One Last Shot: A Second Chance Sports Romance (Frozen Hearts Series Book 3)

The interview with Raina ran a little longer than planned thanks to my and Sasha’s side conversation and the negotiation about Raina’s college plans. I’ve literally never been more proud of anyone than I was of him for the way he handled that. So many people’s opportunities are limited by the cost of the education they need in order to achieve financial independence. I hardly know Raina, but I already want to make sure that she has every opportunity in the world, especially if she’s going to give the next year or more of her life to caring for Stella.

In any event, now I’m late for my meeting with my producer, Charley. She’s not going to be happy about that, but at least I texted her assistant asking for her to call me ten minutes later than planned, and got a clipped OK. But I manage to make it to the solarium before my phone is ringing.

“Hello?”

“Petra, this is Annabeth. I’m putting Charley through.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Silence, then, “Thanks for making me wait, bitch.” Charley laughs. She’s tough as nails, but I know I’m going to like working with her.

“Sorry, something really important came up.”

“What could possibly be more important than talking to your first and favorite producer?”

“Ugh,” I stall. “Something personal.”

“If this show goes well, you’re about to be a household name.” That promise sends a shudder through me. I don’t want the notoriety, I just want to be able to help women tell their stories, to inspire other women to persevere when they feel like giving up. I want to live my feminist beliefs in a way that helps other women take control of their own lives. It’s a big dream, and this show is about to help me achieve it. “And if that happens, there won’t be a separation between your personal and private life.”

“Are you trying to talk me out of this, Charley?” I tease. “Because if so, it’s working.” She knows how on the fence I was about doing the show. She’s the one who pulled me over to her side, fought with me tooth and nail until I agreed. She’s been my biggest cheerleader and also a staunch realist about how my life is about to change.

I’d accepted these changes, and I was okay with them. And then Sasha had to walk back into my life, along with the sweetest little six-year-old, and now they’ve both wormed their way into my heart. I’d thought it was well-protected, that I’d hardened myself off to actually loving someone other than my best friends. And never in a million years did I think I’d be able to trust Sasha again after the way he left me when we were younger. It had taken years to recover from that, and then a series of other men tried to break me like he had, and it was enough for me to swear off ever caring for a man again. Use them for what I needed, and get rid of them—that plan had worked so well for me until he showed up again.

“I’m just trying to prepare you for the reality of how things might change for you,” she tells me. “I know you like your privacy, but that’s going to be harder to maintain. It’ll be more like when you were modeling, except we’re not selling your body. We’re selling your brain, your personality, your life experience. And people are going to pay attention, Petra. I can just feel it. This show is going to be great.”

I take a deep breath, pushing back the trepidation that’s rising to the surface. I’ve already agreed to this. Signed a contract. This is what I wanted. Why does it feel so wrong now?

I wonder for a moment if I should tell her about Sasha and Stella. Does she need to know that I’m legally married? If we’re able to move ahead and find him a path to adopting Stella, and it somehow gets out in the news, she’ll be furious that I didn’t tell her.

Not yet, I decide. I’ll wait until we meet with the immigration lawyer and I have more info.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” she asks.

“Sorry, just lost in my own thoughts,” I say. “This is all a lot to process.”

“Petra, you’ve had over a month to process this. Has something changed?”

Everything’s changed. “No.”

“Okay, good. Listen, I really need you here this week. The studio wants to film some promo stuff and there’s an opening on Friday. So get your ass down here.”

“No,” I say, my voice firm. Obviously, there’s no way I can leave New York this week. Sasha isn’t even back from Philadelphia until the end of the week, and I’m booked on a flight back to Park City Sunday afternoon. “There’s no way I can be in LA by the end of this week. Late next week, probably.”

“Petra, I need you here this week.” She’s not asking.

“You don’t need me, Charley, you want me. There’s a difference.” I’m not under contract yet, so she can’t force me to come to LA early.

“The sooner we get the promo material filmed, the sooner we can start advertising.”

I’m sure that’s an important aspect of the show’s success, but there’s no way I can be in LA this week and she’s just going to have to accept that. I let a disapproving “Hmm” come out, then tell her, “I’ve already given you my answer.”

“I’m starting to get worried about your level of commitment. Have you at least signed a lease down here?”

