One Last Shot: Chapter 27

I’m rolling up the sleeves of my custom tailored shirt—they don’t make dress shirts that fit guys with shoulders and arms the size of mine—as I walk out of my closet. Petra’s in Stella’s room helping her get ready, and I have butterflies in my stomach that I haven’t felt since my first time on the ice in the NHL. The three of us have done many things together, but somehow this feels different. This feels like a family thing.

I grab my phone to slip it into my pocket and see a message from my agent on the screen.

Well, shit. I guess Petra and I are having this conversation tonight, after all. I would have talked to her earlier today, but she was at the party location with her team finalizing everything, and when she got home, she was stressing about getting showered and ready in time. There is no way I am adding to her stress, or even having what’s sure to be a highly emotional conversation right before the party. So it’ll have to wait until later tonight, when everything else is wrapped up.

My bedroom door cracks open and I slip my phone into the front pocket of my dress pants. Petra slips through and looks relieved to see me. “Oh good, you’re dressed. Stella’s going to the bathroom. Her hair is done, she just needs help getting her dress on. Can you take care of that while I get myself dressed?”

“You’re not wearing that?” I eye the Go ahead and underestimate me, that’ll be fun! T-shirt she’s wearing with a pair of booty shorts.

“I mean, I can if you want.” She shrugs as if she’d be willing to step out of the house like that if I dared her.

“No.” A laugh rumbles out of my throat. “I want to be the only one to see you like this.”

I plant a kiss on the top of her head as she walks up and wraps her arms around my waist.

“You look . . . really nice,” she says. “I’ve never seen you this dressed up.” She tilts her head up and traces the length of my tie with the tip of her finger. “You look hot in a tie.”

“I have all kinds of plans for you and this tie later tonight,” I say as I give her ass a little smack with the palm of my hand.

She presses forward into my body, leans up on her toes, and whispers in my ear, “I. Can’t. Wait.” And just like that, I’m so turned on I know I’ll think of nothing else tonight except getting her home and naked. It should probably scare me that someone has this much influence over my thoughts, my body, and my soul, but it doesn’t. It feels right. It feels like it should always have been this way between us, and I hate that we wasted half our lives being apart.

Regret is my own form of punishment, I suppose. But after tonight, we can move forward without regret or fear clouding our vision. And whether we’re in LA or New York, I just want the three of us to be together.

With a kiss on my cheek, Petra turns wordlessly and heads into my closet to get dressed, and I head to Stella’s room. I find her standing in her underwear taking the dress she’s chosen for tonight off the hanger. It’s short sleeved with a knit scoop neck top, and a few rows of pleated fabric between the waist and hem. “Where’d this dress come from?” I ask.

“Petra got it for me today. Isn’t it perfect for your party? I mean, I know I’m not going to be there when the party is going on, but if I were, this dress would be perfect.”

“It is.”

Stella could easily have worn her pajamas since she’s leaving before the party starts, but the fact that Petra wanted her to feel included and to have the opportunity to dress up too . . . it’s so thoughtful. How did Petra find time today to go pick out a dress? Even if she sent her assistant out to find it, the fact that she prioritized that with everything else going on has a lump rising in my throat. “Can I help you get it over your head without messing up your hair?”

We’ve just gotten the dress on when I hear Petra’s voice behind me. “Wow, Stella, you look beautiful.”

I turn from where I’m kneeling next to Stella getting her dress straightened. Petra’s standing in the doorway with her hair slicked back, wearing a white formfitting dress that ends right at her knees. The dress skims across the tops of her breasts with nothing but thin spaghetti straps holding it up.

“You look beautiful,” Stella tells Petra. “Spin around, I want to see the back!”

Petra does as she’s instructed, spinning slowly in a circle. The spaghetti straps skim over her shoulders and meet the sides of the dress. The dress has no back, there’s nothing but skin from the low bun at the top of her neck to the curve of her lower back. Her feet are adorned with strappy gold sandals that wrap around her ankles and up her calves. She’s a Greek goddess come to enchant me with her beauty. Holy shit. Sixteen-year-old me would have had to excuse himself to the bathroom to take care of the erection that’s sprung up in my dress pants. I have slightly more control of my body and emotions now, especially with Stella standing right next to me.

Her eyes meet mine and the heat flares. I notice immediately how her nipples pucker beneath the fabric of her dress. I can’t imagine that she’s able to wear underwear with how low-cut that is in back, so I’m guessing she’s totally naked beneath the dress.

“I love that dress,” Stella says. “Can I wear it when I’m older?”

