Liam
“Pleeeeease daddy! We wanna see you play. You promised!”
“The school holidays are almost over now and you promised,” chorused Maddie. “You won’t let us go on school days. So this is our last chance.”
“I don’t know, munchkins…” he hedged, scrubbing a hand through his hair in his customary gesture when he was unsure of himself.
From the kitchen doorway, Sunny sent him a sympathetic yet encouraging look over Hailey’s blonde crown.
“Why not let them watch their dad in action?” she cajoled. “I can be there to keep an eye on them the whole time. It would be really good for the girls to see you in your element.”
Liam’s gut tightened at her words. His “element”. He felt he was a long way from that status. But he forced a thin smile, not wanting to taint his girls’ excitement by voicing the creeping self-doubts about his abilities on the ice.
“Pretty pleeeeease, Daddy!” Maddie pleaded, snapping his attention back as she and Hailey aimed their patented puppy-dog stares at him in unison.
Liam felt his resolve crumbling at their wide, hopeful eyes.
“Yeah, okay then,” he acquiesced, roughly. “If you two little monsters promise to be on your best behavior, I’ll bring you along today.”
The gleeful squeals that erupted had Liam’s lips ticking up in a genuine grin, momentarily buoying his mood with their infectious exuberance.
He shot Sunny a look of rueful gratitude over their bobbing curls.
Beneath her light demeanor, he could sense her intuitive instruction — that he needed his girls to witness this side of his life to forge a stronger connection, even if he harbored deep-seated apprehensions.
As usual, Sunny had a wisdom that belied her years.
***
Suited up in his sweats and skate guards, Liam led his small entourage into the rink’s cavernous interior.
The familiar sights, smells and cacophony of macho shouts instantly flooded his senses with a punch of adrenaline and nostalgia.
How he missed the thrum of anticipation that used to seize him before every practice session and game.
The pure, feral need to obliterate anything in his path once he hit the ice.
These days the feeling was more hollow and guarded, thanks to the aches and niggles that plagued his body. Each grimacing stretch and labored lap around the rink was just another small reminder of his dwindling days in the top league.
Still, that inextinguishable flicker of competitive fire sparked to life when Liam’s gaze landed on the burly, strutting form of Alex Pasternak. The cocky forward took any opportunity to mock Liam’s “old man” techniques and declining stats.
Gritting his teeth, Liam tried to ignore the stares and snide remarks as he led Maddie and Hailey over to the rink wall’s safety gate.
The girls were practically vibrating with glee as Sunny leaned down to speak softly in their ears, explaining the importance of them listening to her and not distracting their daddy during his “very important practice”.
Satisfied that they were out of harm’s way, Liam glided to the center of the rink.
“Aren’t you a little too old to be bringing your new baby mama along?”
Alex’s sneering taunt, accompanied by a crude gesture toward Sunny’s backside as she settled the girls on their seats, had Liam whirling with an inarticulate snarl already rumbling from his chest.
Alex had just crossed the line. While Liam was used to the ‘old man’ taunts and, generally, took them in good humor, making insinuations about his private life was overstepping the mark.
The team had been supportive following Kate’s sudden death, but Pasternak didn’t seem to have a shred of common decency about him.
Before Liam could advance, however, Coach Hendricks’ whistle pierced the rising tension with an eardrum-rupturing blast.
“Save it for the ice, ladies,” he growled in that permanently gruff rasp of his. “We’ve got an hour of conditioning ahead so quit flappin’ those dick-lickers and get your pretty asses movin’!”
As much as Liam’s hackles instinctively rose at the coach’s typical crass vernacular, the welcome reprieve from Alex’s antagonism had him gritting his teeth and falling into line.
With one last flickered glance at Sunny, who nodded reassuringly, he double-checked that Maddie and Hailey were safely behind the protective tempered glass before immersing himself in the punishing routine.
For the next sixty minutes, Liam endured the taxing stretches, weighted strength sets and grueling bouts of laps that had become the mainstay of his training routine season after season.
Sweat soaked his top, every tendon and joint screaming in protest by the final scrimmage portion as he fought to keep pace with the younger, sleeker bodies that whizzed and buzzed around him.
