Shutout

by Jami Davenport

  “Why doesn’t Mommy ever go with us?” Hailey asked me.

  “Mom likes to skate,” Heath added. I might be imagining things, but I thought I heard a note of accusation in his voice.

  “I know. She’s busy with school and all, but, yeah, she’s a good skater.” I put my arm around both their shoulders and guided them onto the ice.

  “You’ve seen her skate?” Heath narrowed his eyes and studied me closely.

  “I, uh, yeah, long time ago. I’ve known her since high school.”

  Heath was appeased by my answer and I blew out a relieved breath.

  “I wish she was here.” Hailey pouted and stomped her blades on the ice. I tamped down my panic. I wasn’t sure how to diffuse Hailey if she went into full tantrum mode.

  I didn’t respond but began to skate with smooth, easy strokes of my blades on the ice. Heath pulled away as a couple other little boys raced by and gave chase. Hailey, usually outgoing, hung back.

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Daddy used to skate with us.” She sniffled and looked away from me, staring into the distance at something I couldn’t see. My heart constricted, not only because of the depth of her loss, but also for more selfish reasons. Would they ever call me Daddy? I didn’t want to erase their memories of Mark but for them to create new memories with me. This was so hard, not knowing if I was doing or saying the right thing.

  “I’m so sorry. I know it hurts.” My words were lame, but what else did a guy say under these circumstances? I glanced around for a distraction and spotted our goalie Brick’s little girl practicing spins at center ice. “Would you like to join Macy?” I pointed toward the pretty little girl who was Brick’s pride and joy.

  Hailey nodded, and I skated out to center ice with her. I introduced her to Macy and the two of them hit it off immediately. Before I knew it, I was left alone while my kids were skating all over the place.

  “They’re damn good on those blades,” Ice said in my ear. I hadn’t heard him skate up to me.

  “Yeah, they are.”

  Someone had broken out the hockey sticks, and my son had grabbed one. He was big for his age and held his own with the older boys as they scrambled up and down the ice in an impromptu game. You couldn’t get a bunch of hockey players together on the ice without someone finding sticks and a puck. Obviously, the same was true of our children.

  “You’re a lucky guy. Where’s Caro?” He clapped me on the back and grinned at me. His own pregnant wife sat in the stands talking with some of the other WAGs.

  “She didn’t want to come. We’re not on the best of terms.” I met his gaze, and I wasn’t fooling him.

  “She’ll come around, E. Or you can nudge her a little. Never hurts to say you’re sorry. It might damage your pride a bit, but it’s worth it.”

  “I don’t know what I’d be sorry for. She doesn’t trust me. She said so.”

  “Did you do something to cause her to mistrust you?”

  I didn’t think I did, but maybe I had by not discussing my plans with her. Instead I told her what I wanted. Maybe I did owe her an apology.

  Ice coughed and inclined his head in the direction of the tunnel from the locker room to the ice. “Looks like someone changed their mind.”

  My head snapped in the direction he was looking. Before I’d even spotted her, my body knew she was here.

  Caro stepped onto the ice, dressed in black tights and my jersey. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a sassy ponytail. Fuck, but she was stunning. My heart caught in my throat. By wearing my jersey, she was announcing to everyone in this place she was here for me and no one else. I skated toward her with strong, deliberate strokes of my blades, my eyes never straying from her beautiful face. She smiled tentatively, and I grinned like a damn fool. She met me halfway, and we stopped a few feet from each other, unmindful of the skaters skirting around us or the puck whizzing past us.

  “You came.” I stated the obvious and looked even more the fool, but I didn’t care.

  She nodded and reached for my hand. Together, we skated along the boards, trying to avoid the rambunctious hockey game going on around us. I only dared imagine what had brought her here. She’d dropped into my lap like my own personal angel from heaven.

  “We’re taking our lives in our hands,” she said as a group of young boys chased down the puck a few feet from us with Heath in the lead.

  “Watch me, Mom!” he yelled as he raced by. Caro beamed at him, ever the proud mother.

  “Be careful!” she shouted.

  “Yeah, we are. I’ve always liked living life on the edge.” I smiled down at her, and her returning smile lit up my day.

  “He’s your son.” She pointed toward Heath fighting for the puck with a bigger kid. Heath emerged victorious, took the puck several feet down the ice, and passed to a teammate.

  “He is,” I said proudly, as my chest puffed out a little. “And she’s your daughter.” I indicated Hailey, who was trading off spins with Macy.

  “She’s a scrapper like you though.”

  “And a neat freak like you.”

  “In some things. You saw her unwrap her present.” She laughed, her eyes sparkling with good humor and something else I didn’t dare name for fear I’d be wrong, but that something was there in her eyes. It gave me hope.

  “Unwrap? She tore into it like a wild woman.” We grinned at each other, and hope rose inside me. We could make this work.

  “I think it’s time we tell them,” she said.

  I stopped and spun to face her. I searched her face for any sign of teasing, but she was dead serious. “So do I. I think it’s time for a lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I think we should try being a family.” I held my breath and waited for her response.

  “I’d like that.” She placed her hands on my shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed me on the cheek. I broke into a wide grin.

