Chapter Four
TREY
The sharp crack of a hockey stick against the ice echoes through the rink, and my body reacts before my mind can catch up. My muscles tense, ready to dive for cover. The metallic taste of adrenaline floods my mouth as my hand automatically reaches for a weapon that isn't there anymore.
But this isn't Kandahar. It's just Saturday morning youth team practice at the Hawkeyes' training facility. The only explosions here come from kids celebrating goals, and the only thing I need to protect them from is their own wobbly ankles.
I adjust my hearing aid, trying to filter out the sound of skates scraping ice, pucks hitting boards, and kids shouting. The device helps with the damage from the bomb that took half my hearing and my best friend, John Parker, but some sounds still slice through me like shrapnel.
"Uncle Trey! Watch this!" Adeline calls from center ice, her voice carrying over the chaos. She's working on her slapshot; the determination in her stance is just like my brother’s.
I force my features into what I hope passes for an encouraging smile, though exhaustion pulls at every muscle. Three hours of sleep isn't enough to function, but nightmares don't care about coaching schedules or the NHL playoff season.
"Looking good, kiddo!" I call back, noting her improved form. She's getting stronger, more confident. Tommy would be proud of her.
The thought of my younger brother sends a familiar ache through my chest. He should be here, teaching his daughter these things. Not me—the broken soldier who can barely remember to sign field trip permission slips and bake a store-bought lasagna without burning it in the oven.
With Adeline’s nanny quitting on us two weeks ago to travel through Europe, it hasn’t made anything easier.
Luckily, between Isla and her mother-in-law, plus the two bye-weeks the NHL has, we’ve managed to get by for the last couple of weeks.
But I’m going to need a nanny that I can trust with Adeline, and I need her soon.
"You look like shit," Kaenan Altman says, sliding up beside me with his clipboard. The sound of his skates cutting ice is crisp in my good ear. As head coach of the Hawkeyes sponsored youth league, the Little Hawks, he takes these Saturday morning practices as seriously as regular season games.
"Thanks." I adjust my hearing aid again, a nervous tick I can't shake.
The background noise still overwhelms me some days, despite the VA's best efforts at adjustment.
During Hawkeyes games, I usually just turn it off and rely on my other senses.
I can feel a player skating up on my left flank better than I can hear him.
Something you learn with fifteen years as special ops.
You have to rely on more than sight and sound to get you through. "Rough night," I tell him.
He nods, understanding in his eyes. As a retired defenseman for the Hawkeyes and father of two, he gets that the transition from military life to civilian routines hasn't been smooth for me.
"Berkeley's looking stronger on her crossovers," I say, desperate to change the subject. His seven-year-old daughter glides past, dark curly hair bouncing under her helmet. She's the spitting image of him, same determined set to her jaw when she concentrates.
"Yeah, she—" His phone buzzes, and he checks it. "Isla's here. With Vivi."
My pulse quickens at her name. It's been a week since I dropped her at Isla's house, still wearing that wedding dress that made her look like something out of a Vogue front cover, even drenched head to toe from the rain.
One week of wondering if I should have checked on her, gotten her number, done anything besides drive away like she wasn't my problem.
I guess technically, she isn't.
"How's she doing?" I ask, attempting for casual, but I’m sure I miss it by a damn mile.
"According to Isla, better than expected. The media's having a field day though. 'Newport Heiress Leaves Holiday Heir at Altar.' It's everywhere."
Of course it is. Because running from your wedding isn't dramatic enough without Seattle's gossip mill getting involved. I've seen the headlines myself, though I try to stay away from all media noise. Propaganda if you ask me. Especially when it comes to the military.
Not that I blame her. The look in her honey-colored eyes when she climbed into my SUV … I've seen that kind of desperate escape before. In the mirror, every morning for months after the helicopter accident.
“Have you found a replacement for that nanny that dropped you on your ass two weeks ago?”
“Not yet. I made some calls, but so far no one’s interested in keeping Adeline overnight when I’m out for away games.”
“You should ask Vivi to hook you up with a nanny from her company.”
