Chapter 10 #2
I get a peck on the lips as she passes me my usual coffee order. Tipping her head to the side, she motions to meet her in the narrow hallway that leads to the restroom, storage, and her office.
I brace myself for the report of another prank. “Was it the sugar and salt trick this time?”
She groans. “I thought we were done with the plastic spiders, but I found them frozen in the ice cubes in the freezer.” She shivers.
“Kai is a good kid, but needs direction.”
“And I caught him blowing up balloons. He claimed it was for your birthday. When I suggested they’d be deflated well before May, he confessed to wanting to fill the shower with them and they’d cause an avalanche next time one of us went in. It’s harmless, but—”
I exhale a heavy sigh, finishing Nina’s thought. “But we need to find a way to channel his energy.”
Lips pressed together, she nods in agreement. “I’ve been brainstorming.”
“Ice time?”
“Nothing like a frozen sheet and a pair of blades to sharpen the senses.”
She bounces on her toes and taps the air. “Exactly.”
I’d been thinking about getting him on the rink, but am also apprehensive. Yes, skating and hockey are—were—everything, but that came at a cost.
After Nina closes the bakery, she picks Kai up at school and meets me at the arena when I’m done with practice.
I think back to my father starting to time my skating drills when I was five, comparing my stats to his at every age, making hockey more important than my childhood.
But watching Coach Badaszek with my teammates, seeing how the Knights support each other and their families, makes me wonder if maybe there is a way to fall back in love with this sport.
After all, I’ve fallen in love with Nina.
That is, if love means thinking about her all the time, wanting to dote on her, hear what she has to say, and share our lives. Seek her smile and her laugh. Hold her hand. Kiss her.
I could draft a list a mile long.
The vacuous arena space is quiet and the ice is freshly resurfaced. Kai spots me, and I get a fist bump, which is our public version of a hug.
Looking around at the empty seats, he says, “I thought we were here for a game.”
“Even better.”
“What’s better than a game?” His brow rumbles, perplexed.
I wink. “You’ll see.”
I don’t want Kai to experience even a fragment of the pressure I did.
Then again, I kept skating when Desi didn’t and I’d argue that things turned out better for me.
Not because I play for the NHL, but because I found “my thing” and didn’t go bouncing from one bad relationship to the next.
Lucky for me, I’m here to offer Kai a second chance.
“Ice skating? I’ve never tried it,” he says slowly as if unsure.
Having grown up on a tropical island, I can see that he’d be hesitant, but given that his grandfather and I play hockey, I cannot fathom how he’s never been in skates.
Turning to Nina, he asks, “Will you skate too?”
Something flickers across her face, but it quickly passes. “Uh, sure. I mean, of course.”
Knowing we’re all in this together transforms the kid. Kai is practically vibrating with excitement as I lace up his skates—a pair Redd helped me pick up yesterday. They’re probably too expensive for a ten-year-old, but perfect for a kid who’s never had anything that was just his.
Wobbling as he gets to his feet, he asks, “What if I fall?”
“You will fall,” I tell him honestly. “Everyone falls.”
His expression does the same.
Taking his hand in mine, I say. “The important part is getting back up.”
I glance at Nina, wearing jeans and her own skates along with a Knights sweatshirt, with her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Standing at the edge of the ice, the pinch between her eyebrows tells me she’s slightly nervous but determined.
Like she’s facing down something that scares her but has decided to do it, anyway.
“Are you okay?” I ask her quietly as Kai takes his first tentative steps onto the ice.
She shakes her head. “But Kai wants me to skate with him, and ... I want to try.” She bites her lip, clearly torn between desire and fear after what sounded like a harrowing injury that led to the end of her skating career.
I still don’t have many details on the sensitive subject, but I’d love to see her out here.
I imagine her gracefully spinning around the rink, a figure skating beauty.
