Lucy wandered through my apartment as I quickly changed for brunch. She didn’t spend much time in Mimi’s room besides a cursory look to see if the kid had made her bed and picked up her clothes. No, Lucy seemed to scrutinize everything else. The few pictures I’d put up, the reading material and DVDs on my bookshelves, the contents of my fridge and cupboards (I heard Miz Snoopy opening and closing cabinet doors). When she slipped into the main bathroom, I knew she was rifling through drawers and cabinets, searching for items that indicated I’d had female overnight guests. I wondered if she’d be relieved or disappointed her search would come up empty. The only female who’d stayed overnight in my apartment since I’d moved in was Mimi.
Before we left to meet Nolan and Mimi, I snagged Mimi’s bag with her skates and rink wear. We’d have to make another trip to the sporting goods store to buy the rest of her hockey gear before she took to the ice.
Last night Lucy and I had narrowed down our program choices to three. She’d insisted on visiting the newest rink—the only one in the Twin Cities that was home strictly to girls’ and women’s hockey clubs. I wasn’t sold on it for Mimi at her current age and skill level because I believed she’d be better off playing with boys and girls. If she continued with the sport, and when they separated gender, then it might be a good fit. And Lucy wasn’t crazy about the rink I chose. She said it was too “industrial” and none of the kids looked like they were having fun.
Which left us to tour Lakeside, the rink where we’d been for the birthday party. Margene, the chatty rink manager, had the day off, but she’d set up a meeting with Gabi, the programs facilitator. She gave us the facility’s history, a tour of the front end, which housed the offices and conference rooms, as well as a printout of the weekly schedule.
When I shot Lucy a sideways glance, I knew she was sold on this place as a testing ground for Mimi. While I agreed the curriculum had all the classes Mimi would need, something felt off about this place, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
On the drive to the club, I asked Lucy if she’d noticed it. She claimed the only reason it felt “off” to me was that Crabby Gabi hadn’t fawned over me like everyone else had at the other facilities.
Maybe she had a point.
We met at the restaurant across the street from the club—which was packed on a Sunday; people filled the waiting area and spilled out onto the sidewalk. But Nolan had a table. In fact, it appeared Nolan had scored the best table in the house, a corner booth that managed to be both private and yet had a great view.
Mimi jumped up and hugged us both when we reached the table, but she was strangely subdued after she slid back in next to her uncle.
Nolan eyed us suspiciously, like we’d get into a shouting match again if he left us alone. I couldn’t tell him that the previous night’s shouting match had been a cleansing for Lucy and me, possibly even a clean slate.
Lucy and I exchanged a look and I nodded. She’d start the conversation and I’d join in. She leaned across the table and took Mimi’s hands. “Honey, your dad and I are so sorry that we let our tempers get out of control last night. The last thing either of us ever wants to do is cause you to feel scared or unsafe. And we’re very proud of you for calling your uncle Nolan to take you someplace where you weren’t afraid.”
“So you’re not mad?”
“Not at all,” I inserted. “That is what your phone is for. But that aside, your mom and I want to assure you that it won’t happen again. After you left, we realized we needed to talk to each other, not shout at each other.”
“And we were able to make a few decisions that have to do with all three of us, separately and together as a family,” Lucy said.
Her calling us a family . . . that just punched me in the gut. I wanted that so much. “First, I have a surprise for you.”
Mimi grinned. “Is it a puppy?”
“No, almost as good as that.”
“It’s a kitty!”
Jesus. “No. The surprise is I’ll be moving onto the top floor of your apartment building. So you’ll have both your mom and dad close by. Won’t that be great?”
Her gaze moved back and forth between us. “You won’t live by Calder anymore?”
“Nope. I’ll be living closer to you. And the apartment isn’t done, but after we leave here, I thought we could all go check it out.”
“Okay.” She looked at us expectantly.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Lucy asked.
“Can Calder come over and play sometimes?”
“Anytime you want,” I said. “And we have some other good news. We talked it over, and we’ve decided to let you try hockey.”
“For real?” She bounced in the booth seat. “Like playing on a hockey team and everything?”
“Yep. We signed you up for the basic skills class at Lakeside Ice Arena—where we were yesterday. Then if you like it, we’ll enroll you at the Mite Team level.”
“Did you hear that, Uncle? I get to play!”
“I heard that, short stuff. Exciting news. And you know I’ll be there cheering you on at the games.”
Mimi stopped bouncing and looked at Lucy. “What about you, Mommy? Will you come to the games?”
“Wouldn’t miss them for anything,” Lucy assured her. “I believe your daddy will handle taking you to most—if not all—of your practice times.”
I leaned in. “But there is something we need from you, Meems, or this won’t happen.”
Mimi stilled, and I sensed Lucy looking at me, since we hadn’t discussed this part.
“What?”
“You have to stop being a pain about getting up on school days. It’s not fair to your mom. And if you stick with hockey? You’ll have full practices early in the morning before you go to school, so it’d be best if you got used to the early hours now. No more bratty behavior, Milora Michelle. Understood?”
