Chapter 32 Carter Beckett’s Double Cream Pie Cara #4
I don’t know what it is. Maybe there’s some sort of renewed energy in the air after that video.
Maybe pigs can fly and the main official has decided he finally remembers how to do his job.
I’m not sure, but the final period is the kind of hockey not a single person could possibly hate.
It’s lightning fast and rough in all the best ways.
It’s fair and heated, the kind of excitement that has you on the edge of your seat, pulling your hair, and two minutes after Carter puts us in the lead, Tampa ties it right back up.
Before I know it, Tampa’s up 3–2, and the Vipers pile on top of Garrett when he manages to sink the puck in the net with three seconds to go, sending us into overtime.
“When do hockey players retire?” I drop my head to my damp hands, dragging them over my face as my knees bounce, six minutes down in overtime, and Emmett’s just finished his third shift.
I don’t consider myself to be wound tight, but overtime when the Stanley Cup is on the line?
I mean, I’m beautiful, smart, and strong, yes, but I’m only human.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this kind of stress.
I found a gray hair this morning! Can you believe it?
Gray! At my age!” I down my wine cooler before finding the M&M’s and Skittles I’ve been too stressed to eat, shoving a fistful in my mouth.
“I’m not aging prematurely for a sport.”
Rosie gnaws on the tip of her nail. “They’re all in agreement, right? When one retires, they all retire?” She pulls her nail from her mouth just to shove it back in there when the play starts again.
“You guys are a bunch of babies.” Jennie whips a Twizzler around.
“This is fun. Getting your heart racing is good. Don’t—Oh, Jesus fuck, Garrett!
” She leaps to her feet, eyes wild as she watches Garrett climb to his feet after being checked into the boards by a defenseman.
Hand over her heart, she heaves a sigh. “Scared the shit out of me.”
“Fuck yeah!” Lennon shrieks from behind her camera, snapping away as Jaxon pummels the same defenseman into the boards. “That’s my baby! Taking care of business!”
“Oh my God, this is so bad. This is so bad.” Olivia grips her distressed face, pulling her lower eyelids down. “Watching him play like this, when he’s so confident and in control and being a leader, it… it does things to me. Scary, scary things.”
I arch my brow. “Like what?”
“It gives the thoughts in my head a voice. And do you know what they say?” She leans closer, brown eyes wild with terror as she whispers, “You could do it. You could handle one more baby.”
I bark out a laugh, slapping a hand across her eyes and pulling her into my chest. “Shhh, Ollie. Don’t let the voices win.
” But then Emmett leaps over the boards, rejoining the game, and I shove Olivia away as he pokes the puck free from Tampa, tossing it backward to Garrett.
I grab Abel, standing him in front of me, clinging to him while he wraps his fingers around my forearms. “Oh God. Oh God. Ohhhh God.”
“He’s gonna score,” Abel says quietly, and I can hear the certainty in his voice, right there along with the anticipation. “My Emmett’s gonna score.”
My heart lodges itself in my throat as Garrett races up the right wing with the puck on the tip of his stick blade.
His eyes move, cataloguing his options, and then he sends the puck across the ice to Carter, who soars up the middle, passing the puck back and forth with his stick before he spins around one defenseman, coming face-to-face with another before Tampa’s goalie.
He pulls his stick back as if he’s going to shoot, and when he brings it forward, the goalie dives.
But he doesn’t shoot.
He cradles the puck against his stick, tosses it to Emmett, wide open on his left, and my man doesn’t hesitate.
His eyes zero in on that puck as it glides toward him.
He pulls his stick back.
Winds up.
And lets it fly.
Over the goalie’s shoulder.
Right into the net.
His arms go above his head, his stick tossed in the air behind him as he shrieks, and the team empties the bench, tackling him to the ice when they pile on top of him.
I think I’ve never in my life been more in love with him than when he finally drags himself to his feet, making his way over to us, pulling his gloves off so he can make a heart with his hands.
But two hours later, when he’s helping Abel brush his teeth before bed, and I’m sitting in the window in Abel’s room, watching an interview with Emmett on the ice, I find a way to fall a little bit harder.
“How does it feel, Emmett, to be a three-time Stanley Cup champ?” the interviewer asks him. “Does it start to lose its shine after the first or second?”
Emmett chuckles, one hand on his hip as he uses the other to push his sweat-soaked hair off his forehead.
“Does it lose its shine? Nah, definitely not. Of course it never feels quite the same as the first time, but this time… man, I gotta tell ya. I don’t think anything in my life has prepared me for how this, winning here today, with the two people I love most here supporting me, would feel.
” His gaze drifts off screen, and he smiles a lopsided, lovesick smile before he looks back at the camera.
“The Stanley Cup is nice. But me? I’ve already won at life. ”
“Why you crying, Cara?” Abel’s footsteps patter against the floor as he dashes over to me, and I swipe my tears away, turning my phone off. “Is you hurt? Is you sad?”
I shake my head, rubbing my hands up and down his arms, smiling. “I’m not hurt or sad. I feel so much happiness it’s overflowing, I think. I feel… lucky. So lucky.”
“Me too,” he whispers, crawling into my lap. He lays his head on my shoulder and points to the space left in the window seat. “Emmett, can you sit with us?”
I look over my shoulder as Emmett shifts himself off the doorway, ambling toward us. He tips my chin, pressing a soft kiss to my cheek before he takes a seat with us.
“I’m tired,” Abel says on a yawn. “Too tired for books tonight.”
“We can just look at the stars for a few minutes,” I suggest, stroking his hair.
“And make wishes?”
“Mhmm.”
“What will you wish for?” he asks me quietly, looking up at me with hopeful eyes as he fidgets with the buttons on my pajama top. “I won’t tell no one, and if you say it quiet, I don’t think anyone else will hear.”
