She didn’t.
She stayed where she was, waiting for my answer.
“Been a long time since anyone loved me,” I finally forced out.
She smiled, a soft, sweet smile that made me so glad she was my friend. “Well, he’s not the only one who loves you, you know.”
Harper let out a renewed wail, interrupting the moment.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I don’t know what to do for this child,” Tallie said, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.
“You said she likes to move,” I reminded her.
“She does.”
“Does she like riding in car?”
“Get your purse. We’re gonna find out.”
Even though it was after three in the morning and we were both in our pj’s, Tallie and I took the baby and headed out to her car to go for a late-night drive through Tulsa. It was what Harper needed. And helping each other out was what friends did.
“YOU’VE GOT TO start breathing again, or I’ll have to do something drastic like tickle your ribs. Are you ticklish?” Razor rubbed his hands up and down my biceps, warding off the chill in the air.
Some sort of front was blowing in, and the temperature outside had dropped radically in the last twenty minutes. Huge, black, billowing clouds filled the sky along with the cooler temperatures. Ten minutes ago, when Razor and I had left the house to go to the immigration interview, the sun had been out. Now that we were about to head into the building, it was as dark as night…at two in the afternoon.
I’d never experienced such a drastic change in the weather before, but the meteorological shock wasn’t what had me shivering and unable to take a full breath.
It was that I still didn’t know what I was going to do when we got in front of the interviewer. On any other game day, Razor would be at home getting his pregame nap in right now. Instead, he was here with me, and everything was riding on what happened over the next hour. Should I do what was best for Razor and force my own deportation? Or should I stick with the plan and hope for the best?
I wasn’t sure. In fact, I might not make up my mind until pressed to answer a question. Considering that it was such a massive decision, you’d think I would have decided well before now what I should do. I’d never been so wishy-washy about anything before.
A streak of lightning lit up the sky, followed soon after by a crack of thunder that I felt all the way down to my bones.
“Come on,” Razor said. “Let’s get inside before this storm hits. Just tell the truth, no matter what they ask.”
I took his hand and walked through the glass double doors by his side, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. Whatever decision I ended up making, I still had to go into this interview.
There was no getting out of this.
The receptionist greeted us, all business despite her smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Chambers? We’re ready for you.” She led us through a door and down a hall, much like the office where my counselor worked. At the end of the hall, we turned into a corner room, where a man in a gray suit sat behind a computer desk, glasses perched near the end of his nose. The receptionist left the room and closed the door behind her.
The man stood up and held out a hand for Razor to shake when we entered. “Mr. Chambers. And Mrs. Chambers,” he said when he offered me his hand.
I took it even though a sheen of perspiration covered my palm.
He smiled. “Doug Harris. Thank you both for coming in today. Why don’t you have a seat so we can get started and not take up too much of your time.”
There were two armchairs in front of his desk. Razor guided me to one and eased me into it before sitting beside me. I reached for his hand as soon as we were settled, needing the reassurance of his touch.
He squeezed it and winked at me before smiling at Doug. “Thanks for working us into your schedule at a time when my team’s in town.”
“No problem, no problem. Although, it might not have been so bad if you’d been here on Friday instead of in Winnipeg.”
“I don’t know. I think we might have lost a hell of a lot worse than we did if I hadn’t been out there.”
Doug laughed. “It gets worse than eight to nothing, then?”
“It can. You’re a hockey fan?” Razor asked. He had an easy smile and, as usual, no problem talking to anyone. About anything. He was a natural.
“Learning to be one. It’s still new in these parts.” But then he was down to business. He picked up a manila file and opened it, taking out a stack of papers. “So… It says here that you two met in Vegas?”
“Yeah. I was there for my buddy’s bachelor party and wedding.”
“And Viktoriya? What were you there for?”
Another crack of thunder shook the walls of the office, and I jumped. Then the rain started, pummeling the windows. It was coming down in sheets instead of individual drops, or at least that was how it looked. My heart beat so hard it had to be almost as loud as the storm outside.
Doug smiled at me. “Sounds like we’ve got quite a thunderstorm brewing. Is it your first good storm in this part of the country?” He glanced at one of the windows. “Might get some hail. The sky doesn’t look green, though, so hopefully we won’t have to deal with a tornado.”
“Tornado?” I’d only seen about those on TV before. I’d never seen one up close and personal, and I didn’t want that to change now.
“Let’s get this done so we can all get home, hmm? So why were you in Las Vegas?”
My throat felt swollen shut, and I couldn’t swallow.
Razor squeezed my hand again and rubbed the pad of his thumb over my skin.
The plan was to tell the truth, but wouldn’t telling the whole truth prove we had only married in order to deal with my residency? Surely if I was up-front about it, blunt and to the point, the truth beneath the partial truth would come out.
I took a breath and met Doug’s gaze head on. “I was trying to be prostitute. Wanted Razor to be my first John.”
Doug raised a brow, but he didn’t say a word, waiting for me to continue.
“I lost my student visa and needed money to go back to Russia.”