“No, I haven’t found a place yet,” I tell her. That’s on the agenda for next weekend when I’m down there. “I saw a promising little house online, but I want to go see it when I get there.”

“Just make sure it’s close to the studio.”

I laugh. “Well, obviously, I want to be as close to you as humanly possible.”

“Just get your ass down here and nail down a lease, and I’ll feel much better about all this. I’ll be able to stop worrying that you’re actually a flight risk. I hope you know how much I’ve stuck my neck out for you to make this happen. I know you’re the right person for this show. Now we just need to show those stuffy execs that I’m not wrong about you.”

Why does it feel so wrong to be doing something so right? This show is the right choice, I know it is. I’d hemmed and hawed about it when deciding, but once I commit to something, I’m all in. That’s why I have been completely upfront with Sasha about not being able to stay in New York—I know it’s impossible. But now I’m extremely torn. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t committed to this show. Because if this commitment didn’t exist, I might want to stay in New York a bit longer, to see if what’s developing between Sasha and me now, as adults, is real and worth fighting for.

“You are still in, right?” Charley asks when my thoughts have kept me silent for too long.

“Of course,” I say. The words come out with far more certainty than I feel.

“Good. Please don’t prove me wrong here, Petra. You are going to be amazing. I’m not sure why you still seem so unsure.”

“I have never liked being in the public eye,” I admit.

“You were an Olympic skier and then a model. You literally lived in the public eye for like ten years.”

She says this like I need the reminder. “I know, and it wasn’t good for me.”

“What do you mean?”

It already feels like I’ve said too much, and I don’t even know where to start my explanation. “Nothing. I was younger then, and the attention was all too much.”

“Well, you are older and wiser now. You’ll be fabulous.”

“I already am fabulous.”

This gets me the laugh I was expecting, breaking the tension of the moment.

“That you are,” she agrees.

I glance at the time on my clock, realizing Sasha needs to leave any minute and I don’t want to miss saying goodbye. “I have to run. I’ll see you in LA in a little over a week,” I tell her. “Right on schedule.”

I walk over to the wall of glass that leads from the solarium into Sasha’s room, but he doesn’t appear to be in there. I open the door and call his name to be sure, but there’s no response. So I walk through his room and down the hallway to the entryway, expecting that maybe his suitcase will be there and he’s puttering around somewhere waiting for me to get off the phone so he can say goodbye.

Nothing.

I wander into the living room and through to the sitting room, and still no sign of him. I head back through the living room to the dining room and into the kitchen. He’s nowhere to be found. There’s no indication that he’s still here.

What the hell? He left without even saying goodbye? Without telling me whether we’ll have the contract ready for Raina today? Without even leaving a note?

I go through to the solarium and find my phone where I left it on the table, and I don’t have any missed calls or texts from him, and now I’m getting angry because it’s a lot easier than admitting to myself how hurt I am. I shoot off a text to him.

Petra: You left without saying goodbye?

I respond to some emails and prep for a meeting with Morgan that’s supposed to start in twenty minutes. And when I sit down for that meeting, I still have no response from Aleksandr. I know he’s in the car on his way to the training facility, so there’s no reason he wouldn’t see the text.

Maybe he’s on a phone call and can’t respond. Be patient.

Patience has never been a specialty of mine.

“Don’t you like the burritos?” Stella asks.

I take a look at my half-eaten dinner and then give her a small smile. “I do, I’m just not very hungry.” We’d made dinner together, and I can tell she’s worried that I don’t think she did a good job. “But I’m going to save the rest of my burrito for later, because I think this is one of the best I’ve ever had.”

She beams. “I didn’t know I liked guacamole, but you’re right, it makes burritos even better.” She looks at me like I’m some sort of all-knowing food goddess.

“My best friend, Jackson, is a taco guru,” I tell her. “I’ve learned a lot about Mexican food from her.”

“What’s a guru?”

“It’s someone who’s an expert on something, someone you can learn from.”

“Are you a guru too?”

I try not to laugh at the question, which is asked so innocently. “No, I don’t think so.”

“There’s nothing you’re an expert on?”

I’m certainly no relationship guru. I think about the fact that Aleksandr still hasn’t replied to my text or returned my call after I left him a voice mail earlier this afternoon. I thought we had something, that we were building something. Here I was thinking how much I didn’t want to go to LA because I just wanted to stay here with him and Stella, and obviously that was very one-sided.

