Page 94 of One Last Shot

Her swallow is convulsive and for a minute I think no words will follow. Finally, she says, “The best way I know to protect myself is to always be the one leaving.”

“Before someone else can leave you, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

She’s so strong and independent and fiercely protective of the people she loves. I didn’t realize that front hid so much damage.

“I would never leave you. I would never hurt you.” She has to know that. If she didn’t already know it back in New York, she has to know it now that I’m here in LA. Now that I came out here even when she told me not to, because I literally could not conceive of not seeing her for even a few more days.

I soft hiss escapes her lips. “Really? Because you were the first one to do both.”

“Petra, we wereteenagers. We are not the same people now that we were back then.”

“I hope not,” she sighs, then she leans over and lays her back against my chest. “Ireallyhope not.”

* * *

“At some point,” I say as I pull her foot into my lap and slip her heel off, “we are going to need to talk about this relationship.”

Her eyes roll back in her head as my thumb runs across the ball of her foot and then down the arch. She makes a soft, indistinct sound of contentment, a rumbling deep in her throat that is distinctly sexual.

“That is amazing,” she says.

“Imagine what I could do if you were naked.”

She glances around the small but crowded outdoor seating area of the restaurant, taking in the tables of other diners scattered amid the brick patio and surrounded by ivy-covered walls. String lights hang above us and hurricane candles sit on the tables, giving the space an ethereal glow. I want to recreate this ambiance on my terrace, so Petra and I can eat out there every night and be reminded of this dinner.

Our teak table is against one of the courtyard walls and the nearest table is a good six feet away, but still, she looks nervous that someone will hear me. So what if they do?

“Just keep doing that, and we’ll get to the rest later,” she says, keeping her voice low. It’s the huskiness of it that turns me on more than anything. As it always does for her and only her, my body reacts.

“Your calves still sore from the hike?” I ask as I slide my hands up her leg and massage her calf gently. The heat of the LA day is abating, and it’s comfortably cool out tonight. I still can’t get over how amazing the weather is here. Sunny and dry and perfect almost all the time.

“Yes. Even those amazing views weren’t worth this soreness.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be wearing those heels, then?” Her heeled sandals make her legs look sexy as hell, but I don’t understand why she’d wear them if her calves are sore.

The way she rolls her eyes suggests she’d never be caught dead in anything else. But even though I appreciate how she looks tonight, all dolled up in a strapless sundress and these gorgeous sandals, I prefer her completely natural—just out of the shower, makeup-free and hair wet, in her pajamas, settling into my couch for the evening.

I want her permanently back in my apartment.

“Don’t think that your legs are going to distract me from talking about this relationship.”

“You’re the one who started talking about my legs.” She bats those impossibly long eyelashes at me.

“I need to know what you’re thinking, Petra. Before you left, you said you didn’t want to go. But once you were gone, you cut me out of your life. What happened? And how do we make sure that doesn’t happen again when I leave tomorrow?”

I’m not dumb enough to think that just because things have been relatively normal while I’ve been here—that just because the sex has been amazing and the company has been easy, that just because we finally talked about our past—she won’t try to remove herself from my life again once I’m gone. I think one of the keys to her success is her ability to hyperfocus on what’s in front of her, whatever challenge or opportunity that might be. The by-product of that is pushing away everything else.

“I don’t know what to say, Aleksandr,” she says, and I try not to visibly cringe at the use of my full name. She seems to be using it more than my nickname now. “I am filming an entire season of a show in less than two months and also running a company from seven hundred miles away. Even though I’m not facing medically diagnosed exhaustion anymore, it’s still exhausting. It’s two full-time jobs. I don’t have anything left to give.” She leans back in her seat and crosses her arms. “The only reason we’re even having this dinner, the only reason we had a great day today, is because of a freak coincidence that you happened to be in town right as my schedule cleared.”

“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I manufactured a crisis to get her out of the country?” I give her a small smile, hoping that some humor can lighten her mood.

She leans forward, her face serious. “I want to be with you, Sasha. I love how things are between us, how easy and good everything is when we’re together. But I just can’t make that commitment right now. I don’t know what my life is going to look like in two months when we finish this show. Maybe it’ll flop and I’ll go back to my life in Park City. Maybe it’ll do well and I’ll need to be in Los Angeles full time.”

It doesn’t escape my notice that she doesn’t mention an option that involves her being in New York. “So, what are you saying?” I don’t know if this means she doesn’t see a future for us.

“I ...” She sighs. “I can’t make any promises right now. I thought maybe I could, back when I was in New York, before I knew how crazy my life was going to get. It’s not that I don’twantto be with you. I really do. And it’s not that I don’t want to help you adopt Stella. It’s just that right now, I don’t think I can commit to anything more than trying this long-distance thing and seeing how it goes.”

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