Smoke Signals

by Catherine Gayle

  All too soon, he broke off the kiss and backed up a step, still caressing my cheeks.

  “Why don’t you want me to love you?”

  I tried to shake my head, but he kept a firm hold on me.

  “Tell me, Tori. Talk to me. Baby, I need to understand.” The blue of his eyes had turned almost black as he searched me for answers.

  “Please don’t,” I said through my tears.

  “You’ve got to give me a fighting chance. Let me in on whatever it is that’s going on in your head so I can find a way to combat it.”

  There was nothing he could do to change the inevitable, though. I wasn’t sure talking about it would help anything. It would only force me to face everything I was scared of head on. Even though I knew he’d follow, I wiggled out of his grasp and headed into his bedroom.

  He closed the door behind us as soon as he came through. He took a few strides toward me, dragging a hand through his hair, but then he stopped. His eyes were wild and full of hurt when they landed on me.

  But there would be much more hurt soon if he let himself love me. It had to end.

  “You keep walking away. Shutting me out. Closing down.” He sounded like a wounded animal, and he had a wild look in his eyes like he’d been cornered on top of being hurt.

  This couldn’t be good.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and folded my hands in my lap, buying a moment to think before speaking. It didn’t do me any good. I still didn’t know what to say and what not to say. If I didn’t figure it out fast, he was going to… Well, I didn’t know what he’d do. Snap, most likely. Whatever that would mean.

  He sat next to me, and I fought the urge to put some more distance between us. But he didn’t touch me, so I managed to stay still, almost touching him but not quite.

  “You shouldn’t love me,” I forced out. More tears fell, darkening my blouse where they hit. I watched the spots spread.

  “Why not? And how the hell do you think I should go about stopping it from happening, anyway? We can’t control who we love. It just happens.”

  “It’s not love,” I insisted. “You’re good man—”

  “I swear, Tori, if you tell me one more time what a good man I am—” He slammed himself back against the mattress, his legs dangling over the edge of the bed. “This isn’t me being noble or some shit like that. I’m not confusing the fact that I want to help you with being in love with you. I’m a fucking grown-ass man. I know the difference. I love you.”

  “You should try to stop.”

  “Why? You said you aren’t running away.”

  “Not running.”

  “Earlier, at the airport… You said something about how we’d have to still be married in a few years, even after this immigration interview.”

  I sniffled, every bone in my body aching to either throw myself in his arms or run to the corner and curl up in a ball. I didn’t do either. I stayed where I was, even though his thigh bumped against mine. “Yes.”

  “So you don’t want to still be my wife in a few years? You don’t love me, not even enough to stay when it will give you what you need?”

  “That’s not it.” Not at all.

  “Then what? I’m trying, Tori. I’m trying really hard to understand, but that’s the only thing that’s making any sense.”

  “Because they’ll send me away!”

  He went silent. Razor was never silent. He was always talking or laughing. His deep, big voice always filled the room and my heart, but now there was nothing.

  I felt empty without the sound of his voice filtering through me. Empty and alone, and even more terrified than I’d been the night I first sought him out. I pressed my eyes closed, trying to come to terms with the newest hole in my heart, because there was more of this to come. So much more. I was going to have to learn to breathe again without him filling me up.

  Swallowing hard, I stood. I needed space. But he reached for my hand and stopped me.

  “I’m not going to let them send you away,” he said, so quietly I thought I’d imagined it at first.

  “You can’t stop them. They’ll make me go back—”

  “No one’s sending you back to Russia,” he said with a lot more heat this time. “It’s not going to happen. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Help me, then. Explain it.” With gentle but insistent pressure, he tugged me back down next to him.

  “It always happens.” Sobs clogged my throat, threatening to halt my words before they formed, but I somehow powered through. “If I l— If I care about someone, they get taken from me. This time, they’ll take me from you. Send me back to Russia. And then…” I shook my head. “It’s easier to go now. Before.”

  “Before what?” He put an arm around me, drawing my head down to his shoulder.

  “Before I love you more. It already hurts too much. I can’t—”

  “Nobody’s taking you away from me. You got that?” He squeezed me tighter. “If you choose to leave on your own, that’s one thing. But I’m not going to just roll over and let them deport you. If they give us problems, we’ll appeal. We’ll tie it up in the courts for as long as it takes. And if we somehow lose that, then we’ll put in an application for refugee status—”

  “Can’t be a refugee,” I cut in. Not the way I understood it, at least.

  “If you can’t be a refugee after what the fucking Mafia has done to your family, then this country’s refugee laws are seriously fucked up. There’s got to be some kind of visa for trafficking victims. Something.”

  “There’s visa, yes. But you have to help the police. You have to give them information. Help them track down Mafia guys. I— I can’t. I don’t have information to give.” I’d looked into it after Papa died. Even if I qualified in other ways, I didn’t have any information to give them. I couldn’t help them end human trafficking. There was no chance I’d be granted that sort of visa, the same as they wouldn’t consider me a refugee because I wasn’t being persecuted for my race or religion, or anything like that.