I smile softly, cupping his cheek as my thumb moves over the flush of his skin. “This moment right here, over and over.”
Abel grins, settling back against my chest. “That’s a nice wish. What would you wish for, Emmett?”
Emmett looks up at the stars for a moment before his gaze coasts down to me and Abel. “If you and Cara were the only stars in my sky, that would be enough for me.”
Abel yawns, fist curled under his chin as his eyes flutter closed. “I like that one too. I’ll always be one of your stars.”
He’s out just moments later, but Emmett and I sit there beneath the stars for another thirty minutes, soaking up the quiet, warm love, one we’ve been so lucky to find. Emmett takes him carefully from my arms, laying him down in bed where we kiss his forehead before turning for the door.
“Emmett? Cara?” his sleepy voice calls, stopping us. “How come Lily’s jacket said Daddy? And Ireland’s, and Connor’s. Mine didn’t say Daddy.”
I pause, looking up at Emmett beneath the glow of the stars outside. “Well… Lily’s jacket said Daddy because Adam is her daddy. And Connor’s too. And Carter—”
“—is Ireland’s daddy?”
I nod. “Exactly.”
“Oh.” He’s quiet for so long, I think he’s fallen back to sleep. But then he speaks again, his words soft and raw, vulnerable. “Do I have a daddy?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” I move to his bed, sitting on the edge as Emmett crouches before him. “You have an Emmett.”
Abel gazes at Emmett with hooded eyes, reaching out to brush the stubble on his jaw. “My Emmett,” he murmurs. “And do I have a mommy?”
My throat squeezes as I take his hand, pressing a kiss to it. “You have your Catharine.”
“And I have my Cara?”
I smile, tears stinging my eyes. “You have your Cara.”
“Does anybody call you Mommy and Daddy?”
Emmett meets my gaze before shaking his head. “No.”
“If I called you that, would it make you feel special?”
“Oh, honey. You don’t need to call us Mommy or Daddy to make us feel special.”
Emmett cups his cheek, tilting Abel’s gaze to his. “You make us feel special every single day.”
“But what if I wanted to? One day?”
I think back on the training we did, the one that feels so long ago. A child calling their foster parents Mom or Dad should be the child’s choice only, and should never be forced on them. “If one day you wanted to.”
Abel thinks for a moment, then nods. “Okay,” he murmurs as his eyes close again, as he snuggles beneath the blankets.
Emmett twines his fingers through mine, and we tiptoe across the room. For the second time tonight, a little voice stops us in our tracks, right before we can close the door.
“I wished for you. When I wished on the stars tonight, I wished for you. Good night, Mommy. Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
And wow, what a fucking wild, wild thing it is to hear those words. Not because of the name, the single label I’ve spent so long yearning for. No.
Because of the boy who spoke them. Because of the trust he’s placed in us, the love he’s given to us so freely.
Because there is nothing in this world that I want to be more than I want to be the safe space this little boy calls home.
The arms he crawls into, the ear he lends his sleepy ramblings to, the star he wishes on.
He’s given me everything, a love I could never have dreamed of, a strength so different from the one I’d known, a version of myself I’m proud of, always, because I’ve learned, finally, how to give myself grace when I need it most. Patience, because things don’t always happen when you want them to, and trust that things will work out exactly as planned.
And if I could give him one thing, just one, it would be loving him just right.
Because when done right, oh, man, love is such a powerful, crazy thing.
When someone loves you right, they show you how to love yourself.
They show you how to let other people love you, how to value yourself enough that you accept nothing less.
The just right kind of love has the power to erase all the negative thoughts one by one, the labels we’ve slowly given meaning to.
There’s no room for those thoughts to hold any real weight, because the just right kind of love whispers louder, until it’s impossible to ignore.
That’s what I want to give Abel, what I promise him every night beneath the stars over the next three days, while Mommy and Daddy become his new favorite words, and those stars above us wrap us in their glow, protecting us from the world outside.
But you can’t see the stars every night, and sometimes on those extra dark nights, that’s when you’re reminded that there’s no real protection from the world outside.
That without the glow you’re used to, it’s easy to feel a little lost. That something so small, something so seemingly insignificant…
it can knock your world off its axis in the blink of an eye.
I TRIP OVER THE EDGE of the rug in the dark, catching myself on the edge of our bed. “Ow, fuck.” Clutching my injured foot, I roll onto the bed, wiggling into Emmett’s lap. “Help me,” I pout up at him.
He drops his smile to my mouth. “Not a star out there tonight. Can’t believe how dark it makes the sky.
Hopefully the storm blows over soon.” He scoops me against his chest, carrying me into the bathroom, where he deposits me on the counter and readies my toothbrush for me.
I spin toward the mirror, crossing my legs so I can brush my teeth while watching Emmett draw on the mirror.
He starts with the stars, scattering them across the top of the mirror.
Then, he adds the mountain, tall and vast. Next, he draws Abel, standing right there on the top, with me and Emmett flanking his sides, our hands linked.
My favorite team, he scrawls beneath the picture, before he wraps one arm around my waist and drops his chin to my shoulder. “I love you, firefly.”
When we make it back to bed, I plug my phone into the charger, taking a moment to check my email. I scroll past most of them, but pause when I see one from Abel and Catharine’s social worker. Something like dread settles low in my belly, but I swallow down the irrational fear and open the email.
It’s short and to the point, and it never ceases to amaze how few words it takes to shatter someone’s world. Because after the pleasantries and the congratulations on Emmett’s recent win, comes just a small handful of words that manage to knock the air clean from my lungs.
Catharine is ready to meet to discuss the next steps in Abel’s placement plan.
And suddenly our future looks as dark and scary as this starless sky.