by Teague, AS
“And now, there’s Hunter,” she cried, a fresh wave of tears leaking out of her eyes. “I’m almost seventy years old. How am I going to raise another child at my age?”
The thought that Barb and Chuck would be the ones left to raise Hunter hadn’t crossed my mind until she said something. That would devastate Aiden, to have his boys separated and in completely different states.
“Shay didn’t know who his father was, and if she did, she never told a soul. I wouldn’t even know how to go about finding him.”
I shook my head. “We both know who Hunter’s father is.”
She tipped her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t see Aiden when we got here and they wouldn’t give him any information on Hunter. He was ready to tear down the walls of this hospital to find that boy, because he loves him just as much as he loves Landon and Owen. And Hunter loves Aiden.”
She pressed her lips together, the lines around them deepening. “You’re right, dear, he has always done more than his fair share where Hunter was concerned. Shay never wanted for anything for her boys, Hunter included, because Aiden always made sure to take care of them. All three of them.”
I squeezed her shoulder gently and sucked in a deep breath. “Barb, why don’t you let Aiden take him?”
“What?” Her mouth went slack.
I quickly began talking, trying to convince her that it was what was best for everyone. “Hunter and the boys just lost their mother. They are going to need therapy, a stable environment, and all the love in the world. You and Chuck can certainly give Hunter all of those things, but he’ll be uprooted from the only home he’s ever known, separated from his brothers for the first time in his life. He may not adjust well.”
“I don’t know…” She looked away from my face to peer through the waiting room windows. The clouds had begun to break, the sun peeking through illuminating the city.
I cleared my throat. “You don’t have to make any decisions now. You need to talk it over with Chuck; you two need to really come to an agreement. But I can guarantee you that Aiden would never turn him down, and you would always be able to see him just the same as Landon and Owen.”
She nodded. “I’ll have to talk to Chuck. I can’t imagine raising another child. There is so much that has to be done when you’re raising them. It’s all fun and games when they come to see Nana and Papa for the summer. Ice cream for breakfast, daily trips to the park and movies, no bed time. But you can’t do any of that when they live there permanently.”
I laughed. “I get it. Kids are a lot of work. It’s one of the reasons I never wanted any.”
She looked at me and tilted her head to the side. “And now?”
“Now?” I wanted those boys. I wanted Aiden and his kids, all three of them, in my life, forever. “Things change, and life has a way of telling you what you want instead of the other way around.”
She gave me a weak smile and patted my knee. “You’re absolutely right, dear.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mel
The morning after the accident, Aiden had used his celebrity status (and a hefty part of his wallet) to have Landon and Owen moved to a private room together so that I could be with both of them while he stayed with Hunter.
He was moved from the pediatric intensive care unit a week after the boys were discharged and stayed there for another week as his lung healed enough to be able to go home.
True to her word, Brooke had shown up with Griff and Allie in tow the day after the accident. They stayed longer than they needed to and we had to all but force them to go home. As soon as they left, Quinn showed up to offer his support followed by Shane and Trav.
Those four guys had rallied around their friend and his boys and every time I saw one of those big football players reading with Hunter or playing video games with Landon and Owen, I got choked up.
Aiden may have never had the parents and brother that he wanted, but like me, he’d created a family of his own.
It had been the longest two weeks of our lives, but it was finally time for Hunter to be discharged from the hospital and begin our trek home.
Once again, Aiden had chartered a private plane to fly us all back to Wisconsin, and the boys had all thought they were hot shit being wheeled onto it like they were celebrities walking the red carpet.
Together with Chuck and Barb, Aiden decided that it would be best to tell the boys together that their mother had not survived the accident. I’d gracefully bowed out, letting them all know that I was right outside the room for them but wanting them to be alone together while they learned the news of their mother’s fate. I was only in the hallway for ten minutes before Hunter called me in, his sweet face streaked with tears.
They’d all been devastated, and I knew that we had a long road ahead of us, but I was confident that together, with Chuck and Barb lending us all the support they had to offer, we’d be okay.
Aiden’s parents had come to Pennsylvania when they’d heard, and according to him, they were both more compassionate and concerned than they had been in years.
That was another long road that would have to be traversed, but I had a feeling that things would be changing with Aiden and his parents. He’d finally come to accept that his parents would always favor his older brother, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t room in their family for him as well.
We pulled up to the house, and Sandy came bursting through the door before we’d even put the SUV into park. “You’re home!” she shouted as she ran toward us, her arms outstretched.
Landon climbed out and was immediately swallowed in a bear hug. “Landon, honey, I missed you!” Sandy cried into his messy hair.
“I missed you too, Sandy,” he said, his voice wobbling. He was dangerously close to crying but managed to keep it together as Owen jumped from the vehicle and launched himself at Sandy.
“Owen, dear!” she shouted as she made room in her ample bosom for him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her dress, not even trying to stop the tears that leaked from his eyes.
