Chapter 38
August
“You gonna ask me for permission to marry him, or are you just going to continue watching him like an idiot?”
August blinked and looked down at the man lying in the hospital bed beside him. The man who sometimes forgot who he was talking to and where he was, and who was slurring his words so badly that he was hard to make out.
And yet—Eren Callahan still had enough energy to torture him even if he was only two weeks into recovering from a traumatic brain injury.
Eren had asked for a minute alone with August once his very short visit with his daughters was finished. They had been watching him through a window all week, and today had been the first time they were permitted inside the room.
The girls had been quiet but very brave as they took their father’s less usable hand and hugged it with all their strength. They didn’t cry, but that was okay because August had done enough crying for both of them.
August had stayed with Quinn to keep him distracted as the scene unfolded, and he had comforted the girls when they looked to him for strength. It was so much easier to help other people compared to helping himself, so he focused on the task entirely during the emotional ten minutes.
Eren had shot him tired glances throughout the visit, but August hadn’t thought much of it because it was hard to tell what Eren was looking at sometimes due to his poor coordination.
He spent most of his days sleeping and recovering, and he was still so weak that he couldn’t push himself into a sitting position on his own yet.
August had been surprised and slightly terrified when Eren asked him to stay while Quinn and the girls waited and waved at him through the observation window. He didn’t know what he had expected his captain to say, but it wasn’t random shit about marriage, that was for sure.
“You’re good—” Eren paused, taking his time to swallow and breathe before he started again. “Good with them. Emira—Emira loves you. Alara loves you. Quinn loves you.”
Great, now August was tearing up.
Eren sighed, and August could tell he was getting tired.
“May loved you, too. Said you were an adorable cur-cur—” Eren scowled, though one side of his mouth did it weaker than the other. “Fuck—fucking grumpy. She said you were grumpy. She liked it.”
August tightened the laces around his hand, forcing a smile past the pain. “Yeah? I do remember Esme during that last party. She held my hand while I cried about not having a girlfriend.”
Eren snorted and squeezed his eyes shut, like he thought the darkness could help him remember better.
“That’s right,” he said. Eren opened his eyes and stared at August, and the seriousness of the situation came back into full swing. “Marry him. Make him happy. I need to know he’s—okay. I need him to not be alone if anything bad happens…to me. And I need—”
Tears were in Eren’s eyes, and he tried to lift his weak arm to wipe them away, but got tired halfway through the motion and dropped it back to his side.
August leaned in and brushed them away with his thumb, not stopping until the tears were gone and Eren’s fierce expression had softened.
“I need you to be there for my girls, too. Need you to teach them how to skate—how to be kind—and how to eat all their damn vegetables so they grow up tall like you.”
August’s throat was spasming painfully, and he had to swallow several times before he could speak again. “You’ll be able to do all that on your own, Cap. The doctor said with enough physio, you’ll walk again. He said you have a super brain, remember? Don’t count yourself out yet.”
“Walk, yes,” said Eren. “But not skate.”
August frowned at the same time Eren smiled.
“The ironic thing is—I was going to retire after we won the cup.” Eren shook his head, and soft laughter spilled from his lips. “I wanted more time with my girls. Didn’t want them to grow up without a mother or a father…”
August took Eren’s good hand and held it. He tried not to think about how frail that hand felt because he knew that would break him, but it was hard to see the man who had led him since his rookie year so vulnerable.
“We both know I could drop dead any time,” Eren said in quiet acceptance. “If that happens, and I hope it doesn’t, but if it does—I want you to raise my daughters with Quinn. If Quinn has his way, they’ll be in art school instead of knocking bodies into boards. Can’t have that.”
August scoffed and squeezed Eren’s hand. “You’re saying that to one of the few players who doesn’t play rough.”
Eren shook his head, groaning when the movement hurt him. “Naw, leave the rough stuff to their Uncle Niko, since you idiots are a package deal.”
August was beginning to see the vision Eren was painting of the future, and it was so impossible it was funny. “If you’re saying it’s up to me to tell Quinn that he needs to keep the girls in hockey, then you may as well give up. I’m not the one in charge at all.”
Eren chuckled and squeezed August’s hands back weakly. His eyes were closed now, and he was already breathing deeply like he was about to fall asleep.
