Chapter Twenty-Four
Happy Birthday
Banks
I wake up on my thirtieth birthday and tell myself it’s just another day.
Thirty years old.
Three decades on this planet. Twenty-two years of hockey. Twelve in the NHL. Six teams, two trades, approximately eight hundred penalty minutes. And not a single person who has ever made a big deal about my birthday.
That’s not self-pity; it’s just a fact. Birthdays require people who care enough to remember, and for most of my life, those people didn’t exist. The foster families had too many kids to keep track of.
The group homes didn’t do individual celebrations.
By the time I aged out, I’d learned not to expect anything.
It’s easier this way. Expectations lead to disappointment. Disappointment leads to—I shut down that train of thought and drag myself out of bed.
It’s just another day.
Practice is at nine. I arrive at 8:54, which for me is practically early, and head straight for the locker room. Most of the guys are already there, in various stages of getting dressed. The usual chaos—music playing, insults flying, someone complaining about something.
Normal. Good.
I keep my head down and start gearing up.
“Yo, Banks!”
Logan’s voice cuts through the noise. I don’t look up.
“Banks! Hey, Banks!”
I still don’t look up. Maybe he’ll take the hint.
He doesn’t.
“Happy birthday, man!” He’s right next to me now, grinning like an idiot. “The big three-oh! How’s it feel to be officially old?”
I turn my head slowly and fix him with the glare I usually reserve for opposing players who’ve taken cheap shots at my teammates.
Logan’s grin falters. “What?”
I don’t say anything. Just keep staring.
“Okay, okay.” He holds up his hands. “Not a birthday guy. Got it. Message received.” He backs away. “No birthday. Never happened. What’s a birthday? I don’t even know what that word means.”
He retreats to his own stall, and I go back to lacing my skates.
Crisis averted.
Except now Zayden is looking at me with that expression—the one that says he knows something I don’t want him to know.
“It’s your birthday?” he asks.
“No.”
“Logan just said—”
“Logan says a lot of things. Most of them are wrong.”
Zayden doesn’t push it. That’s one of the things I like about him. He knows when to leave well enough alone.
Practice is brutal. Coach runs us hard—line drills, defensive plays, a scrimmage—and by the end, I’m soaked in sweat and my shoulder is screaming. I tell myself it’s the good kind of pain. The kind that means I’m still alive, still useful, still capable of doing my job.
I shower, change, and head for the exit, planning to go home and spend the rest of my birthday doing absolutely nothing. Maybe I’ll get crazy and take a nap.
But when I push through the doors, she’s there.
Winnie.
She’s leaning against the wall near the parking lot entrance, wearing jeans and a soft sweater, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. In her hands is a single cupcake—chocolate, from the looks of it—with a lone candle stuck in the top.
She smiles when she sees me. “There you are.”
I stop walking. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” She holds up the cupcake. “Happy birthday.”
“How did you—”
She shrugs. “I have my ways.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m not used to this—people knowing things about me, people showing up with cupcakes, people caring.
“I don’t do birthdays,” I manage.
“I figured.” She pushes off the wall and walks toward me. “But humor me. Just this once.”
I should be annoyed. I am annoyed—or, at least, I want to be. But looking at her, standing there with the cupcake in hand and hope in her eyes, I can’t find the irritation I’m searching for.
“You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know.” She’s in front of me now, close enough that I can smell her shampoo. “But I wanted to. Everyone deserves to have their birthday acknowledged. Even grumpy hockey players who pretend they don’t care.”
“I don’t pretend. I genuinely don’t care.”
“Liar.” She lights the candle and holds up the cupcake. “Make a wish.”
“Win—”
“Make a wish, Banks. It’s tradition.”
“I don’t make wishes.”
“Everyone makes wishes.” Her voice is soft. “Just close your eyes and think about something you want.”
I want to argue. I want to tell her that wishes are for children, that I stopped believing in them around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus, that no amount of candle-blowing has ever changed anything for me.
But she’s looking at me with those blue eyes, and I’m powerless.
I close my eyes and think about what I want.
The answer comes immediately, without hesitation.
Her. I want her. Not just physically—though God knows I want that too—but all of it.
Her laugh. Her warmth. Her hand in mine.
Her voice saying my name. I want to wake up next to her.