“How did you lose your student visa?”
“Porn. I was in porn. Against rules of ballet school.”
He shuffled through the stack of papers until he found one and pulled it to the top. He jotted a couple of notes on it. “And you two married the same day you met?”
“We did,” Razor said. “I realized there was more going on than met the eye. My mother worked as a prostitute for several years when I was growing up. She did it to put me through school and get me involved in hockey. So, I know a bit about the profession. The women in it. And Tori wasn’t like them.”
“Hmm.” Doug kept jotting down notes. Then he looked up, staring straight at me. “So why, exactly, did you two decide to get married?”
This was it. Do or die. Sink or swim. I had to make up my mind right now about what I wanted to happen. I tried to swallow, but nothing would go down. In fact, it felt as if everything was about to come up. I pressed my eyes closed, hoping that would make everything come into focus. And then I said the first thing that came to mind, the words pouring out in a rush.
“Razor married me because he wanted to protect me. Because I have no more family, no one left to go home to if deported. I did porn because Tambovs killed my father and—”
“The Tambovs?” Doug interrupted. His entire demeanor changed suddenly. He sat up straighter. His eyes darkened like the clouds outside. He leaned forward, tapping the end of his pen on the desk. “The St. Petersburg Tambovs?”
I didn’t know what this change meant, but I’d already started down this path. There was no turning back now. “Yes. They took Mama. Tried to take me, but Papa got me away. He sent me to school in America, but they killed him.”
“We’ve found out that they’ve killed Tori’s mother, too,” Razor added. “One of my teammates has an uncle in Moscow who is a member of the local po
lice force there. He did some investigation for us.”
“And that’s why you started doing porn,” Doug said. He didn’t ask. In fact, he was already writing notes again.
“Yes.”
“And porn is why you lost your visa.”
“Yes.”
He stopped writing and looked up at me. “What was your plan in Vegas? If Mr. Chambers had taken you up on your offer and paid you for sex, what were you going to do with the money?”
That question caught me off guard. “Was going back to Russia before I was deported.”
“Even though you knew the Tambovs had taken your mother and killed your father.”
“Didn’t know what else to do.”
“There’s a U-Visa,” he said.
“But I can’t help police. I have no information. Need information for U-Visa.”
“Hmm.” He went back to making notes and didn’t say anything for a long time, so long that I started fidgeting in my chair.
I shouldn’t have been so honest. Because now, he knew that the reason Razor had married me was just for the green card. They were going to deport me, and even if that might be the best thing for Razor, it was a nightmare come true for me. They were going to send me back to Russia, and I would never see him again. Panic clawed at my throat, forcing bile upwards. Another booming crack of thunder shocked me so much that it went back down, just in time.
“So I think I know why you two married to begin with,” Doug said. “But I need to know if that’s the only reason you’re still married, or if there’s something more.”
“You’re not taking her away from me,” Razor said, practically growling the words and turning as fierce as the storm raging outside. “I’m not going to sit here quietly and let you send her into that kind of hell. She’s been through enough already, and they want her. They’re after her. You looked like you believed her about the Tambovs. That’s the fucking Mafia. You’re not sending her—”
Doug held up a hand. “Whoa. Hold up. I never said anything about sending her back to Russia. Viktoriya’s right about the U-Visa, but that isn’t the only option here.”
“It’s not?” Razor repeated, sounding much calmer.
“I’m not ruling that out yet, but there are other possibilities. We could still get her permanent resident status through marriage, possibly, but we need to reasonably believe that this is a real marriage. And if that’s the direction we go, the process could potentially be expedited due to the threat of trafficking. There are a few other options, as well, but here’s what I need you two to both understand right now.” He stopped talking and stared straight at me. “We’re not going to send you back to Russia to be trafficked. Period.”
“I can stay?” My voice was so small I could barely hear it myself.
Razor threaded his fingers through mine.
Doug gave me a slight smile. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure it happens. But I need you two to cooperate, and I need you to be completely honest about everything. Got it?”
All the tension within me lifted in an instant. I’d done my best to do what was right for Razor, even though it would rip me to shreds to do so, and I’d failed. Maybe my staying wasn’t best for him, but it was the only way I’d ever be free, and I knew it.
He knew it, too. That was why he’d worked so hard to do everything his agent told him.
I didn’t think I could love him any more than I did right at that moment. I nodded. “Yes.”
“Got it,” Razor said.
I could stay.
With Razor.
I took a breath, letting my lungs fill with air, and the most perfect sense of peace settled over me.
I could stay.
WE HAD THUNDERSTORMS just as intense as that first one, and some of them even more so, almost every afternoon for the next week, often lasting well into the evening. They cropped up out of nowhere, the temperature dropping and the sky turning black as midnight within minutes. Tallie told me I’d get used to them if Razor and I lived in Tulsa long enough. I doubted that. The sudden changes left me shaken, and the intensity of Mother Nature’s wrath was more than simply frightening.