Petra laughs and says “Of course” at the same time I grind out “No way in hell” through my gritted teeth.

Petra ignores me and looks directly at Stella. “When you’re an adult, you can wear whatever you want. Your body, your choice. Don’t ever let anyone”—here she glances from Stella to me—“especially a man, tell you what you can and can’t wear.”

“Okay,” Stella says softly beside me.

I consider what Petra’s telling her. “Petra’s right,” I tell Stella, even though it pains me to think of my six-year-old ever being as grown-up and sexy as Petra.

“You guys ready to go?” Petra asks.

Stella springs forward to take Petra’s hand. “Yes, let’s go!” She looks over her shoulder at me, where I’m still on my knees on the floor. “Come on, Dada,” she says and drags Petra forward through the door. Petra glances over her shoulder at me as I stand and adjust myself, and the way her eyes are dark orbs of black pupil surrounded only by a thin ring of her blue irises, I know she’s forgiven me my earlier comment and is already thinking the same thoughts I am right about now.

The night is winding down, one player after another coming over to thank me for hosting this party. Some, like my coaches, are heading home because it’s late. Others, because they have a tipsy wife or girlfriend hanging on their arm and whispering too-loud dirty thoughts into their ear.

In a moment of quiet reprieve between goodbyes, I tip the beer bottle back, then take in the scene Petra has created for the party. It really is amazing. A big awning covers the outdoor roof deck, and rows of string lights hang from the highest part of the brick building down to the low point of the awning opposite it. The long length of the roof deck is a low glass wall, and beyond it are spectacular views of the river and the Brooklyn Bridge, with the Manhattan skyline lit up beyond them. A few people are still curled up, their drinks on the gold and glass coffee tables between several sets of velvet sofas facing each other. Along the glass wall, leather-backed barstools sit tucked under the glass countertops that adjoin the wall—those too are littered with drink glasses being left behind faster than the waitstaff can clean them up. There are plants everywhere, especially in the corners like the one I’m standing in, and around the bar at the opposite end of the deck.

My eyes land on Petra. She’s talking to her assistant, Morgan. In that tight white dress, she’s sexier than she has any right to be while working and I’ve been taking tonight to observe, so I know I’m not the only one who has noticed. The guys have all eyed her with interest, the wives and girlfriends with a little bit of jealousy. I want to slap a sign on her that reads “She’s mine,” but maybe a ring on that finger would be slightly less caveman and more socially acceptable.

“Is that the girl from the game?”

The question shocks me out of my stupor and I turn my head to find Thompson standing right next to me.

I don’t have to ask what girl, or which game. “Yep.”

“I’ve been trying all night to figure out why she looks so familiar. You couldn’t take your eyes off her then either, even while we were playing.”

I think about how he held my ass up when I almost got knocked over because I was so busy staring at her after I scored my goal. “We won, didn’t we?” I give him the side-eye when I say it.

“She’s got a kid?”

I furrow my brow at the question, wondering why he thinks she’s a mom until I realize that last time he saw her she was holding Stella. I don’t know how to respond to that, but I’m starting to feel like a bit more honesty might be beneficial to my teammates realizing I’m not a hockey-playing robot.

“That was my niece she was holding.”

Thompson makes a sound in the back of his throat like this clears something up, even though I imagine he still has some questions about that.

“You’re into her?” he asks.

“What gives you that idea?” My voice is so sarcastic he actually snorts.

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t give her my number?”

“Not if you know what’s good for you.” He probably assumes I’ll beat his ass if he tries, but really, I’m just saving him from Petra’s response.

“You going home with her tonight?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” I respond instead.

“So yes, then,” he says.

I’m not going home with her, actually. She lives with me. The words float through my brain, but I trap them there and take another long swallow of my beer instead. She doesn’t technically live with me. She stays with me when she’s in New York. We need to figure out a more permanent solution, and I’m not talking to my teammates about our relationship until it’s more settled.

Tonight. We have to figure things out tonight.

“All right, I’m heading out,” Thompson says. “Just wanted to say goodnight. And good party. Mystery woman over there did a nice job.”

“I’ll let her know,” I say, and we clasp each other on the shoulder in farewell.

The last few people leave and we’re down to only me and Petra, her staff, and the waitstaff. She ambles over to me in those sexy heels, leans into my shoulder, and sighs. “My feet are killing me,” she groans.

“Want me to massage them?” I ask, and nod toward the empty couches. “Plenty of space.”

