Chapter 8
EIGHT
Milk
Deacon
I’m half-asleep on the couch when something pokes my shoulder.
“Hey,” Dash whispers about as softly as a six-three right winger is able. “Still alive?”
I grunt. “Unfortunately.”
“Good. Coach D would string me up like Christmas lights if I let you die.” He squints at me, phone light in my face. “Follow my finger.”
“I’m going to follow my fist into your face if you don’t move that light.”
He smirks, satisfied I’m not brain-dead. “Wake me if you start choking on your tongue. Before I check on you again in—”
“I don’t need to be checked on. This isn’t my first concussion.”
He moves back to the cot. “You go into a coma, I’m unplugging your life support out of sheer spite.”
“That’s friendship.” I chuckle silently.
He moans as he sinks into the cot, and two minutes later, he’s snoring loud enough to rattle the walls.
I start drifting again, until soft footsteps move across the hardwood. Then, a feather-light tap to my knee.
“Deacon?”
Her voice. Soft. Uneasy.
I crack an eye. Claudia stands over me in pajamas, holding Savannah’s baby monitor like a lifeline when she’s just steps away.
“You okay?” she whispers.
I should tell her to go to bed. That I’m fine. That Dash has the idiot-on-concussion-watch duty. But the truth is, I like her voice breaking through the dark.
“Still here,” I rasp.
She kneels beside the couch, hair loose and messy and unreal in the glow of the monitor’s light. She doesn’t touch me, but she’s close enough that I feel the warmth of her skin.
“Concussion protocol,” she murmurs. “You should be checked every few hours. I don’t want to wake up and find—”
“Me dead on the couch?” I finish, amused.
She winces. “Something like that.”
“Dash has alarms set. He’s doing shifts.” I angle a lazy smirk her way.
Her mouth twitches. The smallest smile. God, she has no idea what that does to me.
“Good,” she says. “Though honestly? I’d be the one stuck explaining to the paramedics how you drank breast milk and then died on my watch.”
I grin slowly. “Worth it.”
She rolls her eyes, and she tries to stand. I catch her wrist lightly, just a touch. No pressure.
“Claudia.”
She freezes.
“Go sleep. You need your strength to keep producing that… delectable milk.”
Her inhale catches, but she quickly covers it with a scoff, shaking her head. “You’re impossible.”
“And you liked impossible.”
“The only thing I like,” she whispers, leaning in just enough to make my pulse stutter, “is sleep.”
“Liar.”
Her eyes spark — challenge and heat and something she wants to deny.
“That was a long time ago,” she mutters.
I lift a brow. “Not too long though, Claudia.”
Her lips twitch. There it is — the woman from the app, not the cornered mother from today. The one who could spar word-for-word and never back down.
“My very naughty girl is still in there,” I murmur, low enough only she hears.
She swallows, pulse fluttering in her throat. “Get some rest, Deacon.”
She slips away before I can say more, footsteps soft, like she’s afraid to wake the house — or afraid of staying another second near me.
When the door clicks shut, I exhale slowly.
Yeah. She felt that. And hell if I’m not awake now, wired all over again, heartbeat doing stupid, teenage things. Because Claudia Holloway just skated back into my life. She’s fire pressed right up against the fuse.
And Dingy? He has no idea what storm he just walked into. But what is his angle?
I don’t do social media, not that you’d know that based on how often my mug was plastered all over it, but it’s true. But desperate times calling for desperate measures and all…
What I gathered from the scroll is that wherever Kyle Dingy was off the ice, he was in the very near vicinity of his team’s owner, Aldridge Shaw.
No red flags there; Dingy has always sucked off and schmoozed anyone who could boost his status.
The man would polish skates with his tongue if he thought it meant an upgrade.
I’d like to pretend I don’t know what pushes me to keep scrolling, but I do. And I’m not even pretending I’m not surprised when I see Emilia Shaw — Aldridge’s daughter — at every one of those events.
Do I dig deeper? Bet your ass I do.
Gala after gala, yacht shots, “philanthropy brunches” that are really PR laundering factories. Emilia is right there. “Hockey Princess” headlines. Dingy is posing like he’s already a king instead of a jester who got lucky.
Most guys in this league know the rule — owners’ daughters are off limits. Not because of morals, but because careers die that way. You don’t flirt with the throne unless you want to end up headless.
And Dingy? He’s out here playing royal consort like he’s earned the crown instead of buying rented suits and hashtags.
Then I see it — a blurry pap shot, her laughing, his hand too damn familiar at her back.
Caption: Future Power Couple?
Christ.