I lengthen my arm and hold out my hand for her to take. It’s an invitation to whatever comes next for us. “If you want …”
She looks at it, then at me, contemplating. She knows that if she lets me help her, whatever thin strands of apprehension she clings to that separate us will be cut. It’s almost like the clock ticks down to the end of a game, but then her palm slides into mine and we glide onto the ice.
For the first few minutes, Kai clings to the boards, his ankles shaking like a newborn deer. I stay close, one hand ready to catch him, offering encouragement and basic tips about balance and momentum.
But Nina ... Nina is astounding.
The moment her skates touch the ice, something changes.
The hesitation disappears, replaced by muscle memory and years of training.
She glides away from the boards with effortless movements, but then I notice something important.
She’s not wearing figure skates. Rather, hockey skates. Yet she executes a perfect turn.
“Whoa,” I breathe.
From somewhere in the arena, someone whistle-hoots, then calls, “Nina, you’re amazing!”
I think it’s Cara. A metal door slams shortly after, leaving just the three of us.
Nina is amazing. Even if out of practice, even scared, she moves on the ice like it’s her natural element.
I can see the skater she used to be in every smooth line of her body, every elegant movement.
But there’s power there too and I wonder what would happen if she held a hockey stick in her hands.
She circles back to us, wearing a tiny smile as if she’s afraid to let it grow across her lips.
“You mentioned an injury, but didn’t tell me you were a figure skater,” I say.
“Because I’m not, er, wasn’t.”
I frown, not following. “But—?” I gesture to the carved ice beneath our feet.
“I played hockey and got a full scholarship to Ohio State,” she corrects, but there’s color in her cheeks and light in her eyes that wasn’t there on dry land. Pride, maybe. Or remembered joy.
“Seriously?”
“I’m no NHL player, but I can hold my own.” She winks.
“I don’t doubt that,” I reply with a beaming smile because this woman is full of surprises. “We’ll have to play sometime.”
“I’d love that.”
For the next hour, we work with Kai. Nina takes one side, I take the other, and slowly but surely, the kid finds his balance. Eventually, the training wheels are off and he’s skating on his own.
“Look at me!” he calls out, making it halfway across the rink before the toes of his skates collide and he goes down in a heap. But he’s laughing as he falls, and he wobbles right back up, ready to try again.
Nina skates up beside me. “He’s a natural. Good balance, no fear. Give him a few weeks and he’ll be coming for your position on the Knights.”
I chuckle. “We’ll see. I don’t want him to think he has to follow in my footsteps.”
Nina’s lips crimp slightly as if she senses the unspoken truth that my father’s pressure on me left invisible scars.
“It wouldn’t have to be competitive. Not yet, anyway. Just fun. Just skating.”
“Skating with his family.” The word family slips out before I can stop it, but that’s exactly what this feels like as distant memories surface of my mom, dad, Desi, and me before everything fell apart.
Nina’s hand finds mine. She says, “Our family.”
We watch Kai make another circuit of the rink, this time staying upright for the entire journey. When he reaches us, he’s beaming with a sense of accomplishment.
“Did you see that? Did you see me skating around that whole part?” he asks breathlessly.
I give him a fist bump. “We saw. You did great.”
“Can we come back tomorrow?” He bounces a little and nearly loses his footing.
Nina arches an eyebrow. “Depends on whether you can behave yourself at school and only use the flour if we’re baking something.”
“I promise,” Kai says seriously.
I ruffle his hair. “Let’s go around once more, all together.”
“Family style!” he shouts, charging the rink.
One time turns into at least three. When we get to the warm room, I help Kai out of his skates, showing him how it’s done. Alexi in the pro shop is sharpening some blades and Kai wanders over, watching with interest.
I catch Nina looking around the arena with something like nostalgia, even though this place is relatively new. I link my pointer finger through hers and squeeze.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“For what?”
“For giving me this back. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I was out there again.”
“You should skate more often. You’re incredible on the ice.”
“Maybe I will.” She wears a faint smile.