“I would feel guilty if everyone were cleaning up around us while I sat here with you rubbing my feet.”

“I’ll wait until cleanup is done.” This seems like a good place to have the conversation we need to have tonight. If we go home, we’ll end up naked in bed. We need to talk first.

“Okay, you’ve got a deal.”

I set my beer on the edge of the balcony to my right. “Okay, what do we need to do?”

“You’re paying for this,” she says, looking around the space, “you’re not working.”

“I’d feel guilty if everyone was cleaning up around me while I stood here having a beer.”

“Touché.” She rolls her eyes at me. “Fine, we need to move these couches and tables inside.” She points toward the glass wall to the inside space where food was served. The waitstaff is already in there, breaking down tables and pulling the spindle chairs to the side of the room.

It doesn’t take long for me and Petra’s staff to move the couches and coffee tables inside, then I head out to start grabbing the leather barstools and bringing them in too. “How’s this all work?” I ask Petra when she steps up beside me. “You rent the furniture and they deliver it for the event?”

“Pretty much, yes. The hard thing is finding enough of the same items for a coherent look. Sometimes for events like this, where I want eight matching couches, I have to buy the furniture. Then Morgan turns around and sells it online, but that adds a whole layer of complexity when you’re only in town for a few days. Back in Park City, I have a whole storage unit with stuff we keep to reuse at events.”

I pull out one of the last two barstools for her. “Here, sit for a minute. Let me rub your aching feet.”

Petra glances into the interior loft space where her team is chatting as they grab a few remaining items and head toward the elevator. “You good, Petra?” Morgan calls.

“Yeah, we’ll lock everything up,” she calls out. “Thanks everyone!”

They call out their goodbyes and Morgan says, “Okay, see you at the airport tomorrow.”

I see Petra’s shoulders reflexively stiffen, and I hope it means she hates the idea of leaving as much as I hate the thought of her going.

“See you then,” she says.

“Are you flying back to Park City with them?” I ask as we watch them all get into the elevator.

“No, but my flight to LA leaves at the same time as their flight through Denver, and apparently our gates are really close. Morgan had mentioned that earlier, which is”—she shrugs—“whatever. I just wasn’t planning on being in work mode tomorrow morning.”

“You seem like a pretty close-knit team.”

“We are. It’s been hard on them with me being in LA.”

“I can sympathize with that feeling,” I tell her as I reach down and pull her foot into my lap.

“Hmm.” She lets the sound out slowly as I untie the gold straps that wind around her calf and slide her sandal from her foot.

“What does ‘hmm’ mean?” I ask as I scoop up her other foot and repeat the process of removing her other heeled sandal.

“I’m just trying to figure out what you mean by that.”

“What’s to figure out? I’ve missed you while you’ve been in LA and it’s been hard on me being separated like that. I want you back here in New York,” I say and she shakes her head back and forth slowly. “Or I want to be in LA, if that’s what it takes.”

Her eyes shoot up to mine, huge and wide and questioning. “What are you saying?”

“I want us to be together wherever it works. And with my contract up in New York after the finals, I’m free to either renegotiate with New York or try to move to another team.”

“You would leave New York?” Her voice is quiet and unsure.

“To be with you? Yes.” My thumbs are making small circles on the ball of one of her feet, and I slide one thumb down along the arch of her foot. Her eyes roll back until they’re closed and a small sigh escapes her lips.

“This . . .” she says. “This feels very sudden.”

“Petra.” Her name comes out rough with my Russian accent. I hold the long e and roll the r deliberately, and no other words follow until she opens her eyes and looks at me. “Is this the direction you see our relationship heading in?”

She pauses, then says, “Yes, eventually.”

“But not now?”

Her lips part, but no words come out. I think back to what my dad said about her and her mom: She knew how I felt about her and she used every available opportunity to manipulate me, sharing little pieces of herself here and there when it was convenient for her, then denying there was anything between us and telling me I was a jealous fool. And I’ve watched Petra do the same to you . . .

No, that’s not Petra. She’s not denying there’s anything between us.

“I don’t know,” Petra says, and I’ve almost forgotten what I asked.

“What would be different if we waited longer, aside from having to figure out how to make this work long-distance which, let’s be honest, is not working all that well.” Aside from the couple days I spent with her in LA, it’s been over a month since Stella and I had seen her before this weekend. The FaceTime calls we fit in only made it harder because we got to see her without really seeing her.

