Smoke Signals (20 page)

“Yes, thanks,” he said.

He still wanted me to go through with it. He didn’t get it, and I had no idea how to help him with that. We were from two entirely different worlds, and I doubted we would ever truly understand each other.

A FEW WEEKS
passed, and I still couldn’t convince Tori to go through with the therapies Dr. Rodriguez had recommended. She’d been going to the studio for some ballet classes, and I’d been working out with Hunter and Dima to get ready for the season, but otherwise nothing had changed. She was still trying to convince me that her pain didn’t matter and I should fuck her in spite of it, and I was still bound and determined that I couldn’t do any such thing.

The one improvement, at least in my opinion, was that Tori had stopped attempting to get things started while I was sleeping. She’d taken to trying to jump me while we were both fully awake, instead.

I didn’t mind that she was throwing herself into it wholeheartedly. In fact, she’d started doing it while Hunter, Tallie, and Dima were around us sometimes, so that was only going to aid our cause in terms of convincing whoever needed to be convinced that we were in this for more than just a green card. The problem was that I was horny as hell all the time, now, and couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t care how
okay
she told me it was—I would
not
be the one to cause her physical pain.

It was the middle of August now, and a few of the guys with school-aged kids were starting to show up and get settled. School would be starting next week. With them in town, it meant there were a few more showing up at the gym…and getting on the ice with us. So far, we weren’t skating too hard. Mainly we just wanted to get our skating legs back, which was never easy after a summer off the ice. Ours had been a long summer, too, since we’d finished last season in the basement of the league and hadn’t even had a whiff at the play-offs.

Anyway, now we’d added a couple guys to the mix. Jason Stewart, better known as Stewie, and his wife had three kids in elementary school. Mike Oslow’s oldest daughter was starting kindergarten this year. Ox was a guy I knew from my rookie season with the Storm, but he was new to the Thunderbirds this season.

Andrew Nash showed up a lot earlier than the rest of the guys, too, even though he didn’t have any kids in school or any other solid reason to be in Tulsa in August…only he came without his wife. “The divorce just went through last week,” he explained. “Didn’t want to stick around Oshawa right now.” Drew was one of the team’s alternate captains. He’d been distracted as hell through all of last season, though. I supposed going through a divorce was a good reason to be distracted.

“You never said a word all of last season,” I pointed out over a meal. “Had no fucking clue your marriage was on the rocks.”

He shrugged it off, like it was no big deal. That was how things tended to go with the T-Birds. Everyone minded his own business. We had meals together and other things like that, but generally we all kept to ourselves. I was probably closer to Hunter and the team captain, Eric “Zee” Zellinger, than I was to any of the other guys, and that was only because we’d all played together in Portland for a while, and that team had always been more like a family. Everyone was all up in everybody else’s business. Constantly. A guy could hardly take a dump without someone else coming along to critique it. It was ridiculous…but I also kind of missed it.

With all of them joining us, things were starting to feel more like they would once the season got underway. Regular workouts. Ice time every day. Meals together afterward. We were getting into a routine. As much as we might complain about the grind, there was no denying that we all liked having everything we needed to do laid out for us.

After those three had been around for a few days, Dima came over to me as we were cleaning up in the locker room.

“Can I come to your house? Is Viktoriya home?”

He never asked to hang out. Not with anyone. Sometimes last season, he’d gone out with a couple of the other Russian players to do things, but otherwise we’d had to drag him along with us. Dima was not a joiner by nature.

He had news about Tori’s mother. There wasn’t any other explanation.

“What did you find out?” I needed to know before he told her. I needed to prepare myself for her reaction, at least as well as I could.

He shook his head. “It’s bad.”

“Bad as in she’s being mistreated somewhere? Or bad, as in she’s dead?”

“Uncle says she’s dead. Killed over a year ago.”

I nodded, keeping myself calm and cool on the outside, even though inside my heart was breaking for her. Tori was damaged enough already. This news was liable to shatter what remained.

“Do I want to know how it happened?”

He shook his head. “Better to not know. Better dead than living through what she did.”

I’d been afraid of that.

The other guys were all heading out to have lunch at a nearby sub and salad place. We explained that we had something else that needed to be done and left them to it.

