by Pippa Grant
Yeah.
I plead a headache.
I can’t get Ingrid’s face out of my brain.
The pain. The tears. The crack in her voice.
I hurt her.
I hurt her, and I don’t know how to fix it, and while I should be playing poker with Mom and Tripp and Lila, instead, I’m lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, except for the times when I roll over and sniff my sheets and wonder how long Ingrid’s scent will linger with me before I breathe it all gone.
Then it’s somehow Friday.
Tripp’s wedding day.
I smile broadly through the ceremony, which is the biggest small wedding ceremony I’ve ever been to. Our immediate family, our extended family made up of my entire circle of close lifelong friends, the family they’ve brought into the mix with marriage and babies, most everyone who works for the Fireballs, from players who could make it to the office staff and all of their families, and a few of Lila’s closest friends from her time in New York—they’re all here.
And they’re all going about life as if nothing’s broken.
Like it’s sunshine and rainbows on a tropical beach, instead of cold and desolate and gray.
I’m falling in love with you.
When the fuck does love make you leave?
When all the formalities are done, and my smiling brother and his beaming bride take to the dance floor in the reception hall of Heartwood Manor, a renovated mansion from the early nineteen hundreds that sits on a couple thousand sprawling acres atop the highest hill in Copper Valley, I take to the bar and a quiet corner of the room, my back to the wall, sitting in an extra seat, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking kids playing on the brown grass outside to my right, a dance floor getting more crowded by the minute to my right, and tables of scattered people enjoying the end of dinner in front of me.
Doesn’t take long for Mom to find me. “Lovely day to be a grumpypants.”
“I’m not grumpy. I’m introspective and recovering from a sinus headache.”
“Grumpy,” Wyatt echoes.
The two of them sit, uninvited, on either side of me, while Davis lurks by himself at a nearby table too.
“Violet couldn’t make it?” Mom asks cheerfully.
I slide her a don’t start look. “Stan couldn’t make it either?”
Her lips twitch, and I realize I know that twitch.
It’s the twitch of gotcha.
Fuck.
I glare at Davis, who’s not watching, but his beard moves like he knows it and he, too, is having an attack of the lip twitch.
“You’re not dating Stan Sheldon,” I say to Mom.
“And you never dated Violet. Not for real, anyway.”
Fuck. I signed a non-disclosure agreement on that one. It was a good career move for both of us at the time—Violet needed someone to help with her image, and I was getting ready to go on my first stadium tour and needed the extra press. My family isn’t supposed to know.
It all feels as dumb and stupid now as being sentimental still about a toy from childhood.
I can’t think of anything good to say, so I settle for glaring at my mother a little more.
She laughs. “What? I had to make sure your brother heard something. And I’ve been enjoying dinner with your team’s manager isn’t so bad comparatively now, is it?”
My gaze whips around the room until I locate Jimmy Santiago, who’s not actually easy to find since I tend to listen to more Fireballs games on the radio than I watch.
But when I do find him, I wonder why I didn’t see it sooner, because he keeps shooting covert looks at my mother from his perch across the room.
And he’s the only one.
“Tripp’s gonna kill you,” I mutter.
“No, he’s not. We’re both grown-ups, and it certainly didn’t impact Jimmy’s performance in the play-offs, now did it?” She pats my knee. “Your performance, however…”
“I’m fine.” I’m not fine at all.
“You had a fight with Ingrid?”
“Said I’m fine.”
“Levi. You’re not fine. And on top of not being fine, you still have glitter in your hair, and you still won’t tell us why.”
“He might not want to talk about it, Ms. Wilson,” Wyatt says.
“I have about forty-eight hours before he leaves town again, and I’m not interested in spending most of it babysitting him to make sure he’s not going to do something like taking a fake girlfriend again when it might ruin his chances with a woman I actually like. So, he’ll talk about it whether he wants to or not.”
She’s threatening torture, and if she’s confessing to dating Tripp’s team manager, I doubt there’s any amount of blackmail I could use to get her to stop.
Which means the easiest course of action is to give in and tell her so I can get back to dealing with this on my own. “Ingrid dumped me. Happy now?”
“Of course not. What did you do?”
“What did I do?” I throw my hands up. “Do you think if I knew what I did, I’d maybe be working on undoing it right now instead of sitting here with no fucking—sorry, freaking clue where it all went wrong?”
Mom’s studying me, and I know that look.
It’s the you know what you did wrong, Levi, but I’ll let you pretend you don’t.
I take a swig of beer.
That doesn’t help.
So I try it again.
Nope. Still not helping.
“Her ex was always gone,” I say to the floor. “So I’m out of the running. Because I’m always gone too.”
“Oh, sweetheart…”
“I called my assistant and told her to cancel everything she could for next year. I can’t cancel my tour. I mean, I could. I could. But I couldn’t live with myself.” The economic impact of a canceled tour is massive, and I don’t mean to me. I mean to all the people who work on a tour. The support staff. The crew. The band. The people who work the stadiums for shows.
