Chapter 23
TYLER
The day after CAS and the police showed up just after breakfast, Denny calls to press charges against his mother.
They try to tell him that they can’t disclose the caller’s identity, nor did they leave their name.
So he countered that if that were the case, he wanted to press charges for her forcing her way into his house and trying to abduct his child.
It might not go anywhere since it happened a month ago. But maybe she’ll get the message.
I think both Nate and Officer Shaffer left a little humbled after nurse April laid into them, insinuating that they needed to learn how to identify a petulant adult tantrum with false accusations.
I’m pretty sure I saw Nate agree, even if silently and subtly.
He said as much on his first visit, that they believed the accusation to be bogus.
Which means he knew how to identify someone falsely accusing another of some pretty serious shit.
“I don’t know what the fuck she’s after,” I hear Denny say from down the hall.
He’s on the phone with his friends. They’re in Chicago right now.
Winnipeg plays them this evening. “She didn’t want to be a mother and never put any fucking effort into being a mother, so she wants to ruin my kid’s life too? ”
Because he’s talking to all four of his friends at once, they’re on video, so I can hear the response, though I’m not entirely sure which voice belongs to whom.
I haven’t met them that many times. They usually come and go pretty quickly, and since Denny has certainly been doing better than the first couple weeks, they haven’t been here to do laundry or drop off food.
I miss the Chinese food, though. That was delicious.
“Do you think she wants Ty?” someone asks.
“I don’t know,” Denny answers with frustration. “At the very least, she doesn’t want me to have my son. That’s now evident by the bullshit calls, right?”
“It makes sense, then, in a sick and twisted way. She’s technically your next of kin, and Child Services will also try to put the kid with the biological family first.”
Is that the case? Admittedly, I’m not well acquainted with how Child Services works. Is it different in the US than it is in Canada? I’m not sure who made the comment, so I don’t know whether that’s from an American bias or a Canadian one.
“I’ll fucking die on the hill fighting to never allow my child in her care,” Denny grits out.
“We’re beside you, Denny. We won’t allow it to happen either.”
“I’m so fucking furious I can’t get out of my own way.”
“We could use your energy on the ice tonight. Want to come to Chicago?”
I don’t hear Denny’s answer. I’m guessing he walked into his bedroom or maybe the nursery.
I turn my attention to Sally’s phone. I haven’t been guessing the code often.
I don’t want to lock myself out. Instead, I keep it charged so when I tap on the screen, I see our smiling faces looking back at me.
It makes my heart hurt every time I look at it, and yet I almost always smile. The two of us are my lock screen too. A different picture. A different visit. But not much else is different.
Hockey talk floats on the air, and I smile a little more. They’re talking about Chicago’s season and how to win against them.
Is this why you slept with him, Sally? Because he’s a hockey player?
We used to watch hockey together all the time. Even from hundreds of kilometers away. Despite the time difference, we often sat on the phone together and watched games.
Hockey was something we bonded over as kids. We love the sport. It’s almost weird growing up in Canada and not loving hockey. It’s something I find kind of funny since there are only seven Canadian teams and twenty-five American teams.
Are there answers to find in your phone?
I muse. I tap the screen again so our faces smile up at us.
There are a couple notifications there, mostly stupid ones from apps that insist on trying to get you to open them.
There’s a text from someone. I don’t recognize the name, but from the little preview of the text, they don’t know Sally’s died.
It’s not like I wrote it in the air or anything. I notified her employer. I notified everyone that she had accounts with when I came across them. She mentioned very few people by name, though. Outside of work gossip, Denny was the most frequent name, and I rarely heard it unless I brought him up.
I knew something was up when you first told me you were marrying him. Every single day, I’m more convinced that you wouldn’t have been happy with him. Besides hockey, there’s literally nothing here that I imagine you being interested in.
I’m reminded of the old adage that opposites attract. I agree to some extent, but I maintain that when you have zero in common, it’s just not going to work out. How do you grow together?
