Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
McCabe
E arly the next morning, I sit in the kitchen feeding Abby some rice cereal mixed with sweet potato for breakfast, when I hear a grunt of pain from the guest bedroom. It’s all the assurance I need that forcing AJ to stay with me was the right call.
I’m pretty sure the only reason she relented was that she needed to pee badly when we got back to our building, and didn’t have time to fish out her key and open her door left-handed, so she agreed to use my bathroom. When she was unable to redo the button on her pants left-handed, I think she finally realized that living on her own with her dominant hand immobilized wasn’t possible. At least not yet.
“You okay?” I call out, thankful the guest bedroom is the closest to the kitchen so she can hear me.
“I’m fine.” Her words are grunted too, because she’s most definitely not okay.
Goddamn, this woman is stubborn. “Do I need to come in there?”
She clearly doesn’t miss the amused tone, because she calls out, “Don’t even think about it.”
I’m guessing she’s trying to change her clothes without help—exactly what the doctor and nurse told her she couldn’t do. Now the images of her undressed body are filling my head, which is just so wrong, given that I’m sitting right across from Abby. Still, I can’t stop my brain from going there.
“Oh, I’m thinking about it!” I call back.
Reaching forward, I tickle Abby under her chin to get her to open her mouth so I can shovel in another spoonful of rice cereal. It’s not that she doesn’t like it. It’s that she wants mealtimes to take as long as humanly possible, and I’m not going to lie...feeding her is kind of boring. I’m committed to avoiding distractions while doing it. I don’t go on my phone or watch TV while I do anything with her because we don’t get that much one-on-one time with my travel schedule, and I want to make our time together count. But the sooner she eats, the sooner we can move on to something more fun.
“Dada,” I say, pointing to myself.
“Daaaaaaa,” she repeats.
She’s so close to stringing multiple syllables together, and I’m pretty damn determined that “Dada” is going to be her first word.
“Shit!” The yelp of pain accompanying the curse has me setting the bowl on the table and handing Abby the empty rubber spoon so she can chew on it in her highchair while I investigate what’s going on in the guest room.
I knock twice before I enter, and when she spins around, it’s clear why she’s in pain. She’d insisted on sleeping in her clothes last night because she didn’t want me to help her get undressed, and now she’s decided to take matters into her own hands. As a result, she’s got her good arm out of her sweater, but her splint has snagged inside it.
“Can I help get you untangled?”
“I’m freaking undressing. Why are you barging in here?” She’s annoyed and feisty, and I don’t know why, but I really like that. Still, I don’t want to be a creep and make her uncomfortable.
I hold up my hands and look at the ground. “Because you’re not supposed to be doing that by yourself. It’s why you’re here, and not across the hall in your own place.”
She makes a sound that’s like a growl rattling around in the back of her throat. “I hate feeling helpless like this.”
“You’re not helpless,” I say with a sigh, “you’re injured. Come here. I’ll help you get out of that sweater, and I promise I won’t even check you out while I’m doing it.”
“Oh yeah, because you’re such a gentleman.”
“I am, actually,” I tell her, not even chuckling at the slicing glare she sends me in response. “Come here, let me help.” I don’t move toward her. She needs to make this decision because she’s willing to accept my help, not because I’m standing over her and demanding it.
“Fine.” Her chest deflates with a big sigh as she steps toward me.
Reaching inside the arm of her sweater where it’s tangled around her shoulder and biceps, I spread the knit fabric enough that she can pull her splinted arm out without snagging it. Then I reach down and grab the t-shirt I’d offered to help her put on last night where it sits on the dresser, and hold it out with my fingers spreading the shirt sleeve so she can slide that arm in first, before I pull it over her head and she slides her other arm through.
“You going to put the shorts on too?” I ask.
“Yeah. I hate hard pants.”
“You...what now?” I ask with a laugh as I grab the pair of boxer shorts off the dresser.
“Hard pants. You know, like with zippers and buttons and stuff.”
“As opposed to soft pants?”
“Yeah, like leggings and sweats.”
“Huh. Yeah, me too, I guess.” I never thought about it that way, but it makes sense.
She reaches down with her good hand and lifts the front of the t-shirt to undo the button and zipper of her navy-blue dress pants with her other hand, while I stand there wondering why she almost always wears trousers to work if she hates the feel of them.
“Can you pull these off for me, please?”
Squatting, I grab the fabric at her knees and gently tug down until the pants pool at her feet. It’s not until I look up at her that I notice my face is right at the level of her crotch. I know I said I was a gentleman and all, but that doesn’t mean I don’t imagine this scene playing out differently—me lifting that t-shirt and sliding her thong down her legs before tasting her.
But because I’m not a creep, and because I can hear Abby babbling away in the next room, I hold the boxers out at AJ’s feet so she can step into them, and then pull them up to her knees, letting her take them with her good hand.