“Sasha,” she says, as she reaches over and her hand strokes down the side of my face. “I don’t know what my life even is right now. I don’t know if my show will get picked up for a second season—”

“It will,” I say emphatically. I saw the season premier, I read the reviews, I saw the ratings. If the other episodes are as good as the premier, there’s no way she’s not getting a second season. And I’ve seen another episode while she was filming it, so I know how good they’re going to be.

“But what if it doesn’t? What if you move yourself and Stella to LA, and I don’t get a second season and then I go back to Park City?”

I think about this for a second before I ask, “You’d go back to Park City even if I’d moved to LA?”

Her eyes are wide as she lifts her shoulders in a questioning motion, like she’s pleading with me to understand. “I don’t know. My whole life is in Park City.”

“Your whole life? What about me and Stella?”

“You know what I mean.” She looks away, out at the Manhattan skyline, like the answer to my question might be somewhere over there.

“No,” I say as I switch to massaging her other foot. “I don’t.”

“I mean that everything I’ve built, my business, my employees, my circle of friends . . . it’s all in Park City.” The look on her face is so conflicted.

I think about how both Jackson and Sierra have moved away, and how hard Petra’s told me that’s been on her to only have Lauren in Park City.

“Is that something you could be flexible about?” The knot in my stomach is growing tighter by the moment. “There’s no NHL team near Park City. It’s not even an option for me.”

She takes a deep, steadying breath. “I think I’d rather come back to New York than have you move out to Los Angeles.”

“Okay, we can work with that.”

“It’s just, I have contacts here. I can much more easily move my business here than I can start over in LA. And whether the show gets picked up for a second season or not . . .” She pauses, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then says, “I think I’d rather be here with you and Stella, even if it means I can’t do the show.”

My stomach flips over. “You’d walk away from the show?” I’m stunned. I didn’t expect this at all. I know how much the message of that show means to her, how privileged she feels to get to tell these women’s stories.

“There’s an interview that will air later this season, I think it’s episode thirteen. In it, a super famous actress said something to me that just . . . resonated. She told me: ‘If you’re someone who is stuck working toward goals some previous version of you wanted, when what you now want is actually something else, then you’re not being true to yourself.’ I’ve heard those words over and over in my head since she said them, and it’s like she knew exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. This show, the platform it gives me, it is something I wanted. But what I want now is you. You and Stella. And I think we can make that happen more easily here in New York than anywhere else.”

I drop her feet and stand, spreading her legs in her seat so I can get as close to her as possible. Her arms come around my waist, pulling me to her. I tip my head down and our foreheads rest against each other.

“Thank God,” I say. “For a few minutes there, I thought maybe we were becoming our parents.”

I feel her pull back with a sharp inhale of her breath. “What do you mean by that?”

Shit. I should have thought more about those words. I should have planned out how I would tell her.

“Sasha,” she says when I don’t respond instantly. “What do you mean, you thought maybe we were becoming our parents?”

I take a deep breath. “I’ve been feeling like I should talk to you about something, but also feeling like nothing good can come of talking about this part of our past.”

She sits back in her chair, leaning against the seat back. She’s officially as far away as she can get without getting up and walking away, which I don’t take as a good sign.

“If there’s something you’re keeping from me, I need to know about it right fucking now.” The hard edge in her voice matches the icy glint in her eyes. “Don’t you dare ask me to make a life-altering choice about our relationship if you’re hiding something big.”

“I’m not hiding anything,” I say and hold my hands up in what I hope is a gesture of peace. “But I do know things about our parents, and things about our past, that I wish I didn’t.”

“Go on,” she says, her voice deadly low.

“There was something happening between my father and your mother. I’m not sure how far it ever went, but my father said she wrecked him, always giving little pieces of herself but never willing to completely give herself over.”

“Did they date before she met my father? In college or something?”

“I don’t know. I know they knew each other in college, so maybe? But I’m talking about when we were older.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “How much older?”

I tell her about the day I stayed home from school, and what I overheard before her mother left to pick Viktor up.

“So they both died because she was rushing home to prevent your father from talking to mine?” Her voice is ice.

“I think it’s likely that’s why she was driving so fast, yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me back then?”

“I didn’t know for sure if there was any truth to my father’s accusations. And I didn’t want you or your father to think your mom had been cheating if it weren’t true.”

“But it was true?”

“I think there was something going on between them. I’m not sure how far it went.”

“When did you figure it out?”

I reach out to pull her hand into mine but she pulls away, folding her hands in her lap so tightly her knuckles are white.

“I know this is hard to hear, which is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“When did you figure it out, Sasha?”

“My father confirmed it the night we signed the marriage license.”