“I know you’re not…but all you have to do is look sad, and he’ll cave. I do it all the time…”
Eren took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.
“I’ll teach you the tricks of the trade…tomorrow…”
August placed Eren’s hand down and pulled the blanket over him to keep him warm. “I’ll marry Quinn,” he said. “But you’ll be teaching your daughters how to skate, and how to be kind—and how to eat all their vegetables so they grow as tall as you.”
A stray tear escaped Eren’s eye, and August brushed it away.
“But I will teach them how to find the courage to stand up for themselves, even when it feels scary to do so.”
August gave his captain one more smile before exiting the room, only to immediately be tackled by two mini-Callahans and one medium-sized Harlow.
“What did he want?” Quinn asked, looking up at him through dark lashes that seemed to make his green eyes more vibrant.
“He wants me to get you a ring,” said August.
“A ring!” Emira chirped, though August doubted she knew what that meant.
Quinn’s mouth was open slightly, but he snapped it shut when August frowned.
“And I need to find a lawyer.”
“Dude, you just got out of the hospital and got cleared for morning practice after being off for two weeks, you had therapy this morning, you’re playing a game against Montreal tonight, and you want us to help dig holes in your creepy basement?”
August narrowed his eyes at Niko and shoved a shovel into his hands.
“I was discharged the day after I got injured. I’ve been conditioning training every day that I’ve been off and sweating my ass through physio, so it’s not like I’m going to be lagging tonight, and my basement is fucking huge, so yes, I need your goddamn help. ”
Niko’s face suggested he would rather be anywhere else than where he was now, but August didn’t have much time, and he wanted to get back to the hospital before the game to visit Quinn, so the kid would have to suck it up.
“Why can’t you be like Sauce, over there? Look how happy he is.” August pointed in Haas’s direction, where the rookie was shovelling into the packed dirt with a gleeful grin. “You need to take a lesson in spontaneity from him.”
Niko scoffed loudly, and the sound echoed through the space. “He’s a fucking goalie. The last thing I want to do is learn anything from a guy who thinks digging up gross evidence in your haunted house is a fun activity.”
August didn’t want to do it either, but he couldn’t rest until he knew for sure his dream hadn’t been wrong.
He still couldn’t tell the difference between reality and illusion sometimes, but after he talked to his therapist about the dream where he had buried his father’s tapes and pictures of him in his basement, he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he tried.
But Quinn was too busy to help him, and August didn’t want to hire strangers to do it, just in case there was really evidence involving him buried somewhere, so that’s where Niko and Nollan Haas came in.
Niko, because he was his best friend, and Haas, because he was always around Niko, and the rookie was down for anything when asked nicely.
If they took too long, he would ask Arlo and étienne to join them even though their game was in a few hours. August knew they would help if he needed it, but they weren’t at that point yet.
“And you have media shit to deal with,” Niko grumbled, reluctantly stepping off the paved section of the basement and onto the dirt part like he was scared a skeletal hand would shoot out and grab his ankle.
“But no, let’s get filthy and do our best to avoid digging up the corpses of the victims who were murdered by the last creep who owned this place. ”
Haas straightened, and his humming went quiet as his gaze flicked between Niko and August. “Or—August is actually a serial killer, and he’s saving time by making us dig our own graves.”
Niko slammed his shovel into the dirt. “You say that like you mean it, and yet you’re still not running for your life.”
Haas flashed Niko a goofy grin and went back to shovelling. “Not much we can do if Gusty decides to take us out. He’s gigantic, dude.”
August picked a corner and began digging to hide the fact that he was laughing at Niko’s bewildered expression. He still couldn’t decide if Niko liked Nollan or if he hated him. He would need to study them further before he made up his mind.
“Oh, wow—look at the size of that spider—”
Haas barely got the words out before Niko was climbing August like he was a fucking tree, cursing so fast that he couldn’t tell if he was speaking English or something else. Niko wasn’t a small kid either, and it took a great amount of effort for August to remain upright.
“I fucking hate spiders,” Niko groaned, jumping when August grunted loudly.
“No kidding,” said August. “Wouldn’t have guessed that from your reaction at all.”