Chapter 23 Harrison
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HARRISON
Iwake up before the sun, not because of any alarm but because of the thoughts running wild through my mind that just won’t stop.
The way my night ended may have been blissful as I buried myself in Harper twice more before we finally fell asleep, but that doesn’t change the fact that yesterday still happened.
Connor was given news he wasn’t quite ready for…
or maybe he was ready—is ready—but the way it was presented was shit.
Either way, the emotions of last evening still haunt me, as does the vision of my son’s face as he tried to process everything in front of us.
I guess I can’t blame him for being overly emotional about the whole thing. I probably would’ve been too.
I lie here for a moment, staring at the ceiling as the city lights dance through the window.
And then I hear them, soft footsteps. Careful ones.
Like someone trying not to wake the whole world.
I listen a little more knowing Connor must be up but wait to see if he’s just using the restroom and going back to bed or if he’s awake and needs… well, me.
I hear a cabinet door opening and then closing followed by the faint clink of a glass.
He’s in the kitchen.
Fuck, he’s probably starving.
Harper is still asleep beside me, curled into my side like she belongs there—which of course, she does—but I don’t wake her.
Not yet.
I sit up slowly and swing my feet to the floor, my body heavy but my mind sharp in that way it only gets when something matters.
I pull on sweatpants and a hoodie, then step quietly down the hall.
Connor is standing in the kitchen, shoulders hunched, staring out the window like he’s waiting for answers to show up in the dark. He startles when he notices me.
“Hey,” I say softly.
“Hey,” he answers.
Neither of us speaks for a minute, the silence lingering painfully between us.
“You can’t sleep?” I finally ask.
He shakes his head. “My brain won’t shut up.”
I nod because I get it.
“Mine either.”
Something in his posture eases just a fraction at that.
“You hungry?”
He shrugs. “Not yet.”
“You want to get out of here?”
He turns his head, his brows pinching in confusion. “Where to?”
“There’s a place I always go when life is, well, life-ing, and I need a minute to think.”
He considers my proposal for a moment and I wonder if he’s contemplating wanting to get out of here or wanting to get out of here with me.
“Mkay,” he finally says, tilting his glass back and finishing his water.
I grab a pen and a sticky note off the counter and write quickly.
We went to the rink. He couldn’t sleep. Back soon. I love you.
—H
Then I text her the same thing, just in case, and then we slip out together, into the world that’s just starting to wake up.
The arena is quiet in a way that feels sacred.
Connor pulls on borrowed gear in the locker room while I lace up beside him.
Neither of us rushes nor says much. There are no crowds to work through and no music playing.
I flip on a few lights. Not all of them, obviously, but enough.
The only sounds we hear once we hit the ice are the hum of the refrigeration system coupled with the echo of our skates cutting into the cold surface.
I dump a handful of pucks onto the ice and slide one toward him.
“Shoot,” I say.
He does and it’s harder than I expect. The puck claps off the boards and slides away.
“Again.”
He shoots again.
And again.
And again, until we fall into a silent rhythm.
Pass. Shoot. Skate. Breathe.
I don’t bother him with words or questions or even critique of his maneuvers because this isn’t the time for any of that. When I have shit to work through the first place I want to be is right here on the ice. Alone.
So that’s what I try to give him.
Solace.
Space.
A place to work through his thoughts, in a space he loves, with someone he at least trusted at one point, knowing I’m here if and when he needs me.
He shoots for a long while before he finally asks without looking at me, “Were you mad at my mom?”
The question lands clean and sharp inside my chest, but I promised him a long time ago I wouldn’t lie to him.
“Yeah,” I admit. “I was.”
He nods.
“For a while,” I continue, skating slowly, circling, “I was mad she didn’t tell me. Mad I didn’t get a choice. Mad that I lost time with you I can never get back.”
I stop near the blue line and look at him.
“Are you still mad at her?” he asks.
“Sometimes, yeah. I’m still working through my feelings just like you are now. I was mad at her for a minute last night.”
“Me too,” he says softly before slamming another puck down the ice. This one makes it into the net. I want to give him a high-five, but I don’t. Making it into the net isn’t important right now.
“But I love your mom, Connor,” I say. “And I love you too. So, at some point, I had to decide what mattered more.”