When we got to my house, Tori was already wearing her leotard for her dance class that afternoon, with a pair of yoga pants pulled on over it. She’d gotten up from the sofa when she heard me come through the door, but as soon as she saw that Dima was with me—and only Dima, not several of the other guys, as well—she collapsed back onto it. Like she knew he’d brought bad news.

“
Pogovori so mnoy
,” he said.

She nodded and stayed where she was. I headed to the kitchen to fix lunch for all three of us, leaving them to their conversation. I wouldn’t understand a word of it, anyway, something I needed to fix. I made a mental note to ask Dima to help me learn Russian. More to have another means of communicating with Tori than to listen in on the two of them. In the last few weeks, Dima had taken to looking after Tori, in a sense. He was acting almost big-brotherly toward her, adopting her kind of like Tallie had been. And now that I knew Tori didn’t have any blood family left… The more people who wanted to be part of her life, the better.

It didn’t take me long to roast some fresh veg and pan-fry a few fish fillets, one of Tori’s favorite meals, at least out of the ones in my repertoire. When everything was ready, I looked up to find Dima and Tori already heading for the dining room table. Tori’s head was down, her long hair hiding her face from my view. Dima joined me, taking a few of the dishes.

“You told her everything?” I asked quietly.

“Everything I know.”

I nodded, and the two of us carried everything in to join my wife.

She hardly ate a bite, using her fork to shove food around on her plate. Worse than that, she didn’t say a word. Her head stayed down, her shoulders hunched forward. All I wanted to do was wrap her up in my arms and hold her, but I wasn’t sure she would let me. Not right now.

Dima and I tried to draw her into conversation, talking about the upcoming season. He mentioned a charity sledge hockey event he wanted to put together sometime in the winter. Our efforts were no use. When we finished eating, Dima helped me clear away the dishes.

“Did she say anything when you told her?” I asked with the running water masking the sounds of our voices. I hadn’t heard her speak during their conversation, but I hadn’t been listening that closely since I wouldn’t understand it to begin with.

“No. She sat like block of ice whole time. Once I told all I knew, she thanked me for telling her. That was all. Not a word since.”

I thanked him, too, and he left after giving Tori a kiss on the cheek. I followed him out and closed the door behind him. When I turned around, Tori was so close I nearly ran her over. She looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. The second I opened my arms, she fell into them.

Exactly where I wanted her to be.

RAZOR’S STRONG ARMS
came around me. Steady. Sure. Present. He was the only thing constant in my life right now, the only person left I could count on. And I could. I knew it as well as I knew Mama was dead.

There was a part of me that had assumed she was dead for a long time, but now I knew. There was no more room for assumptions. There was no more point in holding on to even that tiny shred of hope that had been eating me alive all the years I’d been in America, not looking for her or trying to save her from whatever fate she’d suffered. In truth, there was nothing I could have done, and I knew it. But there had always been that nagging voice inside me, urging me to think harder, try something.

But she was gone.

Mama was dead. Papa was dead. If I ever stepped foot back in my home country, I might as well be dead, too.

So now all I had was Razor…him and the fading thought that he could ever save me from the fate awaiting me once the government decided to deport me.

At least for the time being, I had him.

He rested his chin on the top of my head, a reassuring weight keeping me grounded. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more. I needed to lose myself for a while. I needed to escape from the hell that was going on inside my head, and I didn’t know how to do that. Only that I needed Razor.

With both arms around his waist, I hugged him to me.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked, his voice rumbling through his chest and soaking into me.

I shook my head and tightened my grip on him.

“Want to go to the studio for your class?”

Dance wouldn’t help right now. It would remind me of Mama and all I couldn’t have.

“No ballet,” I said. “Not now.”

“Then what do you need?” He wasn’t irritated. There was far more concern in his voice than annoyance. “Tell me how to help you.”

“I need you.”

“I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

“No, I…” That wasn’t what I meant. I wasn’t sure what, specifically, I wanted. Not until the words came out of my mouth. “Touch me. I need you to touch me.”

“Tori.” My name was a groan on his lips. “Baby, I can’t hurt you. Please—”

“Not hurt. Just…touch me. I need—” I’d never be able to explain to him in words what I needed, so I decided to show him instead. I backed away, grabbed one of his hands, and pressed it to my breast. “Touch me,” I repeated, blinking to ward off the tears threatening to fill my eyes.