What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

stink of it. The squelch of slip-resistant shoes on tile. The mournful wails of pain, of loss. So many lives began and ended here.
    The automatic door swung open, and Stephanie trudged forth, her fair skin whiter than ever. She was clutching papers that she handed to him with a weary exhale.
    “So…”
    “They saw something.”
    He stuffed the papers into her bag. She heaved it onto her shoulder as though it weighed a thousand pounds.
    “What? What do they think it is?”
    “I don’t know. I have to get it biopsied.” Her palm was clammy as Alex held her hand on the way out to the valet, her shoulders hunched. She shuffled along beside him.
    “It could be anything.” Like what? What else could a spot on her lung be?
    “Yeah.” She blew out an incredulous sigh.
    The valet brought the BMW around beneath the portico. Alex tipped him, then assisted Stephanie into the passenger seat as though she’d become suddenly brittle, subjected to so much stress that she might break with the slightest taction. “It’ll be okay.”
    She said nothing, just slouched against the door, arms tightly folded over her chest and her hands balled into fists.
     
    ***
     
    Stephanie
     
    Alex was in the gym room overlooking the pool, while Anya slept in her bassinet near the windows despite the bass-heavy electro house pouring from a Bluetooth speaker. His back to Stephanie, and wearing only soccer shorts and sneakers, he performed hammer curls with his dumbbells. Keeping his upper arms immobile, he bent his elbows and curled the weights as close to his shoulders as he could, biceps fully engaged and bulging. He held them in place for a beat, then slowly lowered them to his sides, straightening his arms. Sweat dribbled between his trapezius muscles and disappeared beneath his waistband. Stephanie ran a finger down his back, massaged his delts, and squeezed his luscious ass.
    He gave her a saucy little shake and set the weights down. “Hi, baby. Oh—don’t hug me. I stink.” He laughed.
    “There’s a scent produced by fresh sweat that women find very attractive, you know. It carries a pheromone.” She kissed the dip in his throat. “I can’t wait to steal you away for a few days.”
    Alex slithered his fingers into her hair. His lips brushed hers. “And what, moya lyubov′ , do you have in mind?”
    “You’ll just have to wait until we get there.”
    “Mmm. I like surprises.” He replaced his weights on a three-tiered steel dumbbell rack. He’d organized his equipment in precise rows, as though one stray object would disassemble the house into a jumble of non-Euclidean geometry fit for a Great Old One. One idiosyncrasy he’d have to get over with a kid in the house, especially when she learned to walk.
    Alex wheeled the bassinet out of the gym and into the kitchen. Stephanie unpacked the Thai food she’d picked up for lunch—an apology for shutting down on him last night when they’d left the hospital—and arranged it in bowls.
    “I got a call today,” he said.
    Please not another scandal.
    Alex kneaded her shoulders. “Tell you all about it while we eat. I’m going to take a quick shower.” He pecked her cheek and headed upstairs. Stephanie carried the bowls to the kitchen table. Houses this big came with the standard formal dining room, but they had not yet found much use for it with little time to prepare or host dinner parties and with their families scattered across the country or on the other side of the world.
    Anya remained asleep; she didn’t do much else at three weeks except poop and pee, which happened hourly, it seemed. Combined with her eating every couple of hours, Stephanie and Alex had bid a painful goodbye to sleep for the foreseeable future.
    Alex slid into a chair and twirled rice noodles around his chopsticks. He hadn’t bothered styling the still-wet hair pushed back from his face. Without his usual regimen for taming it, the longer top coiled into waves as it dried.
    “No plans for the rest