“Looking a little rusty out there, gramps!” Alex taunted, purposely crosschecking Liam into the boards mid-deke with enough force to steal his breath. “Can’t see you keeping up with that fine piece of ass you got out there.” He cast a leery glance at Sunny. “Perhaps a substitution is in order.”
A red haze descended over Liam’s vision at Alex’s sneering insult.
With an inarticulate roar, he whipped around and launched himself at the younger man, driving his shoulder into Alex’s gut with bone-crunching force.
They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and sprayed ice shavings, sticks and gloves raining down amidst a chorus of hoots and jeers from their teammates.
“Get off me, you ancient fuck!” Alex wheezed, trying in vain to dislodge Liam’s vice-like grip on his jersey. Liam only snarled unintelligibly, blind with rage as long-standing resentments with his boorish teammate finally boiled over.
He drew back his gloved fist, fully intending to pummel Alex’s smug face into an unrecognizable ruin. But before he could land the first blow, multiple bodies were descending on them, yanking them apart.
“That’s enough!” Coach Hendricks bellowed as the ruckus slowly subsided, Liam and Alex still bristling and shooting venom at each other while in the grasp of their teammates.
“Jesus wept!” screamed Coach Hendricks. “Anderson, Pasternak, get your shit together before I have to start docking pay for this bullshit!”
Liam recoiled as if struck, the coach’s withering censure slicing through the haze of rage. Shame burned through him in a dizzying rush as he finally registered the terrified gasps and muffled sobs coming from just behind the rink’s metal gate.
Sunny had Maddie and Hailey crushed to her sides, her lips moving urgently to soothe their distress even as her own eyes were rounded with shock at the violence they’d all just witnessed.
Ice encased Liam’s gut at the devastated look on his girls’ sweet little faces. He’d wanted so badly for his daughters to see him in his “element”, as Sunny had put it. To finally understand the sporting legacy he was so desperately clinging to. To make them proud.
Instead he’d just given them a horrific display of his worst instincts, the very darkest corners of his persona he fought constantly to shield them from. This was his worst fear.
“Go hit the showers,” Coach Hendricks growled in disgust at him and Alex, jerking his grizzled chin toward the locker rooms
Liam barely heard the continued laughs from his teammates as he slunk away from the ice like a disgraced penitent. He’d just given his girls another memory involving their father’s emotional volatility, to add to the already tragic collection that no doubt haunted their tender psyches.
By the time Liam had showered and dressed in a fresh set of sweats, the locker room was heaving with bodies.
“What I wouldn’t give to have a taste of that sweet piece Anderson’s got on the payroll,” Alex snickered, not even trying to disguise his lecherous ogling in Sunny’s direction outside the doors.
“Man’s got to be putting putting all his energy in the sack.
No wonder he’s got nothing left for the ice. ”
The raucous guffaws at his crude joke had Liam’s jaw reflexively clenching so hard his teeth squeaked from the strain. He finished packing his gear with jerky, aggressive motions, desperate to escape the toxic fug of the changing room before he did something he’d regret.
“She’s pretty hot, I’ll give you that much, Anderson,” Brock Labrone chimed in with a salacious smirk. “Think our boy here’s got enough left in the tank to keep a wildcat like that satisfied? Maybe some of our younger alumni need to step up this season.”
More lewd chortles as Liam slammed his locker door shut, the crash shocking them all into momentary quiet. For one protracted breath, their gazes all swung to him. Most of them registered his furious demeanor and remained silent, realizing they had taken the joke too far.
With an inarticulate growl of disgust, Liam turned and stormed from their midsts, nearly colliding with Sunny in his haste.
She had brought the girls to the corridor just outside.
Maddie and Hailey peered up at him from either side of her forest green skirt like solemn little sentries, their eyes tracking his thunderous exit with more astuteness than kids their age should possess.
Sunny’s own expression was stricken and pinched, discomfort and secondhand shame radiating from her tightly controlled features.
She had no doubt heard the exchange just now.
She opened her mouth to address him, perhaps to offer comfort.