I want to come home to her. I want to build something with her that I’ve never built with anyone.
I want a life that includes Winnie by my side.
I blow out the candle.
When I open my eyes, she’s smiling—that soft, real smile that makes my chest ache.
“What did you wish for?”
“Can’t tell you. Won’t come true.”
Her smile widens. “Fair enough.” She pulls the candle out of the cupcake and hands it to me. “Happy birthday, tough guy.”
I take the cupcake. Our fingers brush during the transfer, and I feel that contact all the way up my arm.
“Thank you,” I say. The words feel inadequate, but they’re all I have.
“You’re welcome.” She tilts her head. “What are you doing today?”
“Nothing.”
“Wrong answer.” She takes my free hand—bold, easy, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I’m taking you to lunch.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know. I want to.” She tugs me toward the parking lot. “Come on. I know a place.”
The place is a diner.
Not a fancy restaurant. Not somewhere with white tablecloths, wine lists, and outrageous prices. Just a diner—cracked vinyl booths, laminated menus, and a jukebox in the corner that probably hasn’t worked since 1987.
It’s perfect. And I’m starving.
“I used to come here all the time for dinner when I first moved to the city,” Winnie explains as we slide into a booth near the window. “Whenever I was homesick, stressed, or just needed comfort food. Best pancakes in Brooklyn.”
“Pancakes for dinner?”
“Breakfast for dinner is the superior meal choice. Don’t argue with me on this.”
I don’t argue. I’m too busy watching her—the way she tucks her hair behind her ear, the way her eyes light up when she talks about something she loves, and the way she makes even a run-down diner feel like somewhere special.
We order. She gets pancakes and bacon. I get a burger and fries because I’m not convinced about the breakfast-for-dinner thing, no matter how enthusiastically she argues for it. The food comes quickly, served by a waitress who calls us both “hon” and doesn’t seem to recognize me. Fine by me.
It’s nice. Being anonymous. Being normal.
“So,” Winnie says, pouring an obscene amount of syrup on her pancakes, “thirty years old. How are you feeling about it?”
“Same as I felt about twenty-nine. And twenty-eight. And every year before that.”
“Which is?”
I shrug. “I don’t really think about it.”
“You don’t think about getting older? About what you want your life to look like?”
“I think about hockey. About staying healthy enough to keep playing. The rest…” I trail off. “I don’t know. I’ve never been good at planning for the future.”
“Why not?”
The question is simple, but the answer isn’t. I take a bite of my burger, chewing slowly, trying to figure out how much to say.
“When you grow up the way I did,” I start, then stop. I start again. “When nothing is permanent, you stop thinking long-term. You focus on getting through the day. Then the week. Then the month. The future feels like a luxury you can’t afford.”
Winnie sets down her fork. She’s watching me with those eyes—not pitying, just attentive. Present. “The way you grew up,” she repeats.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve never told me about it. Not really.” She meets my eyes. “Will you?”
No one’s ever asked me that before. Not like this—direct, unafraid, genuinely wanting to know. Most people dance around it, change the subject, or pretend they didn’t hear.
Winnie just asks. Like it’s simple. Like I’m allowed to answer. And not only allowed to answer, but also allowed to have complicated feelings about it if I want to.
“I was seven when my mom died,” I hear myself say. “Car accident. I don’t remember much about it—just the social worker showing up and telling me I had to go with her.”
“What about your dad?”
“Never knew him. Not even a name on the birth certificate.” I push a fry around my plate. “So I went into the system. Bounced around a lot. Six families and a couple of group homes in between. Eleven years of never knowing where I’d end up next.”
“Six families?”
“The first one had too many kids—I was just a number. The second one gave me back after three months because I was ‘too intense.’ The third…” I shake my head. “The dad lost his job and couldn’t afford an extra mouth. Others I barely remember. And the last one—”
I stop. Celine and Don. The ones who almost kept me.
“The last one?” Winnie prompts gently.
“They were good. The best placement I ever had.” My voice sounds distant, even to me. “Celine used to ruffle my hair and tell me I was a good kid. Don drove me back and forth to hockey every single day.”
“What happened?”
“Don got transferred for work—out of state. They couldn’t take me with them—something about jurisdiction, paperwork.” I shrug, as if it doesn’t still sting after all these years. “They moved, and I went to a group home. Then I aged out at eighteen.”