“I’m going to finish feeding Abby breakfast. Are you hungry?” I ask, turning away so she can get the boxers on under the t-shirt without me watching.
“I don’t eat breakfast. But I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”
“All this talk of killing people last night and this morning...I didn’t know you were so violent,” I tease.
“That’s because you don’t know me, McCabe.” Her voice is hard, and I can feel her trying to put distance back between us...the kind of distance that should exist between a general manager and her players, yet seems to disappear when we’re alone.
I should let those walls go back up. Nothing she told me the other day about her reasons for trading me changes anything. I still missed out on the last couple of weeks of my grandma’s life because of her.
By the time I got the call that Grandma was sick and I needed to come home, she was already on a ventilator...and she never came off. I never got to tell her how much I loved her. How she saved my life and gave me a future, all because she was so wonderfully selfless.
I should have been there for her at the end, when she was sick but still lucid. And I would have been, if I’d still been playing in St. Louis. I would have been able to stop by every day we weren’t on the road. But instead, I was in Boston.
And yet...I can’t bring myself to blame AJ anymore. Because she’s right— I’m the one who beat the shit out of her husband right before the trade deadline, and there was no way I was going to play for him after that. I didn’t leave the team much of a choice but to trade me.
I turn back toward her, happy to find that she’s managed to get those shorts on under the t-shirt. Not that she even needed them, since my shirt comes down to her mid-thigh. “I’ll go get you some coffee. Still like it black?”
Her tongue darts to the corner of her mouth as she scrunches her face up. “Why do you know that?”
I shrug and give her a wink before I turn to head back to the kitchen, where I can hear Abby getting fussy in her highchair.
She follows me into the hallway, walking beside me. “Just because you know my coffee order doesn’t mean you know me, McCabe.”
“If you say so.”
I’m a quiet guy by nature, reserved in a way that has people thinking I’m grumpy or pissed off. But it’s not because I don’t like people, it’s because I’m fascinated by how much you can learn about others when you simply shut your fucking mouth and listen.
The world is full of people who just want to talk, who aren’t comfortable with silence and want to fill every moment with conversation—usually about themselves. I prefer to observe, and to speak only when I actually have something worth saying.
One of the reasons I was first drawn to AJ is that she does the same thing. She has an ease around people that I don’t have, but she leads quietly. Unlike a lot of people in her position, she’s never been self-aggrandizing. Her predecessor here in Boston thought he walked on fucking water, which he most definitely didn’t, and he never let you forget it. AJ isn’t like that.
She puts her head down and does the work, and attributes any and all successes to the team, not to herself. That’s why people here like her. She’s the kind of GM that makes you want to put in the effort and do your damn job the best you can, just so you can earn her approval.
Despite everything that happened between us in the past, even when I hated her, I never stopped observing.
“Good,” she says, plopping down in the seat across from Abby and making faces at her before she turns toward me where I stand at the cupboard about to get her a coffee mug. “So stop trying to act like you know anything about me.”
“You always get punchy and defensive like this when you’re afraid someone might be getting close? Might actually see you as something more than a woman in charge of an entire hockey organization?”
The whoosh of breath that leaves her as her jaw falls open tells me I’ve hit a little too close to the heart of the matter.
“But no,” I say with a healthy dose of sarcasm as I pull a blue Boston Rebels mug off the shelf. “Of course, I don’t know anything about you.”
She turns her attention back to Abby, covering her face with her hands and popping up from behind them, saying, “Peek-a-boo!”
Abby shrieks with delight each time, and I can’t help but smile as I listen with my back turned to them while pouring AJ a cup of coffee.
“Here you go,” I say, crossing the kitchen to hand her the mug. I’ve got it cupped in my hands, holding it from the bottom, so she can easily grab the handle with her left hand. “I’ll take over with her so you can drink your coffee.”
“Pfft.” She lets out an adorably dismissive snort. “I can drink my coffee and chat with Abby at the same time.” Then she turns back toward my daughter, and her voice completely changes. She’s practically cooing as she tells Abby, “Girls are excellent multitaskers. You’ll see. Besides, we’re going to be good friends. And when you’re older and your dad is being a grouch, you can sneak across the hall, and we’ll have juice boxes and watch Barbie movies together.”
I know she’s just babbling to keep Abby entertained, that she doesn’t really plan on developing this relationship with my daughter. She’s probably just trying to annoy me by making me think she and Abby are going to team up against me someday.
But for reasons that don’t even make sense, that thought doesn’t annoy me at all. In fact, it has the opposite effect. It makes me think of my own parents, and how much I’ve always wanted what they had. The teasing and the laughter, but also the deep trust, respect, and affection.
That’s not something I can ever have with AJ—not only because I’m probably moving, but also because, even if I stayed, she’ll always be my boss.
And she’s made it clear that’s a line she won’t cross again.