The idea of asking Vivi for a favor right now when she just ran away from her wedding seems like shitty timing. I’d rather not.
"Uncle Trey," Adeline calls again. "Can you help me with my slapshot?"
"On my way," I call back, grateful for the excuse to escape this conversation.
The ice feels solid under my skates as I push off, the familiar sensation of ice cracking under me like it always has.
Here, I know what I'm doing. Here, I'm not the broken soldier or the inadequate guardian.
Just a coach teaching kids the game I love.
As I demonstrate proper form to Adeline, my mind keeps drifting to honey-colored eyes and a wedding dress in my back seat. To all the things I should have said, should have done.
Movement in the stands catches my eye, and there she is. Vivi. The sight of her hits me, knocking the air from my lungs. She's wearing jeans and an oversized Hawkeyes hoodie—probably Isla's—but she might as well still be in that wedding dress for how she makes my blood pressure skyrocket.
I scan her left hand automatically, searching for that massive diamond that was missing a week ago.
She's too far away to be certain, but a ring that size would be visible from space. When she waves at Berkeley, I don't get the confirmation I’m looking for because she’s wearing gloves.
No way to tell if she’s wearing Jameson’s ring again.
The first time I saw her was at Oakley's, the night I signed with the Hawkeyes.
She'd walked in with Isla, and I remember thinking she looked like she'd stepped out of a magazine—all long dark hair and curves that made my mouth go dry.
A tiny thing with the biggest personality I'd ever seen. And I was hooked right then and there.
It wasn't just her looks that drew me in that night.
It was the way she carried herself, confident but not arrogant.
The way she'd make everyone within earshot laugh, her smile lighting up the whole damn bar.
How she commanded attention without demanding it.
Smart as hell too—I overheard her breaking down complex business strategies to some rookie who thought he could mansplain investments to her.
I considered making a move in those first few weeks after meeting her.
I was still new to town, new to the team, trying to get Adeline settled into our life on the opposite coast from everything she'd known in Florida.
Then suddenly, Vivi was wearing Holiday's ring, and whatever opening I thought I had slammed shut.
Not that it would have mattered if she'd been single.
Women like Vivi Newport don't end up with guys like me.
Trust fund girls who summer in the Hamptons don't choose ex-soldiers who grew up dirt poor with nomad parents and barely finished high school before enlisting.
Women who run multimillion-dollar companies don't want men who have to take sleeping pills to cut through the PTSD that keeps them up all night.
"Earth to Uncle Trey." Adeline waves her stick in front of my face. "You're supposed to be watching my form."
"Sorry, kiddo." I force my attention back to her stance, the other girls waiting for instruction. "Widen your grip a bit. Weight forward on your toes…yeah, just like that. Where's the net open?"
She glances up, analyzing. "Right corner—top shelf."
There's no goalie in the net right now, but I like where she's envisioning it. "Good eye. Now take the shot. Remember, your eyes guide your hands."
She fires off a shot that makes the net but misses her target…yet not by much. The other girls cheer anyway, the sound echoing off the rafters. My hearing aid whines at the sudden volume spike.
"Better?" she asks, skating back to me.
"Much better." I hold up my hand for a high-five then pat her helmet. "Just like your dad taught you."
Her smile dims slightly at the mention of Tommy. "I wish Mom and Dad were here."
The words punch through my chest. "Me too, kid." Every damn day. "But they're watching over us, so let's make them proud. Okay?"
She nods and skates back to join the team for a short scrimmage before we end practice.
She's tough, like Tommy was. There's so much of him in her—the way she analyzes everything, how she notices details others miss.
She's only nine, but sometimes she seems so much older.
I worry about that, about how loss can age a kid before their time.
God knows it aged Tommy and me, even though, as his older brother, I tried to shield him from as much of that as I could.
My eyes drift back to the stands. Vivi's leaning forward now, elbows on her knees, watching practice with genuine interest. She nods at something Isla says, and a strand of dark hair falls across her face.
My fingers itch to brush it back, to touch her in any way that isn't shoving her into my SUV in her wedding dress. Unless she was wearing one to marry me…
"Fuck," I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face.
Get it together, Hartley.