But Liam held up a brusque hand, silencing any overtures as he shouldered roughly past their little huddle.
“Not a word,” Liam spat out in a tone that brooked no argument.
He couldn’t bear to meet Sunny’s gaze, not when it would only reflect just how little respect he commanded from his teammates these days.
He should have gone with his gut this morning. He new this was a terrible idea. But the girls were so desperate to come. In his haste, Liam hadn’t even consider Sunny. That she would become the subject of taunts and jibes. He could have kicked himself. How dumb can you be?
The short walk to the parking lot was accomplished in an icy silence, Liam’s hand clenched in a white-knuckled grip around the strap of his gear bag as he took deep, measured breaths.
He could almost feel Maddie and Hailey’s bewildered stares prickling his back, but didn’t dare look back at them until they reached the SUV’s safety.
Only then, as Liam stooped to open the trunk and throw in his bag, did he let some of the leaden tension bleed from his body in a ragged exhale.
Sunny chose that moment to break the strained quiet, her usually melodic voice subdued.
“I’m so sorry you had to hear those…things,” she began delicately, studiously avoiding looking at him as she gathered the girls close.
Liam’s jaw tightened as her silky hair obscured her expression, due to a sudden gust of wind.
“That was out of line, even for that rowdy bunch,” Sunny continued in a low murmur, so the girls wouldn’t hear. She brushed the hair away from her face. “You don’t deserve to be treated like that. Not by people who are supposed to be your teammates.”
Her unexpected defense of him made Liam stiffen anew, the burn of humiliation searing across his cheekbones as echoes of the team’s crude taunts clanged through his mind.
Sunny’s charity made him feel even worse.
This wasn’t who he was. He was a fighter.
A warrior. A man. The protector of his family.
Not someone to be pitied or consoled like a child.
“It’s a locker room,” he said, hoping to dampen some of her concern. “We all give as good as we get. It’s just how it is.”
“Even so,” said Sunny. “It’s still a place of work. It’s not right.”
Her concerned tone made him twist to face her at last. The soft hurt radiating from her gaze battered Liam’s defenses, holding him immobile.
“I just think you deserve to be treated with more dignity, that’s all,” she continued. “As a person, not just a commodity with an expiration date.”
Liam was the one who had to look away then, his chest clenching. Because dammit, even when he insisted on wallowing in the mire of his humiliation, Sunny still saw him. Truly saw the man beneath the snarling facade and gruff defensiveness, flaws and all. He was scared. Unsure. Insecure.
He was spared having to formulate a response by Hailey choosing that moment to unleash a jaw-cracking yawn.
“I’m sleepy, daddy,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes with her tiny knuckles as she swayed against Sunny’s legs. “And hungry. Can we eat now?”
The interruption lanced the tension enveloping the adults. Liam felt the familiar parental affection unfurl through his chest as he reached out to scoop Hailey into his arms, breathing in her clean little girl scent like a balm.
“You got it, kiddo,” he rasped, flashing her a small but genuine smile. “How ‘bout we all go get the biggest stack of pancakes in town to celebrate how awesome your daddy was on the ice today, huh?”
The infectious giggles at his sarcasm lifted Liam’s spirits marginally. As if sensing the heaviness had finally passed, Maddie sidled up to hug his thick leg.
“I’m pretty sure you got your butt kicked out there,” she announced with her trademark six-year-old cheek. “But pancakes would definitely help!”
Liam barked out a surprised laugh at her astuteness, glancing sidelong at Sunny as her own tinkling chuckles filled the mild spring air.
As he ushered them into the SUV, Liam made a vow to be more mindful around his children.
His struggles with envisioning life after hockey were his own cross to bear — his daughters deserved for their father to be mentally and emotionally present, not constantly distracted by his internal struggle over an uncertain future.
Sunny too, if he was being completely honest. She had stepped up time and time again to handle his baggage with more sensitivity and grace than he deserved. The very least he could do was honor her optimism by striving to meet it in kind.
Despite the lingering ache of humiliation, he felt some of the darkness dogging him since the disastrous practice begin to lift, simply from being surrounded by his favorite girls. All three of them.