“I promise, promise, promise I’ll do better.” She held her pinkie up, and I hooked mine around it, watching as she offered the same pinkie promise to her mother and finally to Nolan.
“Good. After brunch we’ll go buy the rest of your sports gear. There’s open ice late this afternoon at Lakeside. We’ll suit up and skate, since we didn’t get to finish our weekend.”
In a flash Mimi disappeared beneath the table, and then she was crawling between me and Lucy. She hugged me and then her mother. “This is the best day ever! I can’t wait to tell Calder!”
“Can you hold off on telling him until after you’re done with the skills class?”
“But Daddy . . . he’s my best friend! We tell each other everything.”
I heard Lucy suck in a sharp breath. I glanced at Nolan. He shook his head, indicating that Mimi hadn’t relayed last night’s events to her BFF, thank god.
“It’d be a way better surprise for Calder if you told him about playing hockey after you had two weeks of skills training,” Nolan suggested. “When you’re absolutely sure that you want to play hockey.”
She considered it for a moment before she said, “Okay. I’ll wait to tell him. But we don’t gotta wait to sign me up for a team because I know I want to play hockey.” She sighed with pure eight-year-old exasperation. “You’ve known that longer than anyone, Uncle Nolan.”
Nolan shot me an “I told you so” look. “You are absolutely right. Now come over here and finish the picture you were coloring for me.”
As soon as Mimi had fallen back into her own little world, Nolan’s gaze zipped between us. “Everything all right?”
“It’s great,” Lucy said. “You coming to get her gave us the chance for a long talk last night.”
“A long overdue talk,” I amended.
“I’m happy to hear you both can adult when cornered,” Nolan said with a smile.
“Hilarious.”
“On a side note . . . it’s been two weeks since
you dropped the bombshell about ditching the corporate world at LI. The family is gonna grill you on what you’ve been doing.”
“Is this your not-so-subtle way of asking what’s going on with the bar remodel?”
“Yes. We didn’t talk about it at all yesterday.”
I wasn’t sure if Nolan was testing me to see if I’d mentioned the full-scale remodel and reinvention of the bar spaces to Lucy, or if he worried I’d talked a good game and hadn’t done anything to get the project underway. “I met with Walker and his partner Jase two days after our five-way phone conference. They assessed the room upstairs that’ll be the barcade, testing it for structural integrity since it’ll have to hold all those heavy gaming machines. The good news? No structural issues. The bad news is they’re still waiting on permits to start the teardown.”
“What’s the time frame once the permits are released?”
I shrugged. “Depends on what issues they find beneath the lath and plaster. In the meantime, Dallas found a place that’ll sell us fully restored machines. It’s more money up-front, but they guarantee the games are plug-in ready, so that’s one added expense I don’t mind paying. She’s also hired an online marketing firm in the Cities to incentivize the demographic we want into taking a quick poll so we have an idea of what types of games and drink specials will bring them to a barcade.”
Nolan whistled. “So you haven’t been sitting around polishing your trophies.”
Asswipe. I scratched my cheek with my middle finger.
He laughed.
“Someone want to clue me in on what you’re talking about?”
I glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping before I detailed the plans to demolish one bar and rebuild it into two vastly different clubs.
She blinked at me. “Jax. That’s brilliant.”
Inside I was grinning like an idiot from her praise. Outside, I played it cool. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely. I was sort of afraid you’d cash in on your name and turn it into another sports bar.” She scowled. “Which are far too plentiful as it is.”
I sent Nolan an “I told you so” smirk.
“Has Dallas started on PR yet?”
Was Lucy angling for a chance to help out? “Umm . . . not sure. That’s on this week’s agenda. Why?”
“Because you definitely should get Annika to spearhead your campaign. She’ll know exactly what will make the biggest splash. But you need to get her on board ASAP because she tends to overextend herself on new projects during hockey season since Axl is gone so much.”
I must’ve looked confused or surprised because she said, “What? You thought I’d ask to get involved?” Then she laughed. “Uh, no. Can you imagine us working together? We’d disagree on everything, and then everyone would disappear when we reverted to our loud and emphatically stated discussions.”
I glanced at Mimi; she wasn’t paying attention to our conversation. “Yeah, we’d definitely fail at HR’s suggested conflict resolution tactics.” I bumped her with my shoulder. “Although there was a time when our unique approach to resolving our conflicts caused us both to forget what we’d been arguing about in the first place.”
Lucy turned the same time I did. We shared the lovers’ look that held secrets, desire and a smugness that no one else was welcome in our little world.
In hindsight, that’s when I should’ve kissed her. Right there in front of our kid, my brother, and the entire restaurant, so she understood how much I wanted us to rebuild that little world starting right then.
Instead, in the sudden quiet, I heard Mimi say, “Uncle Nolan, are they gonna start yelling at each other again?”