Kai rushes over, gibbering about ice skates with excitement. You’d think he just discovered King Arthur’s sword in the stone. The little dude is pumped. Mission accomplished, I guess. We go to the Fish Bowl and get a big plate of nachos to share, once more, family style.
Later that night, Kai dozes off on the couch halfway through what he said is his favorite animated movie. I didn’t quite follow the plot, but it involved an orphaned Hawaiian girl and an alien creature she adopts as her dog.
With Bibi’s quilt tucked around him, Nina and I sit on the other end of the couch in the glow of the Knights’ tree. At some point, my arm found its way across her back and her head nestled into the crook of my chest and shoulder.
“He called us his family,” she says softly.
“We are his family,” I reply, and the truth of it settles around us like a hug.
“Lane?”
“Yeah?”
She tips her head up toward me. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
The words hit me like a perfect pass, right in the sweet spot where I can’t miss. I turn to look at her, this incredible woman who’s given me more than I ever thought I deserved.
“I think I fell in love with you the moment you said ‘I do’ in Vegas,” I admit. “I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“Because it was crazy?”
“Because it was terrifying.” I brush a strand of hair from her face. “Because I’ve never felt this way before.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Not even with Xoe?”
I bristle at the name, wondering how she found out. Then again, our breakup wasn’t exactly private, which likely gave Vinny an ulcer.
“Definitely not. That was something else. Not training wheels, but like I had to experience a bad relationship, what doesn’t work between two people in order to know what does.
” The words appear on my lips almost before I think them, but it’s true.
“How about you? Any great love stories in your past?”
“No. Just a few sets of training wheels,” she jokes.
Meeting her eyes, I wonder if our connection was actually love at first sight when we caught each other’s gaze across the ballroom on New Year’s Eve.
I say, “Before I was afraid to lose. I spent my whole career making calculated moves, doing my best to please my father and protecting myself from injury, from disappointment. Then all of that came, anyway.”
Her chest seems to crater, but that’s not my intention. “And now?”
Smoothing the pad of my thumb over the top of her hand, I add, “The best things in my life—you, Kai, even this trade to Nebraska—came from the unknown. From no longer trying to do things ‘my way.’”
“I get that. I really do.” Her gaze lingers on mine.
My pulse ratchets up.
The space between us closes.
When we kiss this time, it tastes like promises and forever and the kind of love that chooses to stay.
Her lips are soft and sure against mine, and steadiness grows between us as she adjusts to fill my lap. There’s no hesitation now, no uncertainty—just Nina, warm in my arms, kissing me like she means it with her whole heart.
My hands lace around her waist, pulling her closer, and I think about how different everything feels now. How the weight that used to sit on my chest before every game has been replaced by something lighter, something that lifts me up instead of holding me down.
She mentioned her word of the year, rise and I feel like it could be mine too.
When she splays her fingers over my shoulders, I make a sound that’s half laugh, half sigh, because this is what I didn’t know I was missing. Not just the physical connection, but the way she kisses me like she’s proud to be mine, like she’s choosing me.
We break apart slowly, reluctantly, and when I look into her eyes, I see my own amazement reflected back at me.
“I love you,” I whisper against her lips, the words coming easier every time I say them.
“I love you too,” she whispers back, and it sounds like the best kind of promise.
Outside, snow drifts from the night sky, dusting Nina’s windows with sparkly white gems. Inside, our makeshift family is warm and safe and whole.
For the first time in my life, I understand what home really means.
It’s not a place. It’s not even a person.
It’s the connection and laughter and the challenges and the ordinary. It’s us choosing each other, day after day, in all the ways that matter.
It’s Nina helping Kai with his homework while I make us hot chocolate.
It’s the three of us curled up on the couch, watching movies and sharing popcorn.
It’s Kai’s sleepy voice calling “Goodnight, Mom and Dad” from his bedroom.
It’s Nina’s hand in mine as we navigate this complicated life we’re building together.
It’s family. Real family. The kind I never thought I’d have and now can’t imagine living without.
And tomorrow, we’ll definitely go skating again.