  Razor scowled. “It isn’t going to matter, because it’s never going to get that far. Because even if we didn’t know each other and didn’t love each other when we got married, we do now. So we’re going to go to that goddamned immigration interview, and they’re going to see that this is a real fucking marriage, whether it started out that way or not, and that’s going to be the end of it. We might have to prove we’re still happily married in a few years, but it’s not going to be a big deal. No one’s taking you away from me.”

  I wanted to believe Razor. He spoke like he believed what he was saying, and there was no doubt he was full of conviction as far as making sure I wouldn’t be deported. But things were never that easy, at least not in my life.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” he said, tipping my chin up toward him. “Still processing?”

  I nodded. Thoughts were swirling through my head, making me feel like I was in a never-ending pirouette. Dizzy didn’t scratch the surface of how I felt.

  Razor kissed my forehead and hugged me tighter. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  We changed clothes and crawled under the covers. There wasn’t a chance I’d fall asleep any time soon with the way my thoughts were all jumbled. I rolled onto my side, facing away from him, and curled up around my pillow.

  “Tori? I really do love you. I need you to believe that.” He smoothed a hand down my arm, and I shivered.

  “Try to stop,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please. Try not to love me.”

  “Not possible.”

  Another tear tracked down my cheek and wet my pillow as he slid into the space behind me. He wrapped an arm around my waist and tucked his knees into the bend of mine, fitting with me like spoons in a drawer.

  “I’m scared,” I whispered into the dark. “I don’t want you to hurt when I’m gone. Can’t stand it.”

  His lips pressed to the back of my head. “Of all the things for you to w
orry about… You’re killing me here. Let me worry about my own heart, beautiful. And maybe let me worry about yours for a while, too. Think you could do that?”

  It was a nice thought, but… “No.”

  He chuckled. “Didn’t think so. I had to try, anyway. Get some sleep, Tori. Nothing’s going to change for a couple of weeks, at the soonest.”

  Which meant I had a couple of weeks to make up my mind as to what was best. For me and for Razor. Even if he wouldn’t agree.

  CONSIDERING THE FACT that this season, we likely wouldn’t do much better than last season, I was in a hell of a good mood for the Thunderbirds’ home opener. Something about realizing I was in love with Tori and she was in love with me—even if she wasn’t happy about it—must have had something to do with it. Having Mom in town helped, too. No matter what the other contributing factors might be, there was no wiping the grin off my face the whole fucking day.

  “Why you so fucking happy?” Slava Zherdev demanded when I walked into the locker room at the BOK Center before the game. Slava was my defensive partner on the top pairing, and he was the surliest son of a bitch I’d ever come across. “Put on fucking game face.”

  I took off my suit jacket and loosened my tie, winking at him as I took a seat in the stall next to him. He glowered in response, which only made my smile wider. I loved getting under his skin, and he made it way too easy. Off the ice, the two of us were oil and water. On the ice, we weren’t a hell of a lot better. That was how the whole team was, actually. We were just a bunch of spare parts tossed into the mix, but none of us really fitting the roles we were being asked to fill.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely fair. Hunter was a true top-tier goaltender, and Drew could play right wing on any team’s top line. The rest of us were a hodgepodge, though. Almost every guy on this team was being asked to play above his level, and the results were disastrous.

  I changed into my gear, other than taping up my socks, and took a seat at my stall to finish getting ready for the game. I taped up a few sticks to have them ready for use, in case I broke one. Then I tied and retied my laces—an old habit that I doubted I’d ever break. Maybe it was a bit of superstition. All I knew was that the last time I’d played a game without doing that, my laces had broken while I was on the ice, and I could barely skate off for a line change. Finally, once everything else was done, I set to work taping my socks in the same way I always did—taping, removing it, and then taping them again.

  “Fucking superstitions,” Slava muttered.

  “Fucking surly Russians,” I replied.

  “Not all surly,” Dima called from across the room.

  I busted up laughing. “I hope you’re not trying to say you aren’t a crabby douche canoe, because you’re the grumpiest son of a bitch I’ve ever come across.”

  He winked at me—the first time I’d ever seen him do something of the sort, which made me wonder if his eyelid would get a cramp—and he almost cracked a grin. “Grumpy son of bitch with proposition.”

  “The last Russian who propositioned me ended up being my wife. Not sure you can beat that deal.”

  “Not marrying your ugly ass.”

  “Thank God for small blessings.”

  “Need help for raising money for paraplegic athletes,” he said. “In December. Sledge hockey game for charity I told you about before.”

  That one took me by surprise. I’d known he was thinking about doing something, but the fact that he was actually recruiting people now meant it was going to happen. It wasn’t just a possibility for some time in the future that might not actually come to pass.

  “What do you want me to do? Be one of the coaches?” I hadn’t ever done anything like coaching before, but it couldn’t be too hard. I mean, Katie’s dad Webs was a coach, for fuck’s sake. And this was for some charity event, so it wasn’t going to be like real coaching. I’d just stand behind the bench, talking with whoever was sitting there.

  He muttered something in Russian that had Slava snorting in laughter beside me. Using words he hadn’t yet taught me, no less. “You’re not coach,” Dima said. “Need you to play.”

  “On a sled?”