  “I love you, Caro. I never stopped loving you.” The words came from deeper than my heart, more like my soul, my very core, the very thing that gave living things life. I loved her. Maybe I’d always loved her. But this time I loved her as a man loved a woman, and I intended to show her how much.

  “I love you, too, Easton.” Her blue eyes shone with the light of a thousand stars, and she was brighter than every one of them.

  “It’s taken me a long time to figure out what I wanted. I don’t think I really knew until just now. I don’t want today, or even tomorrow or next week, I want forever.”

  “So do I.”

  I bent down and kissed her in front of everyone. I might have lost the bet as Puck Brother, and I didn’t care one damn bit. My teammates catcalled all around me but I ignored them.

  This was what I’d wanted for longer than I realized.

  Chapter 29—Good Morning

  ~~Caroline~~

  Easton stayed the night, and we made love well into the morning. Now I lay cuddled next to him at dawn, our naked bodies entwined. I wanted to wake up like this every morning for the rest of my life, but one step at a time.

  We still had some talking to do.

  He stirred and opened his eyes and a slow smile spread across his face. “Good morning, beautiful.”

  “Good morning to you.” He ran his hand down my back and rested it on my bare ass. I laid my head on his chest.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Oh, God, I hate the sound of those words. You’re not going to boot me again, are you? No regrets, remember?”

  I sat up. This needed to be a face-to-face conversation.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and by the shock on his face, I could’ve knocked him down with a feather.

  “Sorry?”

  “My behavior. I’ve been really unfair to you. All you asked for was to be a part of our children’s lives, and I fought you at every turn.”

  Easton nodded slowly, as if he were considering something. “I’m sorry, too, for pushing you when you weren’t ready to be pushed, for no
t understanding what you’re going through along with the kids. I’m not usually so impatient.”

  “I want to tell them, and I want them to have your last name.”

  “You do?” He blinked several times, then swiped his arm across his face. His eyes were suspiciously bright. “When should we tell them?”

  “How about this morning?”

  “This morning?” Now that the final moment of truth was upon him, he looked scared. “What if they throw a fit and hate the idea of me as their father? What if they blame you for keeping this secret from them?”

  “They probably will, but we’ll deal with it. Their anger or hurt won’t last forever. They’ll forgive us. You’re a great father, and any child would be lucky to have you in their life.”

  “I could say the same about you. Let’s do this.”

  I slid off the bed and held out my hand to him. He took a moment to survey my naked body with a naughty smile.

  “What is it we’re doing?” he joked, easing the tension slightly. I swatted at him. He caught my hand in his and kissed my knuckles.

  I pulled away. “No more good stuff until we’re done with the not-so-good stuff.”

  He sighed and stood, stretching his magnificent body and reaching for his clothes.

  We showered and dressed. As hard as it was not to linger in the shower, we didn’t. We had a mission, and we were both committed to our mission.

  The kids didn’t bat an eye when Easton and I walked out of the bedroom that morning. I’m not sure they understood what was going on, but they seemed okay with it. Junie was making breakfast, and the smell of bacon made my stomach growl.

  After breakfast, we sat the kids down at the dining room table. Junie, guessing something big was going on, made herself scarce.

  Heath sipped his juice and studied us with a solemn face, too serious for a kid his age. Hailey jabbered away, talking about her riding lessons, the pony she rode, her figure-skating routine, and a kid in her daycare she didn’t like.

  I held up a hand and smiled gently at her. “Hailey, honey, I need to you to be quiet and listen for a moment. Easton and I have something very important to tell you.”

  Hailey stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth forming a big O. She clasped her hands on the table in front of her and nodded, also serious for once.

  I met Easton’s gaze, and he squeezed my hand under the table. Turning back to my babies, I drew a deep breath and dived in. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. Your dad, Mark, was a really good dad, and I never want to take that away from you, but the truth is that you have another dad.” I paused, trying to find the words that six-year-olds would understand and coming up short. Both children stared at me with twin expressions of confusion.

  “Like Julie at school has two dads? One is her stepdad, whatever that means,” Hailey asked.

  “No, not exactly. Easton is your father, your biological father. Mark was my husband and was also your father because of love, but not physically.” I didn’t know if what I was saying was over their heads or not.

  “If Easton is our real father, why didn’t we know until now?” Heath scowled and his eyes narrowed as he glared at me. My son was not happy.

  Oh, God, this was difficult. “Easton and I knew each other years ago. I thought Mark was your biological father, but after he died, we did tests, and I found out Easton was.”

  Hailey’s lip was quivering, and Heath’s face was frozen solid with belligerence. I was making a huge mess of this. My news wasn’t going over well at all. I looked to Easton for help.

  “Hailey, Heath, I’m sorry I wasn’t in your life earlier. Don’t blame your mother. She simply didn’t know. And you had a great dad. Now I’m here not to fill his shoes but to be a different kind of dad, the kind only I know how to be.”