Emilia Shaw is polished. Bred for rooms most men don’t even get to stand outside. She doesn’t date down. She doesn’t date drama.
And that’s when the ugly truth clicks into place in the back of my mind like a trigger resetting: He’s only suddenly “interested” in seeing his kid because he thinks it makes him look like a family man.
Because a woman like Emilia Shaw would never settle for a guy who abandons a baby.
Not when her world runs on legacy and image and curation.
A girl like that wouldn’t tolerate less.
He doesn’t want to be a dad. He wants a clean narrative. Appealing pics. Depth that piece of shit doesn’t have.
And Claudia’s only in the game, one he wouldn’t be able to play if she hadn’t given him the card.
He’s not doing this because he suddenly grew a conscience.
He’s doing it because he grew ambitious, and he thinks that kid makes him a fucking man.
That little girl a pretty accessory in the photographs, Claudia’s a pawn.
Meanwhile, she’s feeding her daughter in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, trying to build peace out of a life she fought tooth and nail to build.
The game he’s playing, she can’t win, not with the kind of money he has, and definitely when she hasn’t a clue she’s being played this hard.
My head is pounding, the screen, not a good miser with a concussion. There isn’t a fucking thing I can do tonight anyway. So, I power it down.
I wake half on and half off a sofa not made for a man my size to sleep on with a pounding headache.
I glance up as Nalani skates out the apartment door with a bag of peas and lettuce?
“What the fuck?” I grumble under my breath.
“Just pretend you see nothing and close your eyes, man.” Dash chuckles.
“Paul fucking Bronski has chickens,” I say, rolling to my side, and trying to get comfortable.
“Goat.” Dash sighs like he’s in love.
“Goat with chickens,” I remind him before pulling the blanket over my head.
Another set of feet, heavier this time, pad across the floor, and a door shuts.
“Fuck this,” Dash grumbles.
He’s not wrong, I think as I try to ignore my pounding head.
I hear him trying to be quiet as he moves around the kitchen. Getting a drink, I suppose, and wonder if there’s any pain reliever in the place, when it hits me that the league rules are that I’m out for a minimum of seven days if the docs decide I have a concussion.
I’ll miss our next home game against Florida, and the away games against Colorado and Utah too.
Johnson’s going to be in the goal and fuck us.
I chew on that for a few too many moments and decide I need to get the hell up and deal.
I throw the blanket off my face as Koa walks out of the bathroom.
Dash grins from where he’s leaning against the counter. “So, how was the Hayward reunion?”
I sit up and see he’s dressed in Hayward University gear, the same school he and the little brunette attended. “Must be nice to have a change of clothes. Slept in this monkey suit.”
“Found a pile of my old Hayward sweats and tees in—”
Dash cuts Koa off. “Calling dibs on, like, anything other than what I’m in.”
Koa narrows his eyes at him and then looks around.
“Nalani snuck out of here with a bag of greens and frozen peas. If she’s hot for Paul Bronski, you better step up your game, KOK.” Dash chuckles as he heads to the room where Koa and Nalani slept, no doubt grabbing some clothes.
I stand up and adjust myself, “How’s the shower?”
“I piss with more pressure than that shower,” Koa says looking at the door.
“Hot at least?” I ask, knowing he’s going to leave and go find the girl.
“Lukewarm at best,” he says as he walks toward the door.
As I’m grabbing a drink of water Dash walks out and asks, “How do I look?”
He’s in a maroon Hayward hockey tee that’s cut off, barely covering his chest, and a pair of joggers that give new meaning to what the girls all say about gray sweatpants.
“I’m not touching that question with a ten-foot pole.”
He grins as he looks down at his lower half. “Nine, nine and a half if I stretch it.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Sterling?” comes from the girls’ room as Noelle and Sofie walk out.
“Not touching that either. Do any of you ladies need to use the bathroom before I —”
“Me,” Claudia says as the door opens again, and she steps out with Savannah in her arms. “I’ll be fast.”
I block her path, palms out, and she hesitates. I get the look. Pride. Independence. That fierce don’t-need-anyone shield she now dons.
“Jesus, Doc, just give me the little one. Take a shower. Do what you gotta do.”
She opens her mouth like she’s about to tell me off, but Savannah fusses, and motherhood overrides whatever comeback she was loading. Claudia sighs, rubs the baby’s back once, then transfers her into my hands like I’m being trusted with a national treasure.
And Christ, I feel it. Emotional whiplash. The weight of the whole world is in this fifteen-pound bundle. Soft warmth. The tiniest fist curling in my shirt.