls. It’s as if he could sense that I just spent a couple hours trying not to think about whether Petra spending more time with Stella is making her any more likely to help me get citizenship so I can adopt my niece.

“Any progress?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“You said I needed to let you do this your way,” he says, “but the needle is not moving forward enough since you two were in my office.”

“You don’t push a woman like Petra,” I tell him. “She’ll decide in her own time.”

“Well, let’s just hope nothing happens while we’re waiting for her to make up her fucking mind.” Tom sounds pissed off.

“What’s up?” I ask. “You aren’t this mad about my situation. What’s got you so spun up?”

Tom sighs. “Avery’s going away with her girlfriends this weekend.”

I try not to let my laughter escape as the elevator doors open. I take the bag from the delivery man who’s standing there, nod my thanks as I hand him a cash tip, and step back into the elevator before it closes. “You sound so pathetic right now.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”

Tom’s been dating his assistant for a few months now, and after a very tumultuous beginning, they’re practically inseparable.

“Is this the first time you’ll spend a night apart since she moved in?”

“Yep. What are you doing tonight? I probably need to get out of my apartment, want to go grab a drink or something?”

“Can’t. I just got home, haven’t seen Stella in a few days. Besides, Petra probably has plans tonight since she’s kind of been stuck home while I’m gone.”

Tom starts to say something, then pauses. Finally, he says, “Avery wants to see Petra again.”

“Why? Do they know each other?” Didn’t they only meet for like two seconds when Petra came to Tom’s office last week?

“Yeah, well, Petra sent her flowers on Friday as a thank you for arranging her hotel, and they’ve been texting since then. You guys want to come over for dinner one night or something?”

“When’s Avery back? Sunday?”

“Yeah.”

“I have a game Sunday night, but maybe Monday?” I ask as I walk back into my apartment and bring the food into the kitchen.

“Sure,” he says.

“I don’t really have a sitter for Stella, so how about you guys come here instead?” I take the containers out of the bag and set them on the counter.

“Fine.” The word is clipped, his voice annoyed.

“Man, you sound like a real asshole right now. Go out and have some fun while Avery’s away. You used to know how to do that before her, remember?”

“Before her, I used to know how to go out to pick up girls. Can’t really do that now,” he says. “Or, I don’t want to anyway.”

I hear the elevator doors open. “Okay, Stella and Petra are home, I gotta go. Go get drunk tonight or something,” I suggest. “Don’t just sit home pining for Avery.”

“Asshole,” Tom mumbles as he hangs up the phone.

I hang up the phone and walk into the entryway, and Stella runs to meet me in the dining room, then wraps her arms around my legs so I’m immobile. I run my huge hand over her hair. “I missed you,” I tell her.

“Missed you more,” she says.

“Who were you talking to?” Petra asks as she follows Stella into the room.

“Tom.”

“Your lawyer?”

I nod and bend down to pick up Stella for a proper hug.

“Why is he pining for Avery? Isn’t she his executive assistant?”

Oh, she doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t. “They’ve been living together for a few months.”

Her mouth forms a perfect little O. “I had no idea. Maybe that’s why she loves her job so much?” Petra laughs, and the sound rumbles around in my belly the same way it rumbles around in her throat.

She glances at Stella where she rests her head on my shoulder, the back of her head toward Petra. “Think they have sex at work?” Petra mouths silently.

I raise my eyebrows and nod my head knowingly, and Petra laughs.

“Can we eat dinner?” Stella asks. “Then I need to go pack my bag.”

“Pack what bag?” I ask.

“For my sleepover with Harper tomorrow.” Stella gives me such a huge grin that I don’t know what to say in response. “Thank you for saying yes!” She gives my neck another big squeeze before wiggling out of my arms and moving toward the kitchen.

Petra opens her mouth to say something, but I silence her with, “We’ll talk about this later.”

She raises an eyebrow like she’s looking forward to going toe-to-toe with me over this. I don’t know if I love it or hate it that she never backs down from a fight.

