Chapter 7
Levi
The movers came while I was on a road trip to the Midwest, and the interior designer I’d hired took care of everything else. Her crew unpacked every box, so that when I returned and set foot inside my new house for the first time, I didn’t have to lift a finger.
For the first time in months, I felt settled. San Diego—the city and the team—was slowly growing on me, and I could picture rolling into retirement here. You couldn’t beat the weather or the views, that was for damn sure.
Cracking open a cold beer, I dropped onto the couch to enjoy a rare Sunday afternoon off, with the intent to catch up on the action from around the league on the streaming platform that featured every game.
No sooner had my ass hit the cushion when the doorbell rang.
Go figure, the only thing that hadn’t been set up in my absence was replacing the standard bell with one that featured a live video feed.
Grunting, I heaved myself upright, padding my way to the front door and pulling it open.
On the other side was a girl. If I had to guess, she was maybe eleven or twelve—firmly in that phase where she was not quite a child, but not yet a teen.
“Are you Levi Nixon?”
I leaned against the doorframe, arms folded. “Yeah, that’s me.” When I noticed the prosthetic leg sticking out from beneath the hem of her shorts, the pieces fell into place. “You with the sled hockey team?”
Through the Connecticut Comets Foundation, I’d been assigned to work with the youth sled hockey team as part of our required community service.
It was actually kinda cool seeing kids with lower body impairments—whether it was due to limb difference, paralysis, or other physical disabilities—overcome the challenges life handed them and kick ass on the ice.
They were definitely more resilient than I would have been if placed in the same situation, and I admired the shit out of them.
The girl’s brows furrowed, and she shook her head. “No.”
“Selling cookies, then?” My stomach grumbled, eagerly anticipating that seasonal treat only sold door to door or via booth sales now that I’d mentioned it.
Another slow shake of her head.
“All right. What can I do for you then . . .” I let the end of that sentence hang when I realized she’d never offered her name.
“Maisie,” she supplied.
“What can I do for you, Maisie?”
Shifting on her feet and twisting her hands, she stared up at me with big brown eyes. “There’s really no easy way to say this.”
I frowned. “Say what?”
“I’m your daughter.”
Like I’d been sucker punched, all the air left my lungs. The lack of oxygen to my brain caused it to short-circuit.
A daughter? Mine?
No. She had to be mistaken.
It wasn’t possible. I always used protection.
That last thought stopped me in my tracks.
There was exactly one woman I’d ever fucked bare.
Bristol, my situationship back in Hartford during the early days of my career.
But I quickly dismissed the notion that she’d been hiding a kid from me all this time.
Not only did the timeline not add up—our “breakup” occurred maybe seven years ago; any child she may have carried from our time together would be much younger than Maisie—but I’d seen Bristol five or six months after I ended things, and she hadn’t been pregnant.
Memories of that night gave me pause. It had ended in a fist fight between me and the Comets’ rival team’s new coach/former captain.
Leadership from my team had been present, including the man who’d traded me to the Surf, as well as his younger brother, my former roommate, who wasn’t my biggest fan.
They’d all spent years on the road with me and knew I led an active sex life—I was more likely than not to have a woman in my hotel room in whichever city we happened to be playing in that day.
I bet they figured that with that many bed partners, I was bound to have impregnated at least one of them over the years, and they saw it as the perfect way to scare the living shit out of me for a few laughs.
Eyes narrowing, I asked the girl, “Who put you up to this? Was it Braxton?”
Maisie blinked at me. “Who’s Braxton?”
Striding forward, I poked my head out the door, shouting, “Very funny! You really had me going for a minute there, but you can come out now!”
There was nothing but silence in reply.
“Who are you talking to?” Maisie looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Joke’s over, kid. You can go home now.” I made a shooing motion with my hands.
Those impossibly large brown eyes filled with tears.
Oh no. I did not do well with crying women.
As I panicked, my words came out in a rush. “Hey, hey, hey. I’m not mad at you. You did a great job playing your part. I mean it. But I’ve figured out my former teammates were using you to make me sweat because I wasn’t always the nicest to them.”