  Hailey shook her head so hard her blonde curls slapped against her face. “No. No. No! You’re not my daddy. My daddy is gone. I want him back. I want everything back the way it was. I hate this place. I hate you both. I want Nana and Grandpa. I want to go home.” Hailey wailed with the pure emotions of a child, the pain so obvious I felt it in my heart and deep to my soul. Tears flowed down her face and huge sobs racked her small body. Heath threw his arms around her and glared accusingly at us over his shoulder. Hailey jerked away from him and ran down the hall to her bedroom.

  Heath started after her and stopped. His eyes narrowed. “I want to go home too. Let us go home and live with Nana and Grandpa. We don’t want to be here.” He sprinted down the hallway and slammed his bedroom door.

  For a long moment, Easton and I were silent, then our eyes met.

  “That went well,” Easton quipped. I wasn’t in mood for levity and merely scowled at him.

  “I need to talk to them.” I started to get up, but Easton held me back with a gentle but firm hand on my arm.

  “Give them time to absorb everything. This is lot for them to process.”

  “But I—”

  He shook his head to silence me. “Give them a little time, honey. They’re hurting, and I agree we shouldn’t leave them alone too long.”

  “I shouldn’t have told them yet. It’s too soon. And you and I, they aren’t going to like us together and we’re—”

  “You’re not going to run on me again, are you?” Easton’s brown eyes narrowed as he watched me intently.

  “Run on you?”

  “Kick me out. Tell we can’t see each other. We’re in this together, Caro. We agreed on that. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

  “No, not this time,” I admitted.

  “We’ll weather this storm together because that’s how a family does it.” He smiled, not one of his huge light-up-your-world smiles, because the situation didn’t call for it, but a better-things-are-coming and a trust-in-me smile.

  Tears slid down my cheeks, and he pulled me into his arms. I needed him, and that was okay. I’d tried so hard since Mark had died to be everything to everyone and to be independent, I found it hard to admit maybe I did need someone. That together we were stronger than we were apart.

  Easton was the other half of me, and we would weather this storm.

  ~~Easton~~

  There was no real handbook on parenting. Yeah, there were lots of books written on the subject, but I was beginning to discover that being a good parent relied more on instincts, love, fairness, and consistency.

  I didn’t have the solution on how to handle this sticky situation, but I decided that as long as we did it with love and the children’s best interests at heart, eventually things would work out.

  We’d dropped a bombshell on them, and they would need time to adjust, but kids were resilient and sometimes they handled changes better than adults did.

  We gave them about a half hour to let their emotions out. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do or not, but approaching them immediately seemed counterproductive to me, and Caro agreed.

  “I’ll talk to Heath if you want to tackle Hailey?” I said.

  Caro nodded, her face blotchy from crying. She blew her nose, wiped her face, and gave me a shaky smile. “We can do this.”

  I stood and pulled her to her feet. I gave her a soft kiss on the lips and winked. “We can do this. Divide and conquer.”

  She almost laughed. Together, we walked down the hall and knocked on the kids’ bedroom doors.

  Neither of them said a word, so with one last encouraging smile in Caro’s direction, I went inside as did she.

  Heath was sitting on his bed tossing a puck back and forth from one hand to the other. “Ziggy, one of my teammates, can juggle six pucks at once.”

  My son didn’t look up, just kept doing what he was doing.

  “One time he tried seven and got smacked in the head with multiple pucks, almost knocked him out.” I chuckled and waited for a reaction. Nothing happened. The room was silent except for the slapping sound the puck made as it hit his palm.

  Smack. Smack. Smack.

  “I know you’re upset
and have every right to be. It’s not easy to find out things aren’t as you always thought they were.”

  Smack. Smack. Smack.

  “I know you loved your dad, and I never want to take that away from you. I’m just hoping that someday, you’ll find room in your heart for me too. I want to be your dad, Heath. I want to cheer you on at your hockey games. I want to help you with your homework. I want to teach you to drive a car. I want to be there for you when you need me for the rest of my life.”

  Smack. Smack. Thump.

  The two pucks hit the ground, and Heath didn’t bother to pick them up. He lifted his head and our gazes met. His eyes were filled with unshed tears, and my heart broke a little.

  “I miss my dad.”

  “I know you do, buddy. It’ll get easier, and you’ll always have the memories.” I sat on the edge of the bed, keeping a foot between us, not wanting to push it by getting too close. “I know how it feels to lose a dad. I lost mine. I’ll never forget the night they came to our door to tell my mom. It’s burned in my memory, but as time goes on, the good memories are the ones I choose to recall and hold close to my heart.”

  “How did you lose your dad?” He sniffled.

  “He was a firefighter. He died trying to save someone. He was a hero.”

  “My dad didn’t die trying to save someone.”

  “That’s okay. He’s still your hero, right?”

  Heath nodded. “I guess so.” He scooted over, closing the foot between us, and wrapped his arms around my waist. I hugged him close and let him cry, possibly for the first time since his father had died.

  ~~Caroline~~

  Because of my controlling nature and tendency to believe no one else could possibly know what to do in this situation better than me, my first inclination was to insist that I talk to both children. Mark had let me do all the hard parenting, while he’d been the fun parent. The fact that Easton wanted to help with the good and bad stuff was something I should encourage, not discourage, so I curbed my initial reaction and agreed to let Easton talk with Heath while I spoke with Hailey.