Denny’s laughter reaches me, and I hear a very loud recap of their last game as they go through a play.
Sally’s type is far from everything Denny is. She likes scholars. The corporate type. She loves shorter men who are kind of shy and quiet. She likes peaceful evenings in front of the fire with a book. Her ideal vacation would be to the beach, where she can just lie in the sun.
One of the biggest reasons I think Denny is not at all the kind of person she’d settle down with is that a family home has been something incredibly important to her since we were kids.
She wouldn’t choose a man who was away almost as much as he’s home.
She doesn’t want that kind of instability.
There’s no routine in that. No predictability.
Denny doesn’t do any of those things. He’s loud and active and dedicated to hockey. He’s a big guy with big muscles and…
Tell me what you were hiding! I demand. Why did you agree to marry him when we both know you wouldn’t have been happy in this relationship?
The idea that maybe I didn’t know my sister flits through my mind, but the evidence that neither of them was actually interested in the future they’d absently planned is right there, staring at me like a beacon.
Denny told me his reasons behind his actions.
I know for certain Sally would have told me once we got home from the hospital.
I’m going to wonder forever.
It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.
Denny’s footsteps come down the hall, and I look up as he steps into the room. He pauses at the swing where Ty is asleep. Then his eyes are on me.
His gaze as our eyes meet feels charged. Electric. I can feel it in my toes. That same electric sensation travels along my body when his eyes skate down. I’m wearing underwear and a crop top with the tall socks that he likes.
There’s a chance that I’m possibly dressing for him a little bit.
I like the way he looks at me. The hunger in his eyes every time he does has my body humming with excitement.
But truth be told, I also enjoy not having to wear much.
My apartment was always warm, so I could walk around naked if I chose.
I was rarely entirely naked, but more often than not, I wore a variation of what I am now.
The only difference—the part that’s primarily for Denny—is the socks. I wasn’t lying when I said I enjoy taller socks because they keep my ankles warm, but when I’m wandering around the house, I generally wear short socks. Tall socks are for when I have to go outside.
I set Sally’s phone aside when Denny comes toward me. The term prowl comes to mind. The way his head is down, but his eyes are locked on me. He drops his phone where I did Sally’s and climbs on the couch, pulling me prone under him.
I expect to get sexy with the way he was looking at me. But he sighs heavily, and his body weight settles. Maybe he needs a hug. I wrap my body around him and run my fingers through his hair.
“You know what I’m really sad about?” he asks quietly.
“What?”
“Ty is going to grow up with no grandparents. I’m not even sure why I’m sad about it.
I didn’t grow up with mine, but… I don’t know.
I guess…” His voice trails off. After a minute, he laughs quietly.
“The thoughts in my head are contradictory. I can honestly tell you that I never intended to have kids. I didn’t want kids.
Ever. Those cards were never in my future.
And yet, what I keep thinking is that I imagined my partner’s parents in my kid’s life. ”
“Maybe because you didn’t have that, so you naturally want it. It sounds like something positive when all you’ve known is negative,” I suggest.
He sighs. “You know, we’ve talked about my shitty parents often. What about yours? Not the shitty part. I’m not implying that.”
“I don’t know who my parents are.”
Denny picks up his head to look at me. “You don’t.” It’s not a question.
Shaking my head, I shrug. “I have no memory of them. Granny Bella raised Sally and me. She liked us to call her Granny Bella. In hindsight, I think you usually differentiate grandparents with their names when you have multiple in your life, and they use the same honorific, or if maybe they’re not your biological grandparent.
She never had answers about our childhood.
We asked sometimes, growing up and in later years, when Sally and I would discuss it, Granny Bella was a master of deflection. We knew nothing.”
“Where is Granny Bella now?”
“Dead,” I answer, and watch Denny wince. “She was old for as long as I could remember. She died six years ago. So it’s always only been me and Sally. It’s sad to think that we’re the only members of our family, you know?”
