Chapter 21
ANNE
Liam showed up early with coffee and bagels, looking like he hadn't slept.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Ask me again after you've all left." He handed me a cup. "Right now I'm just trying not to think about it."
Finn was still at the table finishing breakfast, chattering about what he was going to tell Mikey and Justin when he got back to school. My mom moved quietly around the apartment gathering the last of our things, giving us the kitchen.
"When will you be back?" Liam asked quietly.
"Thursday. Game 1 of Round 2. I'll fly in that morning."
"And Finn?"
"He stays in Chicago. He's got school and I can't keep pulling him out." I looked at him. "I know."
"I know you know. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
We stood there with our coffee, not saying the rest of it. That this was going to be hard. That we'd just found our way back to each other and now we were doing airports and departure gates and counting days.
"We'll figure it out," I said.
"Yeah." He looked at me. "We will."
At the security checkpoint, Finn finally understood what was happening.
"Wait — you're not coming?"
Liam crouched down. "I have to stay, buddy. Practice. Games."
"But I don't want to leave."
"I don't want you to leave either." He held Finn by the shoulders. "But you get to go home and see Mikey and Justin and tell them everything. The rink. The team. The goals."
"I can watch you on TV?"
"Every single game. And I'll call every night before bed."
"Promise?"
"Promise." He pulled him in, held him tight. "I love you so much, Finn. You're the best thing that ever happened to me."
Finn pressed his face into Liam's neck. "Love you too, Daddy."
They stayed like that long enough that my mom took a quiet step back and I had to study the departures board very intently for a moment.
When Liam finally stood up my mom hugged him, said something quietly that I didn't catch, and took Finn's hand toward the queue.
Liam looked at me.
"Thursday," I said.
"Thursday." He kissed me — slow, unhurried, completely indifferent to the airport around us. "I love you."
"I love you too. Go win some games."
"Working on it."
I watched him until the crowd swallowed him. Finn waved the whole time, craning his neck around my mom's arm.
Then we went through security and it was just the three of us again and I stared straight ahead and breathed.
Finn was asleep before we'd reached altitude, worn completely flat by the week.
My mom looked at me in the quiet.
"You're not going to be able to keep this up," she said. It wasn't a question.
"I know."
"The back and forth. The week here, the week there."
"I know, Mom."
"So what are you going to do about it?"
I looked out the window at the cloud layer below. "I'm working on something. An idea. I don't know if it'll come together but—" I paused. "I don't want to say it out loud yet. In case it doesn't work."
She studied me the way she had since I was small — that particular maternal calculation that was half concern and half something that looked a lot like confidence.
"Okay," she said. "But don't wait too long to decide. Finn's already attached. The longer this is split down the middle the harder the adjustment gets."
"I know."
She patted my hand once and picked up her book.
I looked at my sleeping son against my shoulder — dark hair, long lashes, Liam's face at rest — and thought about what I was going to say on a phone call tomorrow morning.
Tuesday I got Finn back into his routine.
He told everyone. His whole class, by the sound of it. The teacher pulled me aside at pickup with the expression of someone who had heard about the St. Louis Blaze in significant detail.
"He seems different," she said. "More settled. Happy in a way that's new."
"His dad's in his life now. Properly."
She smiled. "It shows. It really shows."
Jess was already at the table when I got to the coffee shop, which meant she'd been there long enough to have read the room before I arrived.
She took one look at me and said: "You're moving to St. Louis."
"I didn't say?—"
"You don't have to. It's everywhere on your face." She pushed a latte across the table. "Tell me everything."
So I did. The whole month. Liam at morning skate. The reveal. Chicago. The cold PT sessions. Dallas. Finn at the rink in his oversized jersey. The goal and the point.
"He pointed at him," Jess said. "Right there in front of eighteen thousand people."
"I nearly fell apart in public."
"I would have fully fallen apart." She wrapped her hands around her cup. "So what's the plan? You can't keep flying back and forth."
"I know. I'm working on something." I looked at her. "I'm pitching my boss tomorrow. On opening a St. Louis office."
Her eyebrows went up.
"There's a real market there," I said. "The Blaze are the anchor but there's the MLS team, both universities, club programs. I've already built the relationships. It's not just personal — it's actually a smart business move."
"And it also means you get to live in the same city as the man you love."
"That too."
She grinned. "You've already thought through the whole pitch, haven't you."
"I may have been up until very late last night."
"Good." She reached across and squeezed my hand. "Do it. Anne, you've been waiting for your life to start for so long. Stop waiting."
I looked at my coffee.
"What if she says no?"
"Then you figure out another way. But pitch it first." She sat back. "And I want front row seats to whatever games you can get me."
"Done."
Wednesday morning I called my boss, Rachel.
She picked up on the second ring, warm and efficient the way she always was.
"Anne. How are you? I heard Round 1 went well."
"It did. Rachel, I want to pitch you something. Do you have a few minutes?"
"Of course."