Maisie sniffled. Voice coming out small, she said, “This isn’t a joke. I’m your daughter.”
The girl was good, but I wasn’t buying it.
I folded both arms over my chest. “Okay, then who’s your mother?”
A few rapid blinks, and the tears clinging to her lashes fell down her cheeks. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“What?” Confusion colored that single word. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can you not know who your mom is?”
“I’m adopted.”
That piece of information only further disproved her claim.
Every woman I’d been with since I joined the league knew exactly who I was, what I was worth, and where to find me.
If one of them found themselves pregnant with my baby, they would have come forward, demanding child support at the very least.
The tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders melted away. “Good. Then you have parents I can call to come pick you up.”
“They’re dead.”
I stumbled back a step. “Dead?”
Maisie ducked her head in a tiny nod. “Bad storm with high winds rolled through in the middle of the night last spring. A tree fell on the house. Sent them to Heaven and gave me this.” She kicked out her prosthetic leg.
Grabbing the back of my neck, I didn’t know what to say.
I’m sorry felt like lip service, not nearly enough to convey my sympathy for all this girl had been through.
But regardless of her tragic backstory, it didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t my daughter, and the only reason she’d found her way onto my doorstep was because of a prank.
“Listen, it sounds like you’ve been through a lot, and I’m happy to help in any way I can, but it’s time for you to go home, Maisie.”
“Home is twelve hundred miles away. I used all the money I had saved to get here.”
In the back of my brain, alarm bells rang, but I ignored them.
I knew I’d regret asking this, but I did it anyway. “Where’s home?”
“Kansas,” she replied.
My knees nearly buckled in relief. “Never in my life have I been to Kansas.”
“I was born in Indiana.”
Well, fuck. I’d been there plenty of times, at least twice a year, sometimes more if we ended up playing the Speed in the playoffs.
Heart rate kicking into high gear, I began to sweat. “There has to be someone responsible for you that I can call.”
“My grandparents passed away when I was little, and both my parents were only children. Their deaths left me as a ward of the state.”
“In Kansas,” I said in a daze.
“In Kansas,” she confirmed.
“How did you even get here?”
“A bus.”
“A bus?” I choked out. “You took a bus all the way from Kansas?”
“Yeah.” Maisie lifted one shoulder as if it were no big deal that she’d traveled halfway across the country by herself.
While I was processing the mess that had somehow landed in my lap, a thought struck. “Are there people looking for you?”
“Probably.”
I dragged a hand down my face. So much for my lazy Sunday. At this rate, I’d be lucky if I didn’t end up on the news for harboring a runaway orphan who’d crossed state lines.
“Might as well come in while I sort all this out.” I stepped back from the door to permit the girl entry.
She remained firmly rooted on the porch. “No. Not if it means you’re going to send me back.”
My frustration reached a boiling point, and I flung my arms wide. “What else do you expect me to do?”
Pinning me with that dark brown stare, Maisie challenged. “Is this how you treat family?”
I let out a beleaguering sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know who told you that you’re my kid, but they were mistaken.”
“I have proof.”
My eyes popped open. “Proof? What kind of proof? Because I’ve never consented to a DNA test.”
A corner of her lips twitched. “Ever heard of a service called Find Your Family Tree?”
My audible swallow probably could have been heard from two streets away.
Three—or maybe four—Christmases ago, my sister convinced me that those genetic kits were a great gift idea for our mother.
Mom had gone on a kick, tracing our ancestry to the 1500s, so Jenn thought it would be cool if we did the testing that could potentially link us to additional family she hadn’t yet uncovered.
Suddenly, I saw Maisie through new eyes. And I realized she was a carbon copy of my sister at that age. The resemblance was so uncanny I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before.
Oh my God.
As the truth sank in, I heard hysterical laughter, high-pitched and strained, coming from somewhere in the distance, though it was muted by the roar of blood in my ears.
I flushed hot, my heart thrashing against my ribcage, and I couldn’t make my chest expand.
Black spots danced in my vision, and I swayed on my feet, gripping the doorframe to remain upright.
I had a daughter. How was this even possible?