  “I’m doing it, too. I need at least a few other NHL guys so people will pay to watch. Rest will be experienced sledge players.”

  “Right.” I fought to avoid rolling my eyes. Why the hell did he think he needed to rope me into something like this? I had enough on my plate sorting out Tori’s issues, which Dima knew better than any of the other guys, since he and Tori talked some. “So why me? And how is this supposed to be good for me?”

  “You can do it as thank you. For helping Viktoriya and teaching you to speak Russian.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Better than marrying me, right?”

  It was a hell of a lot better than marrying his grouchy ass. Still, I laughed.

  I still had a smile on my face when the puck dropped.

  We were playing the Stars tonight, a divisional rival loaded with high-end, top-tier forwards. They’d started their top line of Seguin, Benn, and Nichushkin, and all three of them were already bearing down on me with the puck.

  Benn flew down the wing on my side, carrying the puck on his stick. Our forwards were still in the neutral zone, so it was just me and Slava against three of the most potent offensive threats in the league.

  I churned my legs, staying with my guy and keeping an inside lane on him.

  He passed the puck to Seguin, keeping it just beyond the reach of my outstretched stick. Nichushkin barreled in on our goal, banging his stick on the ice and shouting for the puck, but Slava had that lane closed off. Seguin could either shoot himself—the most likely scenario—or pass it back to Benn.

  Split-second decision time.

  He made his move, and I dropped to the ice to block the pass, trusting Hunter to make the save if Seguin chose to shoot.

  The puck hit me in the ribs, and I managed to brush it out from under me with my glove and get my stick on it to send it out of the zone toward Drew, whose stick was on the ice waiting for it.

  Slava joined the rush while I tried to get my ass off the ice and back in the play. By the time I was on my skates again, the red light was flashing and war drums reverberated through the arena.

  Holy shit.

  We scored within the first minute of play in the season. I never saw that one coming.

  Things were looking up.

  SOMEHOW, WE ACTUALLY won the game. I still wasn’t sure how we’d managed it almost an hour after the final horn had sounded, followed by the cacophony of war drums.

  I would put my money on it having a hell of a lot more to do with the Stars imploding for the night than with us having our shit together, as three of our four goals had come as a result of their defensive miscues, and their offense had been so potent that they should have scored at least ten goals if not for Hunter standing on his head.

  Any way we looked at it, though, we were all happy to walk away with the win. The big question now was whether we’d be able to do it again in a few days against a different opponent.

  I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

  That was the trick with this whole hockey thing. One game didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We had eighty-one more to go before the season was over, and luck wasn’t going to be enough to make us look like a good team. Professional hockey wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  Most of the rest of the guys had already left for the night, but I was still in the locker room talking with Dima about his sledge game and sorting out details for that. Apparently, he didn’t just want me to play—he wanted me to help him plan the whole shebang. “You’re better at talking to people than me,” he said.

  And that was a good enough reason to drag me into it? I couldn’t wrap my head around his decision-making on this one. But Tori was waiting, so I convinced Dima we could hammer out the rest of it later…and maybe I could convince him to have someone else plan it with him. I’d never organized any sort o
f event before—not even Tori’s birthday party, yet, and that was right around the corner. I wasn’t sure I was the right guy for him to peg for this task.

  He came with me up to the wives’ room so he could keep yammering in my ear, his words a half-Russian, half-English combination that was oddly starting to sound normal to me. I nodded as we went along, storing away details about what he wanted to do in case I couldn’t weasel my way out of it.

  I’d expected the room to be virtually empty when we got there, but half a dozen guys and their wives were still around, and even a slew of kids. Not only that, but everyone was huddled in a big circle, the kids on the outskirts with wide eyes, and people were shouting to make themselves heard. Not at all what I’d been expecting. Worried about the possibility of Tori being caught up in that, I pushed my way in with Dima right behind me.

  Mrs. Jernigan and Tori were right in the middle. Mrs. J had a hand on Tori’s upper arm. Tori was in tears.

  In shock, I stopped short at first. What the fuck was she doing with her hands on my wife? Everyone was shouting so much that I couldn’t make out what was happening. But I couldn’t just stand by. Tori needed me. I forced my way to the center.

  Tori’s eyes landed on me. Pain filled them, and not just the physical sort of pain.

  Rage billowed up through my gut, and I took another step, not sure what I intended to do. Before I could do anything, Tallie stepped into my path, passed her baby into my arms, and said, “Take Harper over there, and act like you’ve got some sense. Let me deal with that bitch.” She pointed to a corner well away from the mass of bodies. Then she spun around and pried Mrs. Jernigan’s fingers free from Tori’s arm.

  I couldn’t move, though. If I did, I’d be handing the baby off to someone else and doing something I probably shouldn’t do to the team owner’s wife. Probably why Tallie had given me the kid in the first place—to stop me from being an idiot.

  Harper started fussing. I didn’t know what to do about a fussy baby, but no one else was paying any attention to the little girl in my arms. I settled on bouncing her up and down, since I’d seen Tallie do that a few times. It didn’t seem to help, but I didn’t know what else to do so I kept going with it while I tried to figure out what the fuck I’d just walked into.