Over dinner Stella catches me up on the last few days, including updating me on the situation with Jason, who hasn’t so much as said a word to her since she pushed him down at recess. Petra looks absolutely imperious about this, but it’s only been a day. We’ll see if the truce lasts.

“When do I get to come to one of your games?” Stella asks, out of the blue.

“You want to come to a game?”

“I bet it would be more fun to watch in person than on TV!”

“You watched my games?”

“She watched the first period of each game this week,” Petra clarifies. “The second and third periods were too late for her to stay up for.”

What is this tightness in my chest?

“You watched the games too?” I ask.

“Of course.” I can’t decipher the look she gives me. She seems confused at my surprise, but I know for a fact she hadn’t watched any of my games before this week.

“I used to watch them all the time with Papa,” Stella says, and I marvel at how well-adjusted she sounds when she talks about her parents. Meanwhile, I can hardly think of Niko without evoking all kinds of rough emotions.

“I could probably get tickets to Sunday’s game,” I say, “if you both want to come.” I don’t want to assume that just because Stella wants to be there in person, Petra does too.

Stella and Petra look at each other and grin. “Perfect,” Petra says. “But see if you can get tickets close to the ice. I don’t want to be stuck up in a box away from the action.”

That makes me chuckle, because of course she wants to be where the action is. And in a way that’s easier for me too, because if she showed up in one of the team’s luxury boxes where most of the other wives and girlfriends watch the game, my teammates would be all over me in two seconds. As far as they know, Alex Ivanov lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps hockey—there is no time for anything else.

They don’t even know about Stella, so how in the world would I explain Petra?

“Explain to me why I just helped my niece pack for a sleepover I already said no to,” I say as I walk into the den after putting Stella to bed.

Petra’s curled up on one end of the couch with her laptop on her knees, so I take the chair closest to her. I try to ignore the long expanse of smooth skin on her legs. Those sleep shorts she’s got on are incredibly short and leave nothing to the imagination.

She turns to face me. “Did you say ‘no’? Or did you continuously brush Sofia off when she asked?”

“Either way, I didn’t say yes.”

“You do know that Stella and Harper used to have sleepovers regularly, right?”

“Define regularly.”

“Like usually once a month they’d stay with Sofia and her husband, giving Niko and Colette a night off, and once a month they’d stay with your brother, giving Sofia and her husband some alone time. It was a normal part of Stella’s life, and it sure seems like you’ve—” She pauses like she’s considering her words. “—unintentionally taken that away from Stella.”

It pisses me off that she’s right, but also she doesn’t know how much I hate letting Stella out of my sight. She’s the only family I have left. “You don’t know the whole story,” I say.

One of her eyebrows rises higher than the other. “You’re going to have to give me more than that if you want me to understand your reasoning.”

“You don’t have to understand,” I say, the frustration evident in my voice. “I just need you to do what I say when it comes to Stella.”

She sets her laptop on the couch and stands, which has me standing too. It’s a face-off without the puck. Fighting with Petra has always been a favorite pastime.

“I’m not here to do your bidding. I’m not your fucking employee,” she says, her words slow and deliberate, and so low they sound like sexual seduction instead of the frustration they actually are. “I’m here to do what’s best for Stella.”

“What I decide is best for Stella, is best for her. I need you to trust me on that.”

She inches forward so we’re nearly toe-to-toe. “How can I possibly trust you when you’re not being honest with me?”

“Because it’s me,” I say, and I know my words sound desperate. I need her to go back to trusting me and all I can do is appeal to the reminder of the friendship we once had. “Because we were best friends once, and because even though you’re obviously still mad at me, I think deep down you know that I have your best interests at heart too. Always have.”

She barks out a scornful laugh. “Right.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. You want me to trust you, because you’re you? You are the one person in this world who has disappointed me beyond everyone else. My life has been a series of men disappointing me, so for you to have first place in that category speaks volumes.” There’s color creeping into her cheeks. Petra doesn’t blush. I know because I spent my entire childhood trying to get a rise out of her that way before realizing it was impossible. So this blush can only be her anger creeping into her skin.