And why was I only finding out now? Why hadn’t whoever had given birth to her contacted me?
Shouldn’t I have been able to feel that there was a piece of me out there somewhere?
What the hell was I supposed to do with her?
This wasn’t a part of my plans. I wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s dad.
“Levi? Are you okay?”
The scared voice of the girl standing opposite me cut through my haze of panic, and my lungs miraculously expanded, allowing me to take a deep breath for the first time in what felt like hours.
“Yeah,” I huffed out. “Just having an existential crisis. No big deal.”
Her forehead creased. “Uh . . .”
“Can you please come in while we sort all this out?”
“Fine.” Maisie trudged forward into the house.
Shutting the door, I led her to the living room, noting my forgotten beer and snacks atop the coffee table.
Less than half an hour ago, my life had made sense. Now, I didn’t know which way was up.
My daughter—damn, it was strange to even think that—slipped a backpack off her shoulders and dropped onto the couch.
I took a seat on the loveseat across from her. “Those genetic results that led you to me . . . They didn’t link you to a mother?”
If we could find her other biological parent, that would be ideal. Sure, now that I knew I had a kid, I’d want some kind of visitation, but full-time care of a preteen wasn’t something I was equipped to handle. Not now. Possibly not ever.
Maisie shook her head. “The only living relatives listed were you, Jennifer Nixon-Price, Charles Nixon, and Evelyn Nixon.”
“Those are my sister and parents,” I confirmed. “There wasn’t anything in the adoption paperwork?” It made sense that my name might have been left off documents, but surely, there had to be something that listed the mother.
“It was a closed adoption; the records were sealed. Everything went through an agency. My parents never met my bio mom.”
Of fucking course. Because that was just my luck.
Standing, I began to pace. “Okay, okay.”
This was too big to handle alone. I needed help. But I didn’t know who to call.
My parents would be over the moon at this news, welcoming Maisie into the Nixon fold as their first grandchild and expecting me to step up as a single dad—something I wasn’t ready to jump into with both feet.
Jenn would probably laugh her ass off before telling me, “I told you so.” She’d been warning me for years that my promiscuous lifestyle was going to come back to bite me.
My teammates were all younger than me. A few of the guys had kids, but they were little, still babies and toddlers. They wouldn’t know what to do with a preteen girl.
Wait. There was exactly one person I knew who was local to San Diego and in a similar position, raising a kid around Maisie’s age.
Arizona.
“I need to make a call,” I declared, phone already in hand. “Can I leave you alone for a minute?”
Maisie rolled her eyes. “I’m twelve, not two.”
Twelve. That was good information to have.
“Be right back.”
Hustling down the hall, I closed myself in the laundry room before dialing.
In my ear, it rang once, twice, three times, and just when I thought I was about to be transferred to her voicemail, Arizona answered, her irritated voice coming through the line.
“Look, Levi, I know you’ve developed some kind of bond with Austin, but the second you closed on that house, the relationship between you and me ended.”
Her hanging up on me felt imminent, so I blurted, “I need help.”
There was a heavy sigh through the speaker. “What in the world could you need my help with?”
Okay, here came the hard part.
“You’re raising a teenager, and there’s a girl who showed up here.”
A gasp of horror came down the line. “A teenage girl is in your home, and you decide to call me?!? Don’t you think your lawyer is better equipped to handle this situation than your realtor?”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Don’t worry, that’ll be my next call.”
There was a long pause. “Levi, what the hell is going on?”
Pulling in a deep breath, I confessed, “Her name’s Maisie, and she’s twelve. All the evidence points toward her being my daughter, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Levi.” She drew my name out slowly in warning. “I swear to God, if this is another one of your games . . .”
“It’s not. I promise.”
After a groan of frustration, Arizona said, “Fine. Hang tight. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
My forehead hit the wall, my eyes sliding shut as I breathed out, “Thank you.”
There was an unintelligible grumble before she ended the call.
I had no doubts that woman would show up at my door, acting like an angry drill sergeant, barking orders and demanding answers, but with that knowledge came the immense relief that I wouldn’t have to deal with this alone.
Help was on the way.