I’d still have millions in the bank if I paid to cancel a tour. But those people count on their paychecks. I can’t let them down, and I know Ingrid would be extremely disappointed in me if I did.
And then there would be thousands upon thousands of disappointed fans.
The weight of making the world happy has never felt so heavy.
“Does she ask you to do that?” Mom asks.
I shake my head. “It’d be easier if she had. Instead, it’s like…it’s like she sees me for exactly who I am and what I do, and she respects me the same way you do for it, not like I’m some kind of a god, but like I’m a guy who does good things in the world because I have an obligation to use the gifts I’ve been given. But who I am is also the exact barrier. And you know what’s dumb? She told me that. She told me, time and again, that she put her kids first, and she didn’t have it in her to commit to anything else on that level.”
Mom sighs and leans closer to me, bumping my shoulder with hers. “Honey, being a single mom is hard enough. Bringing another man into it who’ll have different ideas of what’s okay for the kids to get away with and what’s not, and trusting he’ll be as consistent with rules and boundaries as you are, before you even consider when he’s there and when he’s not…that’s a huge burden. I didn’t date when you were younger because it wasn’t worth the emotional toll of balancing a man with what was best for you. There was literally no energy left to even begin to consider one more person to care for, and unfortunately, when I was younger, I tended to go for the men who needed care as much as you did.”
My fist tightens around the wet beer bottle. “Why did you give us so much? You deserve time for you too. You can’t just be a mom. You get to be you.”
“Ah, sweetheart…if only it were that easy.”
Is this anger irrational, or is it justified? I don’t know. I just know I’m seeing red. “And you had Beck’s family. And Mr. and Mrs. Rivers. Davis’s family. Wyatt’s family. They watched us all the time. You could’ve had the help. Ingrid doesn�
��t have that. Her parents dumped her on her grandparents when she was her girls’ age. Her ex is nowhere to be found. Her best friend lives out in the suburbs. Her kids—they’re awesome, but there’s three of them, and Hudson—he’s like Beck and Davis and me all rolled into one.”
“The good parts?”
“The fun parts.”
Mom grimaces.
“Exactly.” I sigh. “She won’t ask for help because…”
I trail off.
She probably does ask for help, but knowing Ingrid, not until she absolutely can’t avoid it.
Just not from me, with the one exception of watching her kids earlier this week.
When she couldn’t avoid it.
And I get it.
I’m not dependable. I travel all the time. I can’t be the father any kid deserves.
Not the kind of father I’d expect myself to be after watching the examples of all of my friends’ fathers, and the years I’d look around on my birthday, or holidays, or during talent shows at school, and realize somewhere out there was a guy who cared enough to knock my mom up, but not enough to stay, and knowing that I’d never be that kind of person.
Fuck. Just fuck.
“You want my advice?” Wyatt asks.
Dude was so quiet, I forgot he was sitting on my other side.
But of everyone here, he’s the only one who’d understand. He got married years ago to the wrong woman because she was pregnant, then had a rough divorce later that cut him out of his own kid’s life nine months out of the year for several years. Then when he and Ellie hooked up, they had to make long distance work until he managed to network his way into an assignment at the local base north of the city.
He would’ve gotten out of the military if they’d sent him anywhere else, and even as close to retirement as he is now, if he got orders somewhere outside Copper Valley, I know he’d bolt for his family.
And he knows tons of fellow service members who have to deploy for months on end, but still make it work with their families.
He’s probably the only person here who has a clue. Beck more or less left the fashion industry to settle back home and be with Sarah. Tripp and Lila work together day in and day out. Cash and Davis are still single. The Fireballs players—I don’t know any of them dating a single mom, and the ones who do have kids take their families on the road with them as often as they can.
Wyatt’s the only person with perspective.
I nod, still staring at the floor.
“It’s not about how much you’re gone,” he says. “It’s about what you do when you’re gone, and what you do when you’re home. You call. You email. You video chat. You don’t walk in the door after a week away, say you’re tired, and go straight to lock yourself in the bedroom instead of taking all the hugs and listening to all the stories about what happened when you were gone. She’s tired too, man. And I don’t care what you were doing while you were gone, I guarantee she’s more fucking tired than you. And I guarantee you she wouldn’t be divorced with an absent ex if he hadn’t been the kind of asshole who expected her to wait on him hand and foot too the minute he walked in the door.”
I swallow hard.
I hear him.
I do.
Hell, I got it enough that I offered to be the one to find a babysitter so we could have dinner.
“How do I prove I’ve got what it takes when there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that she’ll let me?”
Neither of them answer me.
So I sit there, staring at the floor, knowing I don’t get another chance to hang out with Ingrid’s kids during the day.
I almost regret taking the nail polish off and washing as much of the glitter as I could out of my hair.
Mom’s right. I’m leaving in two days, again. I’m out half of December. I can get studio time in Copper Valley and move recording here from New York in January, and I can find a local place to host rehearsals for the tour next year, but I still have travel on the books for at least a week or two a month until the tour kicks off in April.
