Me too #3
The brush doesn’t stop. I keep the rhythm steady, even though internally I pause at her question, repeated again.
“Yes.”
She studies me in the reflection. “I don’t remember her.”
“You were really little, bug,” I say. “Not even two, then you only saw her a couple times when you were three.”
She squints like she’s trying to drag a picture out of fog but can’t. After a second, she gives up, shoulders slumping as she looks back at herself in the mirror instead. I keep brushing. Slow strokes, untangling ends that don’t really need untangling anymore.
“I like Penny better,” she says softly.
Me too.
I set the brush down carefully on the dresser before I can snap the handle clean in my hand. Then I turn to pull her blankets down. She climbs into bed, watching me more carefully now, like she knows she’s stepping into a delicate conversation.
“Can’t Penny be my mom?”
I kneel down and tug the blanket up around her shoulders, tucking it in gently to buy myself a second, smoothing her hair back from her face.
“You’re allowed to love who you love,” I tell her quietly.
“Is it not nice to say that?”
My head shakes quickly. “No. Your feelings are yours. You don’t have to make them nicer for anyone.”
She searches my face again in the low lamplight as she processes that, then her fingers curl into the edge of her blanket. I lean down and press a kiss to her forehead.
“I love Penny,” she whispers.
Me too.
“I know,” I murmur, throat tightening.
Her hand reaches up to close around mine, and those big blue eyes look up at me again.
“Do you love Penny too, Daddy?”
The question is so quiet I almost miss it, and I don’t answer straight away because this isn’t about grand declarations. It’s about what she’s really asking. Is she safe to love Penny? Is it okay? Is this allowed?
I smooth my thumb over the back of her hand.
“Yeah, bug,” I say finally. “I love Penny, too.”
Her face changes, and something unclenches behind her eyes.
“Okay,” she breathes.
She doesn’t ask anything else after that, and her hand slips from mine as her eyes close, this time ready to fall asleep. I sit there listening to her breathing even out and feeling the weight of what she just handed me without even knowing it.
Down the hall, Penny moves softly in the kitchen. I hear a cabinet door close and water running as she turns a tap on then off. Normal sounds.
And I sit there in the dark with a realization deep in my bones.
Protecting my daughter doesn’t mean keeping doors closed.
It means holding them steady while she figures out who feels safe enough to walk through them.
***
The rink smells like artificially cold air and buttered popcorn.
There’s a hundred bodies packed too close together, with the FD on one side in red, PD on the other in navy.
The stands are louder than they have any right to be for a charity cup that mostly exists so we can chirp each other for the next twelve months.
Fletch is already jawing from the bench before puck drop.
“Tucker, you skate like you’re towing a trailer.”
He skates past us with a grin. “At least I can pass, Fletch. Try aiming for your own teammates this time, eh?”
Colt bumps my shoulder as we glide into position for the opening draw. “First shift, I’m flattening him.”
“Try not to get arrested,” I mutter.
The ref drops the puck, and it’s immediate chaos. Sloppy clears and overcommitted hits, and half the guys playing like it’s the Stanley Cup, the other half remembering we have real jobs in the morning.
Colt absolutely levels one of the PD rookies in the second minute and throws his hands up like he’s innocent.
“That’s assault!” Tucker yells.
“It was physics!” Colt fires back.
Herb’s voice carries from the stands. “Atta boy, Lawson! Show ’em how it’s done!”
Leah sits beside him with a thermos and a blanket tucked around her legs, cheering like she’s at a playoff game. Penny’s a few rows down in a red beanie, cheeks flushed from the cold, yelling something that sounds like a joke about police and donuts.
Elle’s wedged between Penny and Remi, face painted with a crooked red stripe that Fletch did in the locker room. She leans against Penny’s side automatically while gleefully yelling down at the ice, and I grin, winking back.
Stacey’s here, too—a few rows further back. Alone, and with her coat buttoned all the way to her chin. I don’t look at her.
Midway through the second period, we’re tied. Tucker tries to thread a pass across the blue line that’s a little too clean not to read, and I step in with my stick down. The puck knocks loose and slides into open ice, and Colt’s already moving.
I shovel it forward to him, then cut wide. He returns it without looking, and I take the shot from the top of the circle.
It’s messy, but it goes in, and the FD stands erupt. Fletch nearly jumps the boards before the whistle, and Colt grabs my helmet and shakes it.
“Yeah, baby! That’s how you do it!” he shouts, smacking my helmet.