“Well, I’m kind of an expert on event planning.” My shoulder ticks up in a small shrug.

“What’s that?” she asks through the huge bite she just took of her burrito, food threatening to fall out of her mouth.

“My job is to plan big events, like parties and weddings and retreats. People hire me to organize all the details and make sure that the event is a success.”

“Is it fun?”

“Sometimes. But the point of work isn’t that it’s fun, it’s that it’s fulfilling.”

“What’s fuf-filling?”

“If something is fulfilling, it means that you’re using your talents in a way that helps other people and also makes you happy. For me, getting to plan these kinds of events makes me feel that way.”

“Are you a guru in anything else?”

I think about the show I’m about to start filming. “Well, I’m also really good at talking to people. At getting to understand their story, and when necessary, giving them advice to help them.” My friends have always come to me for advice because I don’t hold back or sugarcoat it. That may not be everyone’s preferred method of “help,” but they know that they are getting honest feedback.

“I think you’re really good at helping people,” Stella says.

For some reason, this makes me feel worse instead of better. Yes, I’ve helped her. I made sure she didn’t get the evil Irina as a nanny, and I even gave up two weeks of my life to stay here with her (though that hasn’t exactly felt like a sacrifice). I made sure that little asshole Jason stopped tormenting her at school by teaching her how to stand up for herself, and I helped find her a new nanny who I’m sure she’s going to love. But . . .

But what? You’ve done more to help this little girl than anyone could reasonably expect.

But I haven’t figured out a solution to help Aleksandr adopt her. I know we’re supposed to meet with the lawyer Friday afternoon after he’s back from Philadelphia, and I’m really hoping she has some ideas.

“And I think you’ve helped Dyadya more than anyone else,” she continues.

This has my head snapping up to look at her across the table. “What do you mean?”

“He never smiled until you started staying with us,” she shrugs. “I think you make him happy. He likes having you here and so do I,” she beams at me.

I smile at her and mumble “Thanks,” though my stomach is twisting itself into a knot around the small amount of dinner I’ve consumed. I want to believe I make him happy and if she’d said this yesterday or even this morning, I’d have agreed. But I don’t know what to make of this nearly full-day of silence or the eerie feeling that I’m watching him cut me out of his life like he did so many years ago. It feels like history repeating itself, except now we have the kind of relationship I’d always dreamed we would—I was starting to see us as partners, which is what I thought he wanted, and the sex was amazing too.

“Are you finished eating?” I ask, nodding at the skeletal remains of a burrito on her plate.

“I’m too full to finish.”

“Okay, why don’t you go take your shower and get your PJ’s on so we can watch the game. I’ll clean up.”

“Can we wear our jerseys like when we went to the game?”

“Sure, just wear it over your pajamas.”

“And you’ll wear yours too?”

“Uh huh.” I can’t say no to her request, even though right now putting his last name across my back feels a whole lot different than it did on Sunday night.

Half an hour later, we’re watching the pregame show when Stella asks me to take a picture of us. We pose for a selfie together and when I look at the resulting photo, I’m shocked at how much we look alike. The same dark brown curly hair, the same ivory skin and high cheekbones, the same shaped eyes, though hers are brown where mine are blue.

“Will you send that to Dyadya?” she asks. “I want him to print it out so I can have it in my room.”

“Sure,” I say, noncommittally, because there’s no way I’m texting him a photo of us right before the game starts, especially when he seems to have been avoiding me all day. How desperate would that seem?

“Let’s send it now,” she says.

“He won’t have his phone on him,” I tell her. “He’s already warming up, see?” I point to the screen where, behind the commentators, you can see the hockey players going through their warm-up drills like miniature figures skating across the ice.

“But if we send it to him now, he’ll see it right after the game,” she says.

Yes, exactly what I don’t want to happen.

“Here,” she holds out her hand. “Will you show me how to send a photo?” Her big brown eyes are huge and pleading. “I know it will make him smile when he sees it.”

I’m very afraid that she’s wrong about that, but there’s no way to tell her no without giving her a reason, and I don’t have one I can share with her. She has Aleksandr’s best interests at heart, and she just wants him to have a little piece of “home” while he’s on the road.

As I hand her the phone and show her how to send the picture, it dawns on me that even though I’m the adult, I am absolutely not in control in this situation. Stella is one hundred percent running this show.