Page 29 of One Last Shot

Innsbruck, Austria

“Aleksandr,” my father calls as I pass the library doors. My back stiffens. I don’t like to be summoned, but he literally does not know another way to interact with people.

I step between the half-open pocket doors of the extra wide doorway and wonder if he’s been sitting at this desk in the hour since we signed those papers. He doesn’t even look up from his desk when he feels my looming presence. “I need you to sign one more thing before you go.”

“What else is there?” I ask, annoyed at this distraction while I’m on my way to see Petra. “I thought we signed everything earlier.”

“You need to sign the bank draft too.”

I’m having a hard time listening to what he’s telling me because I’m too keyed up at the thought of being alone with Petra, in the dark, and so consumed by the memory of the way we locked eyes in the library.

I step up to his desk, and my father slides a piece of paper toward me. The name of the bank is displayed prominently at the top. FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS is written in capital letters on one line, and below it is the name of my trust and Petra’s father’s name. I sign along the line on the bottom of the page and wonder why I don’t remember seeing a dollar amount in the agreement we signed earlier.

That paperwork is sitting on my father’s desk, so I pick it up as I set my pen down. It’s written in Russian, and until this past year I could barely read more than the simplest two- and three-letter words. But living in Russia this last year has meant I had to learn to read the language I’ve been speaking at home my whole life. I’d been too focused on Petra to spare a glance at the paperwork I signed earlier, but now I stare at the words across the top of the page.

MARRIAGE LICENSE

I can feel my father’s eyes on me as I scan the page. It takes me three times as long to read it as it would if it were written in German or English, but I make it through the document eventually.

Then I turn to the second piece of paperwork we signed. MARRIAGE CONTRACT.

My eyes meet my father’s.

“Explain this.” It’s not a request.

“I bought her for you. Or rather, you bought her, since the money is coming from your trust.”

My eyes narrow. “What do you mean youboughther for me?”

“I see the way you look at her. I see the way you feel about her even while you try to act like she’s only a friend.” As he speaks, fire runs through my veins—embarrassment and anger and shame combined into one rush of heat. I thought I’d kept my inappropriate feelings locked away, hidden so well that no one suspected a thing. I should have known my father’s shrewd eyes would pick up on any clues.

“When I said I wanted to pay for her education with no strings attached, I didn’t mean bind us together permanently for the rest of our lives.” I knew there was no way Petra would ever accept the money from me, which is why I had my father arrange this whole deal. But where the hell had this marriage idea come from? Why would he think that, at nineteen and at the beginning of my professional hockey career, I’d want to be married?

“Sasha,” he says, and I bristle at the nickname. He only ever calls me Aleksandr and my older brother Nikolai, as if using the diminutives that all our friends call us would somehow make him less of an authority figure. “I will not watch that girl wreck you the way her mother wrecked me.”

Oh, so we’re finally talking about this.

“Shewreckedyou?” I say, my voice harsh. “You threatened to tell her husband that something was happening between the two of you, and she died because of your lie.”

The look on my father’s face is one of absolute shock. He really didn’t know that I knew.

“How do you know about that conversation?” His voice and his eyes are serpentine, and I wonder if he’s getting ready to strike with some low blow—something he planned and I’m not expecting. That’s how he operates.

“Itoldyou that I’d overheard your conversation, and you dismissed it,” I say, thinking back to the car accident three years before.

Petra’s father was in our home when the police arrived to tell him his wife’s car took an icy turn too fast, and they asked what she could have been speeding home for. Of course her father didn’t know, butmineknew. “You knew she was rushing home after picking Viktor up from hockey practice, hoping to prevent you from saying something untrue to her husband. Petra lost her mother and brother, and I lost my best friend. All because you threatened her mother.”

I don’t mention how I’ve struggled with my own guilt over this event. Since we lived on the same property, I normally gave Viktor rides home from our hockey practices. But I stayed home sick that day because I had a minor cold and didn’t feel like going to school. Mrs. Volkova wouldn’t have been going to pick him up if I had been there like I was supposed to be. So maybe it’s more my fault than my father’s, even.

My father, sick bastard that he is, actually laughs. “Youthinkyou know what happened, but you have no idea. It wasn’t an empty threat. She had been leading me on foryears. You can think she was innocent if you want, but she wasn’t. 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 over the last two years.”

“Like hell you have.” Petra has made it very clear that she thinks of me like a brother. There’s been no leading me on, no stolen kisses. Nothing but friendship.

Until this summer.

“You watch her like a hawk watches a mouse. You might think no one notices. You might even think she doesn’t know. But how could she not? And now you’ve decided to pay for her boarding school out of your trust fund, because you want to see her dreams come true. And you’re so naive you think you came up with that idea on your own, rather than her planting the seed and nurturing it.”

That money is a tiny sliver of what’s sitting in that trust fund. I won’t miss it, and she’ll get a shot at her dream—Olympic-level skiing. I’d be a selfish bastard not to help her when it costs me so little. Though, I’d help her even if it cost me everything.

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