Razor didn’t seem to be used to them, either, but he wasn’t anywhere near as terrified as I was. One night after a game the Thunderbirds lost by a wide margin, a storm woke me from a dead sleep. I jumped awake, only calming again when Razor settled an arm around my waist and drew me against his side, yet another reassurance that he had no intention of letting me go.
But before long, he had to leave again for another road trip with the team. Tallie invited me to stay at her house while the guys were gone. She said it was so I could help with the baby, but I had a feeling it had as much to do with the fact that I was as scared of the storms as I was of being alone. Either way, I readily took her up on the offer.
“Fair warning,” she told me when I showed up at her house with a few days’ worth of clothes. “The pediatrician thinks Harper has colic, which is why she cries so much. And there’s not really anything we can do other than try to find things that help keep her calm. You might not get much sleep.”
“Wouldn’t sleep at home alone, either.”
“I know.” She gave me a side hug with the arm that wasn’t supporting her baby. “That’s why I don’t feel so bad having you over. We can all take naps whenever Harper goes down.”
The two of them came with me to my rehearsals each day. The music seemed to soothe Harper, at least for the time being, so it was good for all of us. Somehow, thunderstorms soothed her even more than music did. During the almost-daily storms, she slept more soundly than ever, while I curled up in a fetal position and prayed it would end soon. If the weather stayed like this much of the year, I wasn’t sure I was cut out to live in Oklahoma. Tallie assured me storms like this were only common in the fall and the spring, though.
“Only half year, then,” I joked. I had to make a joke of it or I’d go crazy.
She winked. “Something like that.”
The day after the team returned following a three-game trip during which they hadn’t scored a single goal, Razor and I were back at Hunter and Tallie’s house for my birthday party. I’d tried to talk him out of doing anything like that for me, but he hadn’t listened.
“We still need to do things like this to prove our marriage is the real deal,” he reminded me on our way over there.
And I knew that. Doug had promised he would talk to everyone he could to provide corroborating evidence about the deaths of my parents, and that should be enough to get my residency status expedited. But he’d stressed that, while he believed we’d fallen in love since we’d gotten married, we couldn’t leave any doubts about that. At least not until everything had been pushed through the system. For most people trying to get permanent residency through marriage, the process could take two to three years before everything was finalized. He was hoping to sort it all out within the next few months.
So here we were, parking in front of Tallie and Hunter’s house for a birthday party. There was another car in the driveway that didn’t belong to either Hunter or Tallie.
“You said small party,” I complained. “Not many people.”
“And I meant it. Dima’s coming over, too. That’s probably it.”
“Probably?” The last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by dozens of strangers—and no matter how many of Razor’s hockey games I’d been to, most of the other wives and girlfriends were very much strangers to me, not to mention his teammates.
“Maybe Kade, but you’ve spent some time around him. Not a big deal. Right?”
Hunter greeted us before we even reached the door, as did Harper’s cries.
“Sorry,” he said. “She just started up when Dima rang the bell. Hopefully she’ll calm down soon.” He stepped to the side and let us enter.
Dmitri kissed me on the cheek when I came in, putting a small gift box in my hand. “Open later,” he said.
I nodded and thanked him before hea
ding into the kitchen, following the sounds of the baby’s fussing. The guys came in behind me.
Tallie gave me a harried look, bouncing Harper on her hip. “Sorry! But we finished the cupcakes before she started, except I still need to put some icing on them, and there’s wine. Actually, can you pour me a glass? It might get her to calm down if she gets a bit of alcohol in my breast milk. Or maybe I shouldn’t do that. I probably shouldn’t do that. Oh my God, I can’t even think straight anymore. Her colic is going to kill me.”
“No wine for you,” Hunter said a little too cheerfully.
Razor fought to keep from grinning at me, but he failed. “But we can help ice the cupcakes. Just tell us what you want us to do.”
“Well, you need to—” She furrowed her brows. “It’ll be easier to show you. Here.” She passed Harper to Dmitri, whose eyes looked ready to bug out of his head.
“How do I hold baby? Not good idea.”
Tallie glanced at him briefly, rolling her eyes, but she was already digging through the cupboards and bringing out countless mixing bowls and other implements. “You’re fine, Dima. Just let her rest against your chest.”
He awkwardly brought Harper closer, and she immediately grabbed a fistful of his beard. But she also stopped fussing. The change was so sudden and so dramatic that we all stopped to look.
“She stopped crying,” Tallie said, near tears herself. “Oh my God. She finally stopped crying.”
“So take her back,” Dmitri said, trying to pry her fingers free from his beard.
The baby started whimpering again.
“No chance,” Tallie said. “You just keep doing whatever you’re doing to keep her calm.”
“No fucking idea what I’m doing.” But he left her fingers alone. She settled her head on his chest and made soft, gurgling sounds.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, either,” Hunter said. “You’re the Harper Whisperer or something.”
I tried to take one of Tallie’s bowls, but she grabbed it out of my hands. “You’re not icing your own birthday cupcakes.”
“You baked and iced your own baby shower cupcakes,” Razor reminded her. He took the bowl Tallie shoved in his direction and winked at me.
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