He finally looks up at me. “Which one did you pick?”
“My family,” I say simply. “All of it. Even the messy, emotional, and hurtful parts.”
He swallows and takes another shot, this one weaker than the last. “I was really mad at her last night too,” he says. “I really don’t like that she never told me about you.”
“I don’t like it either, bud. I don’t like that she didn’t tell you about me, and I equally don’t like that she never told me about you. Your feelings are very valid, Connor. You have every right in the world to be upset.”
“I was really sad last night too,” he continues, weakly tapping another puck down the ice. He still doesn’t look at me when he explains, “I really thought…maybe you didn’t want me.”
My heart cracks all over again.
I skate over and stop a few feet away, trying my hardest not to crowd him, but crouch down so I’m more his height.
“I hope somewhere in that big brain and beautiful heart of yours, you’re telling yourself that’s not at all true.”
He bows his head. “Yeah…”
“I would’ve dropped everything for you, if I had known,” I remind him with all the sincerity and honesty I can muster.
“And If you let me, Connor, I want to be everywhere you are. I want to be at your practices, your games, your birthdays. I want all the good days and the bad ones. I want all of it,” I say, voice steady even though everything in me is shaking.
Connor finally stops shooting and looks at me. “You do?”
I offer him a small smile as I come a little closer. “Hell, yeah, I do. But I need you to know something.”
“Okay.” He waits.
“I can’t take back the first ten years,” I tell him. “And I can’t make promises I know I can’t keep.”
He cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I want to be where you are all the time…but I have to be where the team is. Not because I always want to be with them but because it’s my job. It’s what I get paid to do. Do you see what I’m trying to say?”
He nods. “Yeah. I get it. Like when Mom has to go visit a client and I stay with Antoni or sometimes my grandma.”
“Exactly. It’s the part about being an adult that can be frustrating.
You don’t always get to do exactly what you want to do because you have responsibilities,” I explain.
“But if you’ll let me, Connor, if you’d like me to…
” I crouch down in front of him, my hand on his shoulder.
“I’d really like to be your dad and be part of your life. ”
He stares down at the ice for a long time, averting his eyes from me, and then he nudges a puck toward me with his stick.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I think I’d like that.”
Holy fuck.
The tightness in my chest loosens a bit, and I have to fight to keep my face neutral even though everything inside me wants to smile so wide it might split my face in two. I feel like I can breathe for the first time since last night.
“Yeah?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
Connor nods, still focused on the puck between us. “Yeah. And can I come to all of your games?”
“Hell yeah,” I tell him with a confident smile. “Every single game you want to come to. I’ll make sure you have the perfect seats.”
“For Mom and Antoni too?”
I nod. “Of course. I’ll put you in a suite if it’s what you want. You just say the word.”
He shrugs. “I mean…Antoni probably would like a suite. He’s fancy like that. But I like to be by the ice. That’s where the action is.”
“Spoken like my own flesh and blood.”
I tap the puck back to him, and we fall into a rhythm—pass, slide, tap—the puck moving between us like a conversation neither of us quite knows how to have with words.
“So…” he starts, then stops, his stick stalling. “Do I call you Dad now or something?”
The question hits me square in the chest. I hadn’t even thought about that.
“You can call me whatever feels right to you,” I tell him honestly. “Harrison is fine. Dad is…well, that would be amazing someday. But there’s no rush. We’re still getting to know each other.”
He nods, considering this as he sends the puck back to me with a little more force. “I think maybe Harrison for now. If that’s okay?”
“That’s more than okay,” I tell him, trying to hide the emotion threatening to spill over. Just hearing him consider calling me Dad someday feels like winning a championship.
He skates in a small circle, stick tapping against the ice as he thinks. I can tell he’s trying to work out something else in his head, so I give him the space he needs. There’s a comfort in the silence that wasn’t there before. Maybe now it’s less tension and more understanding.
“Can I ask you something?” Connor says suddenly, looking up with those eyes that mirror my own.
“Anything.”
“So, you really were boyfriend and girlfriend? You and my mom?”
I smile, old college memories flooding back. “Yeah, we were together for almost four years. We met in college. I played hockey, and she was this brilliant girl who wouldn’t give me the time of day at first.”
Connor’s mouth quirks up at that. “Really? Mom ignored you?”