Sandy was full on snot-sobbing at this point, and Aiden came around and wrapped his long arms around all of them while I busied myself helping Hunter from the car. His leg was in a cast, and he was still slow moving because of his tender ribs, but he’d kept a grin on his face the entire ride home.
Sandy had just dried her tears when she looked up at little Hunter and a fresh round started all over again. “Hunter, baby!”
Landon and Owen stepped aside, Owen scrubbing a hand over his face, and let Sandy gather their younger brother in her arms. She held him close, rocking him back and forth, and I worried that she was squeezing a bit too tight. But if she was, Hunter had no complaints and stayed there, wrapped in the woman’s arms until she was ready to release him.
“Hunter, I’ve got your room all set up,” Sandy said and looked over to me. “Mel helped me.”
We slowly made our way inside, and Sandy led us down the hall to the office. “Dad, wasn’t this your room, like, a month ago?”
“It was,” he said. “But now my room’s upstairs. With Mel.”
“Ew, gross!” Owen shouted as Landon snickered.
Sandy threw the door open, and we were greeted with a hospital bed that was covered in spaceship sheets and blankets, a nightstand full of coloring books with aliens and the art kit I’d given him for Christmas.
“Oh, cool!” Hunter shouted. “Can this be my room forever?”
Aiden chuckled, the sound deep and rich, and he wrapped an arm around my waist. “No, I need this for an office. But we can take all of the space stuff and put it in your room when you’re able to go up and down the stairs by yourself again.”
Landon and Owen wandered in and flopped on the bed before immediately pressing the button to make the head move up and down. “Hey, why can’t we have beds like this?” Owen quipped.
“Cause you don’t have a broken leg!” Hunter shouted back.
Landon’s eyes narrowed. “You just wait til I can beat you up again.”
Hunter laughed. “They put metal in my leg. I’m like Wolverine now. I’m the Metal Man. No one can beat me up.”
The three boys dissolved into a fit of laughter, and I leaned into Aiden’s side, watching them together, my chest filling with warmth.
“Boys, are you hungry?” Sandy asked as she clapped her hands together. She was answered with a trio of yesses, and she spun on a heel and ordered them to follow her to the kitchen.
There was no doubt that she’d already made all of their favorites, and they knew it. They began chattering as the twins helped Hunter down the hall, making bets on what they thought Sandy had waiting for them.
Aiden and I turned and watched them go, but when I went to follow them, he pulled me back into the room and pushed the door closed behind me.
He wove his fingers through my hair and brought his lips to mine, the kiss a mere brush of his mouth on mine. “I love you, Mel.”
His breath against my skin caused me to shiver. “I love you too,” I told him. “So much.”
“I have a confession,” he said, his body still pressed against mine. “I thought that when that lineman hit me, that was it. My life was over. I was angry. At that guy, at myself, at the entire world and fate for being so cruel.”
I nodded. “You’ve told me that before.”
“But now I know that it happened for a reason. My life came to an end that day so that I could start it over with you. We’ve always said that someday, we would be together, someday would be our day, and that was the day.”
“Your injury happened so we could be together?” I asked him skeptically. I was a big believer in destiny and fate, but even that seemed too cruel a fate to be predetermined.
“If it hadn’t have happened, you wouldn’t have been here with me when I almost lost my boys. If you hadn’t been with me, I truly don’t know how I would have survived it. The waiting, the worrying, the uncertainty. Through it all, it was you who kept me tethered to reality so that I didn’t lose my mind with the what-ifs.”
My lip quivered, but he pressed his mouth to mine and stilled the tremble. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
There was an openness in his eyes that I’d never seen before, and within the depths of his blazing blue eyes, a hint of fear, as though he thought there was a chance I would change my mind. I looped my arms around his waist and squeezed tight.
“I want you. I want them. I want the highs and the lows and all the in-betweens. I want to do this life with you, the rest of my life with you and with your boys. There is nowhere else I belong. I’m Team Aiden.” I pressed my mouth to the hollow of his throat, where I could feel his heartbeat pounding. “Scratch that. I’m Team Shaw.”
His lips curved up into the most brilliant smile I’d ever seen. “Team Shaw. The five of us, together.”
“The five of us,” I murmured. “Forever.”
Epilogue
Aiden
My boys stood to the right of me, all three of them bouncing on the balls of their feet, nervous energy radiating out of all of them. “Be still,” I hissed. “You’re making me nervous.”
It had been a little more than a year since I’d officially retired from the NFL and my life had started over. The journey over these past thirteen months had been difficult, some days harder than others, and I knew that it would be a long time still until things were normal again, if that was even possible.
We still didn’t know what had been going through Shay’s head as she took the boys to Pennsylvania and told me that she was headed to Oklahoma. None of the boys remembered the accident, but they said that Shay had seemed fine. The anger that I’d had toward her had vanished when I’d realized that she was gone. She’d had issues that I couldn’t help her fight, and in the end, I no longer held on to the resentment that I’d once felt for her.