By the third period, we’re up by one. The PD push hard, and it gets scrappy with a few chirps that hold too much truth.
Fletch drops gloves at least twice, and judging by the way he grins like a psycho toward the stands afterward, Frankie admitting she likes this shit has only encouraged him.
It’s half for spectacle, half real. Entertaining all the same, so long as no one gets seriously hurt.
I clear one off the line in the final thirty seconds, dropping to a knee and taking it off the shin pad hard enough that I’ll definitely feel it tomorrow.
The buzzer sounds, and red supporters spill onto the ice. Ghost wraps an arm around my shoulders, and Fletch tackles us both. Someone, probably Colt, dumps half a water bottle down my back.
We skate to center ice and shake hands with the PD. Tucker leans in close enough that only I hear him.
“Enjoy it,” he says through fast breaths. “We’re taking it back next year.”
“Sure you are.”
After the ceremony with a very scratched-up-looking trophy, I climb over the boards, and Elle launches herself at me.
“You scored the winner!” she yells.
“I did.”
“You said you wouldn’t fall over!”
I laugh. “I didn’t.”
Penny’s smiling when I look up at her, and I let my eyes rest on hers for a moment. Behind her, Stacey hesitates at the end of the row. She lifts a hand slightly as though she’s about to step forward, then lowers it when Colt barrels in to clap me on the back again.
She doesn’t belong to this group, and she’s nervous to interrupt, that much is obvious.
We end up gathering in a loose knot near the stands. Leah passes out cups from her thermos, and Herb insists on retelling my goal as if it were a choreographed NHL play.
I step aside to grab a towel from my bag and catch Penny’s voice behind me.
“And you were sure about selling it?” Leah asks.
“It was my dad’s share,” Penny explains. “But it hadn’t really been his in years, so I thought it was time to sell it.”
Leah makes a small sound. “That’s… a lot of security to walk away from.”
“It was never security,” Penny says with a shrug. “It was obligation.”
I wipe my face with the towel and glance over her shoulder. Stacey’s a few feet away, and her expression shifts as she busies herself with her phone.
“Well,” Leah says, patting Penny’s arm. “It sounds like you did the right thing selling it.”
“Me too. And—” Penny gestures around at all of us, her eyes catching on mine. “Look how much richer I am for it now.”
Remi steps into my space a second later, arms folded across her chest like she’s about to say something she doesn’t particularly want to.
“She been turning up?” she asks, chin flicking subtly toward where Stacey stands near the aisle.
“Yeah. Late, but yeah.”
Remi’s mouth tightens. She’s known me since my first month in Maplewood, before Stacey and I were even talking about kids. She’s seen the whole messy arc in real time, and she’s had my back through it all.
“She still looks…” Remi exhales through her nose. “Temporary.”
I gulp down some water from my bottle. “We’ll see.”
Remi watches Elle for a second. My kid’s wedged between Penny and Leah now, explaining my goal with exaggerated arm movements.
Remi shifts her weight.
“If Penny needs a break,” she says, tone deliberately casual, “I could take Elle next weekend for a few hours.”
I look at her, but she doesn’t meet my eyes at first
“So she doesn’t have to…” She gestures vaguely toward Stacey again. “Deal with that solo.”
“You sure?” I ask.
She snorts. “You know I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.”
“It’s just right now, with Sta—”
“I will body slam her before I let her anywhere near that baby angel without you.”
I choke on a laugh, and to the side of us, Stacey shifts. My eyes flick back to Remi, and I clear my throat and nod.
“Yeah, that’d be good. I’ll let Penny know. Thanks, Rem.”
“Cool.” She shrugs like it’s no big deal when it absolutely is. “We’ll sort it.”
Remi showing up for me isn’t a surprise. She’s always been that person. She and Colt have seen every version of me that had to figure out how to be a father without a net.
She trusts me, and I trust her.
The noise swells again, and we all turn to see Colt trying to lift Herb for absolutely no reason.
Leah’s laughing, and Penny’s crouching down, tickling Elle as she shrieks with glee about something nonsensical.
Nobody thinks twice about Penny being here.
Not Herb or Leah, or any of the boys. Not Remi, and definitely not Elle or me.
Stacey stands at the edge of it all, phone still in her hand. Always ready to go, always with something else tethering her away.
I rejoin the guys, and Fletch immediately pours a beer into the plastic trophy and makes me drink from it. He pours another one over my head, and by the time I’ve shaken my hair out and glanced back over, Stacey’s gone.