Four #2
“No, he won’t,” Cormac said slowly, his eyes narrowed as he considered the empty doorway Naese had retreated through. “And you have to admit, he’s gotten broodier.”
“Well, that’s his prerogative,” I said.
“Unless it impacts the team,” Cruz said.
“I kind of miss his fun-loving ways,” Maxim said, rubbing his chin. “He’s too serious now.”
“Well, he’s going to have to figure a few things out for himself. Like the fact that willing women aren’t the same thing as a loving woman,” Stolly said.
We turned our collective focus on him, and Stolly grinned a bit sheepishly, his cheeks a dull red.
“It’s true,” he said.
“It is,” Cormac said. “Look at you, all grown up.” Cormac beamed, but it was Cruz who puffed out his chest like a proud papa. And so he should be. Cruz had mentored Stolly because the rest of us hadn’t had the patience for him to mature.
That sneaky little shit was telling me to get my head out of my ass. I shook my head.
Like me, Stolly was a former resident man whore. Also, like me, he was now reformed by his own wife and child. He stared after Naese, concern tugging at his lips. “Hmmm, I guess that’s what he meant about her breaking him…”
“What?” Cormac straightened to his full height. “We need to address whatever’s going on there.”
Cruz tapped a finger to his lips. Well, I imagined to his lips. He had a lot of facial hair, so it was hard to tell for sure.
“I’ll deal with Naese.” Cruz pointed his thumb at me. “After we deal with this dumb shit. He’s our priority today. We’ll deal with Naese’s hot mess after Adam gets his head out of his ass and mans up.”
“Hey,” I snapped.
“Well, you are being quite a fuck-up,” Maxim offered, as if that made Cruz’s comment somehow better.
“You don’t even have a kid!” I smacked his shoulder. My hand throbbed because Maxim’s shoulder was like hitting a mountain. How tiny Ida Jane, so petite and cute, ended up with this monster, still didn’t compute in my mind.
Cormac clapped his hands together once, hard, making a loud smack that echoed through the quiet arena.
“Focus! We’re saving Adam from his self-destructive ways, so he doesn’t end up alone and bitter in that big house, rolling around like that weird hermit crab in Moana.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but Stolly shifted between us and laid a hand on my shoulder. “That crab is fucking cool as shit, but that’s not the point. I get it. It’s hard to outrun the reputation we set for ourselves.”
“Shove it up your ass, Stolly,” I said. “I owned my hookups. All of them.”
Cruz and Maxim scoffed. Cormac eyed me, disapproval radiating off him.
“Sure you did,” Stolly said in an even tone that said his temper was fraying. “But can you own the fact that parenting is a fuck-ton harder than you imagined…and you have to do it all the time on less sleep than you got when you were banging all night long?”
He wasn’t wrong, and I hated that he wasn’t wrong almost as much as I hated that I’d bailed on Naomi. My shoulders slumped, and I set my stick on the ice.
Being honest would devastate me further. That was why I’d run away.
“I don’t know how to help,” I admitted into the thickening silence. My shoulders slumped as I gave into the misery. “I can’t make Felix stop crying…or Naomi. She’s…she’s falling apart, and nothing I do works.”
Stolly squeezed my shoulder, hard. Yeah, I deserved that. “I get that my baby girl wasn’t as tiny as Felix, maybe didn’t have the same issues, but they get easier, and well, you just…figure parenting them out.”
“How?” My voice cracked. “Felix cries all the time, and…I hate it.”
Just like my parents had hated me for crying. I was like my old man—the one person in this world I never wanted to be like, the drug-addicted fuck.
“Course you do, man. That’s your kid who’s upset,” Cormac said. “Guts me when Brooks cries.”
I rounded on him, frustration bubbling over. “But Keelie can soothe him. Naomi just gets wound up, which causes Felix to get more upset, which winds her up…it’s a vicious cycle, man.”
“Yeah, that’s rough. But maybe it’s a phase that’s impossible until it isn’t. Like learning a new shot. Everything is hard until it’s easy,” Cormac offered.
I shook my head out of stubbornness, but our team captain wasn’t wrong. “I don’t know how to be a parent…”
Stolly guffawed. “And you think I do? Or Millie does?” He snorted. “We had the worst parents, like, ever.” Since he’d opened up a bit about his dirtbag parents and we all knew the story of Millie’s asshole father, I couldn’t disagree with him, which kind of made everything worse.
My parents had been more than happy to dump me on Owen, but Owen had been amazing to me—when I let him.
“But we love Bree.” Stolly’s face softened, and his eyes shone with adoration. “So, we make sure she knows that, and that makes a world of difference, man.”
“I’m not like you,” I snapped. “My parents neglected me. Shit, they couldn’t bother to remember to change my diaper, so I potty-trained my damn self!
They never remembered a birthday or bothered to take me to school or…
” I clenched my jaw, refusing to say more. I swallowed the heaviness in my throat.
“All right. Your parents were terrible, too,” Stolly said cheerfully. “We all get a gold star for abysmal role models. But hey, those shit people have nothing to do with you being a parent.”
I frowned. “What?” Of course they did.
“You get to decide your life, your relationship with your son and wife,” Cormac said, picking up the argument. Stolly, Cruz, and Maxim nodded in agreement.
Cormac pointed a finger at me. “You, Adam. Just like you got to decide to play for seventeen years in the NHL and amass a fucking fortune through your contracts and sponsorships so that you can work—or not—for the rest of your life. You have choices, man. Make good ones.” Cormac’s gaze seared into mine. There was a long silence.
I inhaled and released some of the frustration that had been riding me. “I hear you.”
He raised his eyebrows in challenge.
I held up my hands. “No, I really hear you. I’ve had my head up my ass.”
“True,” Cruz offered. “I’m surprised you can hear us based on how far in there your head was.”
Cruz glared while I stood there, accepting the blame. He sighed out the last of his frustration with me, having said his piece.
“Now, let’s talk about how to fix this shit. Your wife deserves to be the center of your world and your kid’s cared for without turning into a pampered little shit.”
I had to hand it to Cruz. He got to the core and didn’t pull his punches…
on the ice, physically, or off the ice, metaphorically.
We were lucky to have him on our team because he was a bear of a man.
Well over six-feet tall with a thick black beard and a permanent scowl, he was the squishy center of our team… and not afraid to admit it.
We were luckier to have him as a friend because he was astute in his observations and he showed us all that we could just be, just feel. That we didn’t have to bottle shit up and force it down and otherwise make ourselves less than to feel less.
For the millionth time, his lack of a long-term partner shocked me. Amongst all of us, Cruz seemed to be the most suited for long-term monogamy.
“I want all the tea on Naese.” The kid followed Cruz and Stolly around like a waggly little puppy.
Cruz shook his head but glared at Stolly.
“I don’t have all the details, but I’m putting it together and it’s a sad story,” Stolly offered. “I’m so…hurt…yeah, I’m hurt he didn’t tell us.”
“What?” I asked.
“Let us get our skates on, and I’ll fill you all in.”