“No, short stuff. I’m thinking they’ve moved on to another more complicated way to communicate.”
Lucy looked away first.
I glanced over to see Mimi eyeballing us with suspicion.
She said, “I don’t get it.”
“Join the club, sweetheart.” Nolan slipped out of the booth. “Come on. It’s time to be assimilated into the collective.”
* * *
• • •
I used to dread Lund family brunches. In the years prior to my sobriety, at these gatherings I desperately tried not to drink too much so my family wouldn’t see that I had a problem. Since they were a group of problem solvers, they’d butt into my business as if they could fix me, so I’d made sure none of them could tell just how broken I’d become.
The secrets, lies, deceptions I lived with still haunted me. While my family’s love and support humbled me to my very core, I remained wary of revealing too much of myself.
But Lucy understood. I sensed her monitoring my mood from the end of the table. She knew when I’d reached the limit of my family togetherness. She worked her charm, and we bailed a full hour before I expected we could.
After we’d secured Mimi in the back seat of my car, I slipped my arm around Lucy’s waist, pulled her in for a hug and whispered, “Thank you.”
“Anytime, sport.” She patted my chest to get me to release her. “Now let’s finish the rest of today’s trials so you can get to your happy place.”
The dirty part of my mind piped up with, Between your thighs? but I ignored it and said, “Where’s that?”
“On the ice.”
I should’ve kissed her then. But I chickened out.
Again.
If I kept this up, I’d start sprouting feathers.
* * *
• • •
Shopping for hockey gear took half as long as I’d allowed for because Lucy kept Mimi focused.
Thankfully Lakeside had family changing rooms. I’d spent my life in locker rooms, so I thought nothing of stripping down to my underwear in front of Mimi and Lucy, so I could show Mimi the order she needed to follow to put on her protective gear. Even though she and I were working on skating basics, she needed to suit up fully, because there’d never be a time when she was on the ice without it.
Lucy sat in the observation area, wrapped in the blanket I’d stashed in my bag. Ice rinks were cold, and she’d dressed for brunch, not hockey practice. She’d seemed surprised I’d thought to bring it.
Once Mimi and I were on the ice, I crouched down to get her full attention. “Two things to remember today. First, you listen only to me. You don’t look around at the other skaters; you don’t worry what your mom is doing. Focus on me. That’s for your own safety—and mine. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Second, we’re done when I say we’re done. There’s no negotiating, no begging for more ice time. Again, this is for your safety, okay?”
“Okay.”
I handed over her new hockey stick. “First thing about hockey. If you’re on the ice, even during open skate practicing, your stick is always in your hand. Period.” I held out my stick. “We’ll start you out with the two-handed grip. One hand here”—I curled the fingers of her left hand around the top of the stick, and her right hand halfway down the stick—“and your dominant hand here. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. The blade is always on the ice. Your stick is always in your hand and the blade of the stick is always on the ice. Now skate forward. Keep your head up at all times.” I started to skate backward. “See the logo on my shirt? Watch it as you’re moving, that way you’ll stay with me.”
I grinned at her look of concentration.
We made it one full rotation around the rink before she fell.
As hard as it was to do, I didn’t help her up. She needed to find her balance from the start, and me picking her up and asking if she was all right every time she fell? We’d get nothing accomplished. Beginning hockey players spent more time sprawled on the ice than they did skating.
I waited until she was upright before I spoke. “Why do you think you fell?”
“Because I
looked at my feet.”
“Exactly. Hockey players spend thousands of hours skating so it becomes as familiar as breathing. That’s so when you’re playing in a game, you’re not thinking about skating; you’re just doing it.”
She nodded and put both hands on her stick. “I’m ready.”
“No, you’re not. What are you forgetting?”
Mimi lowered her blade to the ice.
“Good. Let’s go.”
At the end of an hour, she’d already shown such improvement that I let her take two laps around the rink by herself, as fast as she wanted. She fell twice but she got right back up both times and implemented the three basics without me having to remind her.
“How wide do you think she’s grinning inside that helmet?” Lucy asked behind me.
“So wide she could pass for the Joker.”
“Do you need to take some fast laps too, Coach Daddy?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“I’ll say.”
Her compliment surprised me. I turned and looked at her briefly before returning to watch Mimi.
“Well, you are. Mimi tends to tune out when she thinks she understands something. I couldn’t hear what you were saying to her, but her body language said she was one hundred percent in the moment, listening to you. That is a commendable feat.”
My neck burned from the praise. “It’s the first day, Luce.”
“How many days a week are you planning on working with her one-on-one?”
“Two. And she’ll have an hour of skills classes twice a week.” I groaned. “That’s already more ice time than what I told you.”
“A man who underestimates rather than exaggerates? That’s novel.” She laughed—a sensual rumble that flowed into my ear and vibrated through my entire body.
Christ. When we were together I’d craved hearing that sexy sound because I’d never heard her make that noise around anyone else.
Mimi headed straight for me at a speed she couldn’t control, so I braced myself for impact.
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