Barb and Chuck had decided to give me full custody of Hunter, something that Mel had suggested when I’d gone to see him in ICU that day. I’d have asked for it myself, would have damn near demanded it, but Barb had told me that when she’d seen the conviction in Mel’s eyes, she’d known that with me, and his brothers, was where Hunter belonged. They’d decided to move to Green Bay to be closer to the boys, and I had been more than happy to buy them a house not far from where we lived so that they could spend time with their grandkids anytime they wanted.
Landon had taken his mother’s death the hardest. He’d felt responsible, as though if he hadn’t been asleep during the accident, he could have done something to prevent it and therefore saved her. It had taken months of therapy, but he had finally come to terms with the fact that there was nothing that he could have done to change what happened.
Owen had been upset, but he’d also always been the kid who let things roll off his back. I’d actually worried about him in the beginning because he’d seemed unphased by it all, but about three months after her death, he’d had his breakdown, and we’d been able to help him through it.
Hunter was a sensitive soul and always had been. He still cried frequently for his mother, missing her more than the other two, but he’d also been the first who had crawled into Mel’s lap and asked for a bedtime story not long after the accident.
I was well aware that the healing process would be an ongoing thing, but I was proud of my boys and their progress.
“Sorry, Dad,” Landon whispered.
Owen leaned over and dropped his voice. “You aren’t already nervous?”
I was freaking terrified, but I shook my head. “Nah, I’ve played in this stadium before.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t getting ready to play now,” Landon said.
It was twenty minutes before kickoff. Griff’s team was playing in the Super Bowl for the first time, and he’d arranged for all of us to have a press box to watch the game from.
But the boys and I were down on the field waiting for Mel to join us because I had a surprise for her, something that the four of us had been planning for a couple of months. I’d told her that I was being recognized before the big game tonight for some sort of achievement award, but really, we were here because the only achievement award I cared about was hearing the woman I loved agree to marry me.
“Here she comes,” Hunter said, pointing toward the sidelines.
Mel was crossing the field wearing a Packers’ jersey with my number on it, and a pair of jeans that fit her perfectly. She was beaming at the four of us, her hair pulled away from her face.
She looked casual and comfortable and absolutely gorgeous.
My stomach began to somersault, and those nerves that I’d denied having came roaring through me. The closer she got, the antsier I became, and then she was standing in front of me and I couldn’t speak.
Landon elbowed me in the ribs, and it was enough to pull me out of my head. I opened my arms, and Mel stepped into them. “You okay?” she asked quietly.
I would be in just a few minutes. “I’m great.”
She squeezed and then stepped back and looked around the stadium. “This is incredible, Aiden. I can’t believe that you spent every Sunday in a stadium like this.”
Her eyes were sparkling with awe, and I couldn’t pull my gaze away from her.
I’d spent every Sunday during football season for eight years standing where we stood now, the crowd roaring and chanting my name. I’d experienced my highest highs and some of my lowest lows on Astroturf just like this all over the country.
But none of that compared to this very moment, my kids alive and healthy and happy at my side, my woman, the one who had slipped through my fingers for too many years, in front of me, her face radiating happiness.
I glanced to the boys and jerked my chin, giving them the signal we’d come up with. The three of them grinned, and each of them repeated my gesture before bending and picking up the white signs that were at their feet.
Mel’s back was to us as she continued to look around,
and I took the opportunity to pull the ring box that I’d tucked into my pocket earlier out and then drop to a knee.
The stadium announcer’s voice boomed, “Ladies and Gentlemen. I’d like to direct your attention to center field, where Aiden Shaw, future Hall of Famer, is with his family.”
It hadn’t taken nearly as many favors as I’d thought it would to set this whole thing up, the league being more than generous considering the way my career had ended.
Mel whirled, and when our gazes collided, she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Beside me, the boys were standing with their oversized signs in the air, each one of them with the broadest smile I’d ever seen.
The stadium that had been noisy fell silent, and the announcers voice boomed, “Melanie Holstein, Aiden wants to tell you a secret.”
I watched her face transform from shock to surprise then to recognition as she realized what was happening.
The boys stepped forward, their arms still high in the air, and one at a time, read the words that were written on their sign. Landon started, his voice steady, “Will you…”
Then Owen grinned. “Marry…”
And finally, Hunter shouted, “Our daddy?”
Her eyes darted between where I was still on one knee and where my boys were, and she rushed to the three of them, her arms outstretched. They dropped their signs and nearly took her to the ground as they hugged her tightly, her face wet with tears.
Mel had never tried to replace their mother, but from the beginning, she had let the boys know that they could come to her with anything that they needed.
And they had.
When they were having a rough day, she was the person they curled up next to on the couch. When they saw something funny on their phones or tablets, they couldn’t wait to share it with her, knowing that she would laugh along with them.
Mel had always insisted that she didn’t want to have kids, that she was not meant to be a mother, but she had underestimated herself. My boys adored her, and sometimes I wondered who loved her more, me or them.