I laid it out the way I'd been rehearsing since the flight home — the Blaze connection, the MLS team, the universities, the sports medicine gap in the market, the foundation I'd already built. I kept my voice level and professional and didn't mention Liam until she asked directly.
"Is this purely business?" she said. "Or is there something personal driving this?"
"Both. I won't pretend otherwise. My son's father lives in St. Louis and I want to be there. But the business case stands on its own — I wouldn't be calling you if it didn't."
"I appreciate that." A pause. "This isn't a small ask. New office, new market, overhead costs. I'd need to run numbers."
"I know."
"But I'm not saying no. Give me a week to do proper due diligence. I'll come back to you."
"That's all I'm asking. Thank you, Rachel."
After I hung up I sat at my kitchen table for a long time, listening to Finn's voice drifting from his room — he was telling his stuffed bear the plot of one of the hockey games, apparently, with full commentary.
I'd put it out there. Whatever happened next, I'd put it out there.
Wednesday night I called Liam after Finn went to bed.
"Hey." I could hear the smile before he said anything else. "Two more days."
"Two more days. How's practice?"
"Good. Colorado's fast — their top line is dangerous. We're going to have to be sharp." He paused. "How's Chicago?"
"Fine. Quiet." I took a breath. "I did something today."
"Tell me."
So I told him. The pitch, Rachel's response, the week of waiting.
The silence on his end lasted long enough that I started to second-guess whether I'd said too much too soon.
"Liam?"
"You want to move here." His voice was careful. Like he was making sure he'd heard it right.
"I want to stop living half a life in two cities. And yes — I want to be where you are. Where Finn can see you without plane tickets being involved." I paused. "It's not decided yet. She might say no. But I wanted you to know I was trying."
Another silence. Then: "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything."
"Anne." His voice had gone quiet in a way that meant something was moving in him that he wasn't going to name on a phone call. "I love you. Whatever she says — we figure it out. But I love you."
"I love you too."
We talked until late. Round 2, Finn's teacher, the logistics of a life that was still being built. And when I finally put the phone down I lay in the dark and listened to the apartment and thought about how different the same walls could feel depending on what you were moving toward.
Thursday I flew back.
Liam was at arrivals, and the moment I saw him everything re-ordered itself the way it did every time — like a compass finding north.
We drove to his apartment and he caught me up on the week. Colorado's systems. The game plan. The things Coach had been emphasizing in practice.
"You nervous?" I asked.
"Focused. Different thing."
That night I watched from the stands as the Blaze played Game 1.
Colorado was everything he'd said — fast, skilled, relentless in the neutral zone. The game was tight and physical and went back and forth for sixty minutes.
Final: 3-2 Colorado.
Down 0-1.
When Liam came out of the locker room he had the contained, careful expression he wore when he was managing frustration. I fell into step beside him.
"We outshot them by ten," he said. "Couldn't finish."
"It's one game."
"Can't go down 0-2 Saturday."
"You won't."
He drove us back to his apartment in silence, jaw tight, already somewhere in his head replaying the game. I let him. Some things needed to be felt before they could be let go.
When we got inside I took his hand and pulled gently.
"Come here."
"I need to watch some video. Figure out?—"
"Liam." I stepped closer. Looked up at him. "The video will be there in an hour."
He looked at me for a moment. Something shifted.
He followed me to the bedroom.
I undressed slowly, watching him watch me, and when I reached for his shirt he caught my hands and took over — unhurried, deliberate, like he was putting the game down one piece at a time with every button.
We fell onto the bed together and he took his time in a way he hadn't the last few times — the urgent, quiet, have-to-be-careful times at my apartment.
Here there was nobody down the hall. Nobody to wake up.
He kissed his way down my body without rushing, his hands moving over me until I was pulling at his hair and saying his name into the dark of his bedroom.
"I've got you," he said. "I've got you."
He worked me until I was shaking, then kissed his way back up. I wrapped my hand around him — hard and wanting and I felt him exhale sharply at my touch.
"Anne—"
"Here." I pulled him toward me. "Now."
He pushed inside and we both went still. His forehead dropped to mine. In the quiet of the apartment there was just this — just us, just the weight of him, just the particular rightness of it that I'd stopped trying to explain to myself.
He started to move and I moved with him, no walls between us and nothing left unsaid, and when I came apart it was slow and complete and he followed not long after, my name on his lips like something he'd been holding.
Afterward we lay tangled together, his hand moving slow on my back.
"That's better," he said eventually.
"The game or?—"
"Both." He pressed his lips to my hair. "Mostly this."
I smiled against his chest.
"One game," I said. "You'll get them Saturday."
"Yeah." A long pause. "You really pitched Rachel."
"I really did."
His arm tightened around me. He didn't say anything else, and he didn't need to.
Outside the window St. Louis was doing its late-night thing, and I lay in Liam's bed listening to him breathe and thought about a week from now, when Rachel would call back with an answer.
Whatever she said — I'd already decided.
I was figuring this out.
One way or another.