I know she intended for those words to slice into me, and they do. I don’t know what’s stopping me from telling her why I left her like I did. I could tell her I did it for her, to protect her from an unwanted marriage. I suppose I hold back because in telling her the truth, I might have to admit the depth of my feelings, or the fact that it was me—not my father—who paid for her boarding school. But mostly, I think, because I’d have to explain why my father’s ultimatum was to either marry her or never see her again, which means I’d also have to tell her the truth about him and her mother. And I don’t think I can do that without permanently ruining things between us.

Now that she’s back in my life, I’d rather have this fractured relationship with her than have her never speak to me again. But even more importantly, and the only thing that should matter to me right now—I need her to agree to help me adopt Stella. And if she knew the truth, she might not.

“You’ve got nothing to say about that?” she asks when I’ve been lost in my own thoughts for too long.

“I know I hurt you, Petra, and I’m sorry,” I tell her as I put my hands on her shoulders. “But I need you to know that I’ve only ever acted to protect you, just like I’m doing now for Stella.”

“To protect me? By leaving me? What am I missing?” Her eyebrows dip and I want to cup her face in my hands, smooth out her furrowed brows with my thumbs.

I can’t say what I really need to say, so instead I tell her, “You were so young. I wasn’t what you really wanted.”

“What you know about me, and what I wanted back then, could fill a thimble. You don’t get to make decisions for me, Aleksandr. Not then, not now. But you do get to make decisions for Stella, and I fail to see how keeping her from returning to normal things, like sleepovers at her best friend’s place, is what’s in her best interest.”

She’s on her toes, leaning up toward me as she drills her finger into my chest. She’s so fucking close it’s hard to breathe.

“I just want to keep her as safe as possible. I know she’s safe here.”

Petra’s voice softens when she says, “Part of why you want to adopt Stella is to make sure that Sofia becomes her guardian if anything were to happen to you, right? So there’s no one she could possibly be safer with.”

She does have a point and if I have to bend somewhere, this is probably the right place.

“Besides”—she shrugs, which has my hands falling from her shoulders—“you trusted her with me after I’d known her for a week. Sofia and Harper are practically family to her.”

“Of course I trust you, I’ve known you my whole life.” I soften my stance, no longer feeling like we’re ready to go to battle.

“You have a funny way of remembering things.” Her lip curves up and her laugh is sardonic. “Until I was thirteen, you wouldn’t give me the time of day. When I was sixteen, you disappeared from my life. Don’t give me this ‘I’ve known you my whole life’ shit when we really only knew each other for three years.”

I can feel the muscles in my back tense up. It makes sense that this is how she remembers things.

“You think I didn’t know you before then, and haven’t followed what you’ve been up to since?” I’m dangerously close to saying too much, and willing myself to shut the hell up.

She folds her arms across her chest. I wish she wouldn’t do that. All it does is push up her cleavage into the scooped neck of her T-shirt so I have a hard time focusing on anything but her chest. I drag my eyes away, looking up at her face, but it’s impossible not to focus in on those lips. Wide and full, they mock me because all I want to do is taste them. Fuck, I didn’t think through this whole having her move in plan before jumping into it.

Finally she says, “Careful, you’re sounding a lot like a stalker.” Her voice is teasing, and she steps away from me, the moment of tension broken.

When she sinks back into her seat, I do the same, crossing my ankle over my knee. I’m half relieved that she deescalated this before it turned into something more, and half disappointed to not find out what that “something more” would have been. Fighting with her has always felt like foreplay.

“I have to be honest, I didn’t even once envision a scenario where my wife called me a stalker.”

“That is so weird,” she says, shaking her head.

I know very well what she means, but I can’t help teasing her more. “You think I should have envisioned a wife who thought I was a stalker?”

She laughs when I wink at her, then shakes her head again. “Can you not call me your wife? It’s just . . .”

