Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LUKAS
Idon’t sleep. I lie in bed staring at the ceiling while the city outside slowly quiets into early morning, my thoughts moving in circles so relentless they make my head ache. Every time I close my eyes, I see the same thing again.
Camille standing outside the rink with a little boy beside her. And those eyes. My eyes.
By four in the morning, I give up pretending rest is possible and move out into the kitchen, barefoot and shattered, dragging both hands over my face as I lean heavily against the counter. The flat feels unfamiliar tonight. Too small and quiet for the noise inside my head.
My phone sits beside the sink where I dropped it hours ago after texting Kate.
I didn’t know.
Three words that feel useless against the wreckage currently sitting in my chest. She still hasn’t replied, and I don’t blame her.
I stare at the dark screen for a long time before forcing myself to look away. Because right now, there’s something bigger than whether Kate answers me. Something heavier, far more terrifying.
A child.
My child.
The thought still does not feel real, even after hours of replaying it in my head. I try to attach the idea of fatherhood to myself, and nothing settles properly. It slides around in my mind like something too large to hold.
I think about Félix standing beside Camille outside the rink, small fingers curled trustingly around her hand, while fans shouted nearby and my teammates laughed behind me after the win.
And I think about the moment he looked up at me. My chest cracked open then. Not gently, either; it was violent. Because I knew. Before Camille even spoke, I knew.
“Tabarnak,” I whisper hoarsely into the empty kitchen.
The word disappears into silence. I push away from the counter and pour coffee mostly out of habit, though I already know it won’t help.
My hands are unsteady as I reach for the mug, and that unsettles me even more.
I don’t not get shaken easily. Pressure has always sharpened me rather than broken me.
Big games. Media. Fights. Expectations. None of that prepared me for this.
By eight o’clock, I still haven’t sat down properly. Camille texted just before seven.
Can we talk today?
I stared at the message for almost ten minutes before replying yes.
Now I’m getting ready to meet her in a café halfway across the city because apparently my entire life has become surreal overnight.
I shower quickly, though it does nothing to clear my head, and throw on jeans and a hoodie with little care for how I look. There are shadows under my eyes when I catch my reflection in the mirror by the door.
I barely recognise myself.
The drive into the city passes in fragments. Traffic lights. Rain falling against the windscreen. It’s always fucking raining in Manchester. My grip tightens on the steering wheel every time my thoughts drift too far ahead.
Two years old.
Two years.
I’ve missed two years of his life.
The number keeps hitting me in waves because it is not just time. It’s moments. Entire pieces of a life that happened without me even knowing they existed.
First words.
First steps.
First birthdays.
Fevers.
Nightmares.
Christmas mornings.
All gone.
My stomach twists so hard I have to exhale slowly through it.
The café Camille picked is quiet when I arrive, tucked between a bookshop and an art gallery on a narrow side street. Of course, it’s near a gallery. That part feels agonisingly unsurprising.
I spot her through the window. She’s already sitting down, dark hair pulled loosely over one shoulder, fingers wrapped around a coffee cup she doesn’t appear to have touched. She looks almost exactly the same and completely different all at once.
Older maybe. Softer around the edges. She looks tired.
The sight of her stirs something strange in me because once upon a time I loved her. Or at least the version of love you know in your early twenties, before life teaches you how complicated it can be. But whatever existed between us then feels far away now.
I step inside, and her eyes lift toward me. For a second, neither of us speaks. Then she says quietly, “Bonjour.”
My throat feels tight. “Bonjour.”
I sit opposite her, rainwater still clinging to my jacket sleeves, and the silence that settles between us feels heavy enough to crush us both. Camille looks nervous. I don’t think I have ever seen her nervous before.
“How is he?” I ask finally, because I cannot seem to start anywhere else.
Her demeanour shifts at the mention of Félix, softening in a way that answers before she even speaks.
“He’s with a sitter for a few hours,” she says quietly. “I didn’t think…” Her words trail off. “I thought maybe this conversation should happen first.”
That’s probably a smart idea. Neither of us touches our drinks.
I lean back slightly in my chair, forcing myself to ask the question even though part of me already knows the answer. “He’s mine?”
Camille closes her eyes briefly before looking back at me. “Yes, he is.”
The words land like a physical thing, not that it surprises me anymore. That part happened last night. This is different. This makes it real.
I stare down at the table for a second, my jaw tightening so hard it aches. I feel strangely detached from my own body, like I’m sitting outside myself watching somebody else’s life implode quietly over coffee.
“How?” The question comes out rougher than I intended. “How did I not know?”
Pain flickers across her face. “I found out after you left for England.”
I look up sharply. “What?”
“You’d already signed with the team.” Her voice stays calm, but I can hear strain underneath it now. “You were gone before I missed my period.”
I drag a hand slowly over my mouth, trying to process the timeline.
“You could have called me.”