Winnie is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is soft but fierce. “I’m so sorry, Banks. You deserved better.”
“I got hockey. That was enough.”
“Was it?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I look at her across the table—this woman who showed up with a cupcake, who took me to her favorite diner, who’s sitting here listening to my sob story without flinching.
“It was,” I say slowly. “Until recently.”
Her breath catches. I see it—the slight hitch in her chest, the way her lips part.
“Banks…”
“I don’t know how to do this, Win.” The words come out rougher than I intended.
“I don’t know how to be with someone. I’ve spent my whole life building walls to keep people out.
And then you showed up with your sunshine and your yoga and your—” I gesture vaguely.
“Your everything. And suddenly none of my walls work anymore.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Her fingers intertwine with mine—warm and certain.
“Maybe that’s okay,” she says. “Maybe walls aren’t supposed to last forever.”
“What if I hurt you?”
“What if you don’t?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
We sit there, connected—her hand in mine, the remains of our dinner growing cold on our plates.
“This is the best birthday I’ve ever had,” I say.
She squeezes my hand. “The bar was pretty low.”
“Still counts.”
“Yeah.” She smiles. “Still counts.”
The drive back to her place is quiet, but it’s a good quiet. Almost like everything important has already been said.
I pull up outside her building and park by the curb.
“Thanks for taking me to eat,” I say.
“Thanks for letting me crash your birthday.”
“You didn’t crash it. You made it.”
She turns to look at me, and the streetlight catches her face, turning her eyes to silver. She’s so beautiful it hurts.
“Banks…”
“Yeah?”
She doesn’t respond with words. Instead, she leans across the center console and kisses me.
It starts soft—tentative, questioning. A goodnight kiss. A thank-you kiss.
But it doesn’t stay soft.
Her hand finds the back of my neck, pulling me closer. I angle my head, deepening the kiss, and she makes that breathy little gasp that drives me insane. My hand slides into her hair, cradling her head, and suddenly soft isn’t enough.
“Come here,” I mutter against her mouth.
She doesn’t hesitate. She climbs across the console and into my lap—awkward in the confined space, but neither of us cares. Her knees bracket my hips, her chest presses against mine, and when she settles against me, we both groan.
“We should—” she starts.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us stops.
I kiss down her neck, tasting salt and sweetness, and she arches into me with a moan. Her hips roll—instinctive, searching—and the friction makes me see stars. I’m hard in seconds, straining against my jeans, and from the way she’s grinding against me, she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Win.” Her name is a warning.
“I know.” She doesn’t stop moving. “I know, I know, but—”
She kisses me again, and I lose track of the warning I was trying to give. My hands slide under her sweater, finding warm skin, and she shivers at the contact. I trace up her spine, feeling the notches of her vertebrae, the clasp of her bra—
A car horn blares somewhere down the street.
We freeze.
Reality crashes back in. We’re in my truck, parked on a public street, fogging up the windows like teenagers.
“Shit.” Winnie pulls back, breathing hard. Her lips are swollen, her hair a mess from my hands. “We should—I should—”
“Yeah.” I’m trying to get my brain back online. It’s not cooperating. “I should get you inside.”
“Right. Inside.” She doesn’t move from my lap. “That’s the responsible thing to do.”
We stare at each other. Her eyes are dark, her cheeks flushed. She’s still straddling me, still pressed against the evidence of exactly how much I want her.
“One more minute,” she whispers.
“Win—”
She kisses me again. Slower this time. Deeper. Like she’s memorizing the shape of my mouth, the taste of my tongue.
When she finally pulls back, we’re both trembling.
“Okay.” She takes a shaky breath. “Now I can be responsible.”
She climbs off my lap—gracelessly, nearly elbowing me in the face—and opens the passenger door. The cold air rushes in, a slap of reality that helps clear my head.
She pauses, one foot on the pavement, and looks back at me with those impossible eyes.
“Happy birthday, Banks,” she says softly.
Then she’s gone, disappearing into her building, leaving me alone in my truck, gripping the steering wheel like a lifeline.
I sit there for a long time.
Thirty years old. Three decades on this planet.
For the first time, I’m starting to think my next birthday might be worth looking forward to.