“I know,” I say with exaggerated sympathy, “it takes a while to get over the horror of marrying me, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t be a dick.” She rolls her eyes. “One day you’re telling me you never want to see me again, fourteen years pass, and the next time I see you, you’re telling me we’re married. Sorry if I’m not exactly doing cartwheels at this progression of events.”

I skip right over justifying how I left things with us way back when. The longer I can go without having to explain that night, the better. “Have you at least given our situation some thought?” I have to ask—not because Tom called earlier, but because it’s been eating away at me. It’s the giant anvil hanging over my head at all times, and it’s hard to keep pretending that I’m not constantly thinking about it.

“I have,” she says, and rests her head on the back cushions of the chair. She’s looking up at the ceiling, not at me, which makes it hard to read her. “And I’m trying to figure out a way to help you that doesn’t involve us lying about being married, having lived together, all that. There has to be another way for you to adopt Stella.”

“Tom’s read through the laws pretty closely. New York only allows US citizens to adopt children who are US citizens.”

“I know the US naturalization process is really complicated. I’m sure Tom’s great, but maybe we should talk to an immigration lawyer instead?”

Even though it’s not actually possible and totally cliché, it feels like my heart skips a beat. “We?”

“Well,” she hedges, “yeah. We.”

I nod and hold in the smile that’s trying desperately to claw its way out of me.

“Okay. I’ll ask Tom for a recommendation.”

“Speaking of recommendations,” she says, “any progress on a new nanny?”

“Yeah, the agency sent over some bios earlier today. Want to see them?”

“Obviously.”

“You don’t trust me after Irina, huh?”

“Should I?”

“I want to do right by Stella,” I assure her.

“Then you need to find someone who’s going to love and support her, not some tyrant on a power trip.”

I both hate that she’s right and love that she understands what Stella needs and is telling me. I pull up the bios on my phone and move onto the couch cushion next to her, keeping enough distance that we’re not touching but that she can see my phone.

I reach across my body with the device so she can take it and look through the options, but instead she leans over, resting her head on my shoulder and looking down at the phone. I hold my breath, trying not to breathe in her scent, not to notice how warm her body is where it’s pushed up against mine, and definitely trying to forget about the fact that from this angle I can see right down her shirt and she doesn’t seem to be wearing a bra. I shift to rest my free hand under the arm that’s holding out the phone. Hopefully, she thinks I’m supporting my arm instead of trying to hide the bulge that’s growing in my pants as I soak in her proximity, her smell, and her amazing body.

She swipes through the bios, reading each resumé carefully and analyzing each person’s photo, then returns to a few for a second look. I try not to be the creep checking her out while she’s focused on important details regarding my kid, but I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to stop my reaction to Petra.

She tells me the three that would be her top choices, justifying each with statements like “she’s nannied for an only child before,” or “she really seems to love kids,” or “I like her approach to teaching self-discipline.”

“I’ll follow up with the agency and see if we can get interviews with them . . . assuming you want to be part of that?”

“Of course I do,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say, resting my cheek on her head for a brief moment.

She burrows her head deeper into my shoulder, a shared armless hug that makes it feel like we’re progressing into trusting each other again. Then she stands abruptly. “I’m headed to bed.”

The disappointment flows through me like a heavy metal, making me feel lethargic and half dead. Then in response, my adrenaline surges. I want to fight to keep her here in this room with me. Let her go. You’re playing a dangerous game.

I know that in the end, Petra will leave. I know she has a life she loves and wants to get back to. I know that keeping her here with me and Stella, even in the short-term, isn’t fair to her. It’s like caging an eagle. She’s meant to be soaring somewhere else, not tied down here. And hoping for anything else is just setting myself up for disappointment. More importantly, the longer Petra stays, the more likely it is that Stella will be heartbroken when she leaves. That’ll make two of us. So I vow to keep Petra at a distance to protect both Stella and myself from the inevitable grief of losing her again.

“Goodnight,” I say, picking up my book off the coffee table. I refuse to look at her as she leaves, afraid that she’ll see what I’m feeling written plainly across my face.