“You’re not. We have Ty.”
We have Ty. We. I wonder if he feels the way my heart races at that single word choice.
“But there are no older generations. No parallel generations. It’s now just me.”
Denny slides down my body so he can rest his head on my chest. His arms slide between my back and the couch. “I know. I have three siblings, and both my parents are alive. I think most of my grandparents are as well. Ask me how many of them I have a relationship with.”
I wrap my arms around his head to hug him. He doesn’t feel particularly upset. I’m guessing he’s grown numb to this subject over the years. If it affects him at all, those emotions are buried deep.
“What a way to have someone show up in your life again,” I mutter.
He huffs. “She got the news from the news. More specifically, from Sports Spot. The guys have looked. They tracked down any mention of me, Ty, or Sally, and the only place that has said something publicly was Sports Spot. It was a short clip. A kind comment about how they send their sympathies and how Winnipeg’s offense misses me. ”
I grin.
“I’m not entirely sure where Sports Spot got the news, to be honest. I don’t particularly care.
There’s no speculation or anything. It was a short moment about how my newborn was just brought into the world, and my fiancée died because of complications in childbirth, so I was on a leave of absence for a while.
That means that someone told my mother, or she’s watching.
I’m not sure which I believe to be true, and I don’t truly care.
But what did she actually think would happen if she showed up here?
Did she think I was going to be thankful that she’s here?
Is she honestly that stupid to think I look back on any part of my childhood with fondness? ”
“You had hockey as an escape. Did your siblings have something?”
He shrugs. “Mandy is stupid. She’s always desperately wanted to see my parents differently from how they are.
She’s spent her entire life convincing herself that they tried their best and that they love us.
That they made sacrifices and blah fucking blah.
My brothers, as far as I know, view the situation with clear eyes.
We see. We remember. Leon left for college and never looked back.
I never heard from him when he left. As far as I know, neither did my parents.
Nor did they so much as acknowledge his existence. ”
Denny pauses for a minute. “You know, the holidays in the year I was there after Leon left were really strange. I remember thinking how weird it was that neither of my parents mentioned Leon. It was as if he didn’t exist. Like once he was out of the house and never came around, never called, he simply vanished.
I think it was probably the same way when I left.
And while I don’t know if Anthony did something different, I would wager a year’s paycheck that he did the same.
Mandy…” Denny shakes his head. “I’m going to guess that she stuck around in a pathetic attempt at pretending she has the parents she imagines in her head. ”
“That’s really sad.”
“It is. It was a damn weight off my shoulder. Not to be melodramatic, but seriously, the gloom and shadows fucking cleared as soon as I was out of that house. It was as if I were walking into a brand-new world. A new life. I’ll never forget the feeling of taking a deep breath and knowing I don’t ever have to go back there again. ”
“I hate that you had no one.”
“I had hockey. I realize that it’s not someone, but trust me when I tell you, it was the only thing keeping me going with my life on track. I had a goal, and that goal kept me pushing forward.”
Denny turns his face into my chest, and his lips press against my chest. He’s heavy. I’m not going to say he’s nearing twice my weight, but he has at least eighty percent more muscles than I do, so there’s a very good chance he might. It feels like he pins me down.
He adjusts to push my shirt up, and his lips once more press against my chest, now on my bare skin. I shiver as he continues to press kisses all over. When his mouth closes over one of my nipples, I gasp, hips jerking.
“Mmm,” he says in that way when you’ve just discovered something interesting.
Before I can comment, he’s sucking, biting, and flicking my nipple with his tongue. Meanwhile, I’m moaning like it’s my job as my entire body vibrates.
No one expects nipples to be sensitive on a guy, but they’re wrong. I can totally get off to this stimulation alone. Don’t ask me how I know. Denny has just discovered that secret, and I think he’s going to learn pretty quickly just how sensitive they are.