“I know.”
“You should have called me.”
“I know,” she repeats, quieter this time.
Anger finally sparks in my chest then. Not explosive. Worse. Slow and sickening. “You let me miss two years of my son’s life.”
Camille flinches, and I immediately hate myself for that because, despite everything, hurting her still feels wrong. But not as wrong as this.
“I was angry,” she admits after a moment, and I stare at her. “At first, I thought I would tell you straight away. Then everything changed so fast. Hockey became your whole life, you were doing well here and I…” She exhales shakily. “I felt abandoned, Lukas.”
Guilt twists in my stomach because I did leave suddenly. The contract in Manchester had been huge. Life-changing. I remember the fights we had near the end. The resentment. The distance already growing between us long before I got on the plane.
But none of that feels big enough to justify this. “You decided I didn’t deserve to know?”
“No.” Her eyes shine with unshed tears. “I decided I didn’t want to need you.”
The honesty of it knocks some of the anger out of me. Camille looks down at her untouched coffee, twisting the cup between her hands.
“My parents helped. I sold more work after Félix was born. I convinced myself we were okay.” She swallows hard. “And then more time passed, and it became harder to tell you because every month that passed made it worse.”
I sit there silently because I don’t trust myself to speak right now.
Outside, rain streaks slowly down the café windows while people move past wrapped in coats and umbrellas, completely unaware that my entire life has split open inside this tiny room.
“You should have told me,” I say again eventually, quieter now.
My chest aches suddenly with a grief so enormous I almost can’t breathe through it. Two years. I missed everything. “What’s his favourite food?” I ask abruptly.
Camille blinks at the sudden question. “What?”
“What does he like?” My voice cracks now despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “What cartoons does he watch? Does he sleep through the night? What makes him laugh?”
Emotion floods her face immediately because she understands then. This is where it finally becomes unbearable. Because I don’t know any of it.
“He likes strawberries,” she says softly. “And dinosaurs. He hates wearing socks.” A tiny, sad smile touches her mouth. “He wakes up too early every morning, and he sings to himself when he’s playing.”
I close my eyes. Jesus. Somewhere out there is a little boy who sings while he plays, and I have never heard it. My throat burns.
“I’m sorry,” Camille whispers.
I laugh under my breath, but there is no humour in it. “I don’t even know what to do with this.”
“You don’t have to decide everything today.”
But it already feels like everything has changed anyway. Kate flashes through my mind, then. I picture her smiling at me across the lake and Hudson, laughing during dinner. The warmth of her kitchen. Guilt crashes into me so hard I feel physically sick. They didn’t ask for this either.
I look towards the rain-streaked windows, trying to steady myself before speaking again. “Why come find me now?”
Camille quickly wipes beneath one eye before answering. “I got accepted into a residency programme here. Six months.” She hesitates. “I couldn’t leave Félix in Québec for that long.”
Six months. My brain barely manages to process the number. “And you decided I should finally know.”
“Yes. I didn’t know how big Manchester would be, and I wasn’t sure if we’d bump into each other.” Silence settles heavily between us again. Then quietly, almost cautiously, Camille says, “He already likes hockey.”
Annoyed laughter escapes me before I can stop it, broken and disbelieving all at once. “Of course he does.”
“He sleeps with one of your old Canadians shirts sometimes.”
That nearly destroys me. I lean forward, with my elbows braced against my knees, as both hands cover my mouth. My vision blurs, and I realise with distant humiliation that I am trying not to cry in the middle of a café. I can’t remember the last time I cried.
Maybe when I left Québec.
Maybe before that.
Everything inside me feels cracked open now anyway. “I would have stayed,” I say gruffly into my hands. “If I knew, I would have—”
“I know,” Camille says immediately. “But I didn’t know until after you left.”
I sit there breathing hard through the pressure in my chest while she watches me from across the table.
Eventually, I force myself upright again. “What happens now?”
Camille hesitates. “That depends on what you want.”
The answer comes immediately. “I want to know my son.”
Emotion flashes across her face again, relief tangled painfully with guilt.
I stare down at the table for another long moment before finally asking the question that has been sitting inside me since last night. “Does he know about me?”
“A little.” Camille twists her fingers together. “He knows your name. He knows you play hockey.” Her lips curve faintly. “He calls you the man on the television.”
Christ. The feelings I’ve been trying to suppress give way. I look down, blinking rapidly as emotion crashes through me in waves too heavy to contain anymore.
The man on the television. Not Papa. Just some distant person on a screen.
Camille’s voice is quiet when she speaks again. “He has your eyes.”
And that’s the thing that finally breaks me. It’s not the anger or the shock; it’s not even the lost years. It’s the unbearable tenderness in that sentence. Because he does have my eyes.
I saw it immediately. Those same blue eyes looking up at me outside the rink while my whole world shifted beneath my feet.
My son.
I have a son.