“But you didn’t know it was a marriage license the night we signed that paperwork, right?” she clarifies, like she’s trying to trap me in a today lie instead of a years-old lie.

“Not when we signed it, no. I found out later that night.” Her eyes snap to mine, anger flashing in them, and now it’s my turn to look away.

“You told me . . . what, like two months ago, sitting in Tom’s office . . . that you didn’t know what we were signing back then. You told me that you thought it was just paperwork for your father to give my father the money for my boarding school.”

“That wasn’t a lie, Petra. I didn’t know what we were signing when we signed it.” I explain how I found out later that night in my dad’s office.

“Wait, so the money for my schooling was actually from you?” She’s sounding angrier by the second.

“That’s what you’re focused on here?”

“That’s the first thing, yes. You had no right to sign over part of your trust to me like that, without asking me first.”

“You needed to go to that school, and I would have done anything to see you happy. I still would.”

She purses her red lips. “You knew I wouldn’t take the money from you if you offered it, so you had your dad lie to me?”

It sounds worse than it was when she says it like that.

“I did what I had to do to make sure you had the opportunities you deserved.” There’s a finality in my voice because she can’t argue with that point.

“Okay, second then. You found out about the marriage license and contract that night, after we signed them?”

I nod.

“And again, you didn’t tell me?” It’s a rhetorical question.

“I made sure he wouldn’t file them, so there was no need to tell you. Or so I thought.”

“So, given the choice of either marrying me, or walking away forever, you took the latter option.” There’s no life in her voice. It’s just flat. Dead.

“You were sixteen years old. You were not ready to be married. And neither was I, not even at nineteen. And there was no way I was beginning forever with you as my ‘reward’ for paying for your schooling. I wasn’t going to buy you, Petra. And I didn’t want you to know that your dad had agreed to that plan. I just wanted you to have every opportunity you deserved.”

“But you stayed away for fourteen years,” she reminds me. “You could have come back at any time. You could have told me about your father. You could have told me when I still had a chance to talk to my dad”—her voice cracks—“and find out why he agreed to this plan.”

“I didn’t think you’d forgive me for leaving in the first place,” I tell her.

“I would have,” she says, and the use of the past tense doesn’t escape my notice. “I would have if you’d just told me the truth. Instead, you continued to lie to me. You knew all this stuff about my past, about my family, and you didn’t tell me. You made it seem like you found out about the marriage contract when your dad died, not later the night we signed it.” She gasps in a breath like she needs the fortitude to keep going. “You made decisions about my life without including me in the decision-making process. You patronized me without me even knowing it.”

“Petra, it wasn’t like that.”

She schools her face into a steely expression, perfect and porcelain-like. “Like hell it wasn’t. I don’t even know you at all.”

“You’re the only one who knows me!” My voice is raised and I’m glad no one else is still up here with us—they’d have heard that even inside. Though at some point we’ve switched to yelling at each other in Russian, so it’s not like they’d understand. “You’re the only one I can be open and honest with, the only one who knows my past, the only one I want to spend my future with.”

“How sad is that?” she says with a sad laugh as she hops off the side of her chair. “I’m the only one who knows you, and I can’t even know you because you can’t be honest with me.”

“I kept one thing from you,” I emphasize, but even I realize it’s a paltry defense.

“Even if it had only been one thing—hiding what you knew about our parents’ relationship, or what you knew about my mom and Viktor’s death, or that you’d been the one to give me the money for school, or that you’d cut me out of your life to ‘save’ me from a marriage to you—even one of those would have been too much to lie about. But instead, the lies just built on each other.” She pauses as she bends down and sweeps up her heels from where I left them on the ground at the base of our chairs. “I don’t know you.” The emphasis on the word know hurts even more because Petra is the only person who actually knows me. “And you don’t know me at all if you think keeping everything from me was something I could ever be okay with.”

She takes her shoes and storms into the loft. I watch as she grabs her purse and calls back to me, “You need to leave so I can lock this place up.”

I rush into the loft, desperation quickening my steps. I cannot lose her like this. “Petra, please be reasonable. We can work through this.”

Her laugh is acerbic. “You’re delusional. Take the stairs down so I can lock that door behind you.”

“I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” I tell her and she lets out a cruel little laugh.

“Sure, you do that,” she says as she pushes me out the door into the stairwell and locks it behind me.

I’m halfway down the twelve flights of stairs before it occurs to me that she might take the elevator down, beat me to the bottom, and disappear. And that’s exactly what she does.