“You know that’s what you’ve got us for, right?” Davis says from the other table.
I lift my eyes to look at him. He tips his head toward Mom. “Every kid needs a grandma.” Then toward the dance floor, where Tripp and Lila are dancing with James and Emma. “And aunts and uncles and cousins.”
That’s fucking presumptuous.
I like it.
But I don’t know if Ingrid will.
“The family you make always starts with friends,” Mom says crisply. “I might like this one better than I liked your last girlfriends, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to trust Mr. Never Getting Married to know what you’re doing yet.”
“Says Ms. Won’t Tell Her Oldest She’s Dating His Team Manager.”
“Of the two of us, I believe you have a bigger hill to climb.”
She’s right.
I do.
And the next step is figuring out exactly how I can prove to Ingrid that I can be there for her and her kids even when I’m not here.
I eyeball my beer bottle.
Drinking is not the answer.
But it’s more of an answer than I can see myself finding anytime soon.
I can’t let my family date her for me. That’s ridiculous.
“I should let her go,” I mutter.
“Do you love her?” Mom asks.
Fuck. I’ve loved her from the minute I saw her holding that sign eight years ago. Then, it was a love for a stranger, an affection for what she did for my life without her even knowing it.
Now, it’s for knowing her.
Mom rubs my knee again. “Whatever you decide is right, I’ll support you. Davis is right, you know. When a woman gets involved with one of you, she gets all of us.”
My eyes drift to Sarah, who’s now twirling with Emma while Cash pretends Emma’s feet are going to knock him over every time they spin. And then there’s Lila, who’s surrounded by the rest of the mom squad, who are clearly plotting something.
Ellie was always part of the crew, but instead of sitting with Beck or with the Rivers clan, she’s rubbing her belly and chatting animatedly with a group of Lila’s friends from New York.
Pulling the outsiders in.
It’s what we do.
Jimmy Santiago is looking at Mom again. I lean back and nudge her elbow. “Go dance. Have fun. Thank you for being awesome.”
“I’m writing that one in my journal tonight. Today, my youngest acknowledged that I’m awesome.”
“I don’t tell you that enough.”
She smiles as she rises. “You do, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it more.”
I don’t. I never have.
And if I hadn’t met Ingrid, I probably never would’ve realized it.
Wyatt claps me on the shoulder. “You need anything, let me know. I’m gonna go grab a dance with my wife.”
I want to dance with Ingrid.
I want to dance with her. Chase Hudson out of the dinner mints so he can’t shove them up his nose. Convince the deejay to let Zoe borrow the mic to karaoke to her favorite song. Tell Piper that Tripp needs advice on how to make his baseball players more like hockey players and watch her trap my brother against the wall.
I want to be here.
Just need to figure out how.
Twenty-Eight
Ingrid
We’re late to Piper’s hockey practice Saturday. I’m cranky that she has practice at all, considering half the kids are out of town since it’s Thanksgiving weekend, and the kids who are in town aren’t the kids whose parents I know well enough to beg for a ride for her, and my babysitter isn’t one that I trust to drive my kids in holiday shopping weekend traffic.
The good news is that it’s just Piper and me, since I have a babysitter.
The bad news is that she hates being late for hockey.
The worse news is that I’m a complete and total bear, and I’m trying very hard to not take it out on
my kids, but I’m tired.
I’m so tired. The store. Their activities. The squirrel. Just everyday life—today, it’s too much, and I don’t think I can solve it by declaring today to be watch TV and order in pizza day.
Nor would I want to. Staying busy is good, right?
“It’s okay, Piper. No one’s upset that you’re late,” I tell her as I help her shove her skate on. She’s all padded up and ready, bouncing on the bench while five or six other kids skate out on the ice with the coach. “Most of the team isn’t even here. Any minutes you get are bonus minutes.”
“But I want to be out there now.”
I finally get her skates tightened, and she takes off so fast I nearly lose a finger.
That child was born to live on the ice. I’m a little terrified of what’ll happen the first time a coach tells her she can’t play with the boys, or the first time I tell her she can’t move up in the league because Mama’s terrified she’ll take a punch to the ear.
I’m shaking my head as I rise off the players’ bench, but instead of seeing the other parents when I turn to head up into the stands, I come face-to-chest with a mountain in a Thrusters jersey.
I stumble back against the half-wall, crane my neck up, and find myself staring into the face of Piper’s idol.
There are exactly three things I remember about Ares Berger.
One, he’s the largest man in pro hockey, nicknamed The Force, which I’m quickly realizing is probably an understatement.
Two, he told Sports Illustrated in an interview early this summer that he had hearing problems as a kid that went undiagnosed until grade school since his twin brother did all his talking for him when they were little.
And three, Levi knows him.
Ares doesn’t smile—not exactly—but his lips lift in one corner, and I get the feeling that’s as close as I’ll get to any hint that I need to get out of his way, and also that he’s amused at the idea of puny little me blocking him.