6. JAXON
JAXON
Favorite Daddy
My mood has been off all damn day, and it shows.
The whistle cuts through the rink, sharp enough to slice bone.
“Again.”
My voice carries over the scrape of blades and the dull crash of bodies against the boards. The drill resets in seconds. No wasted movement. No talking back. No one on this ice is stupid enough to mistake my tone for a suggestion.
Good.
Because I’m not in the mood to repeat myself today.
The Metro Raptors spread across the ice in formation, jerseys dark with sweat from the last forty minutes of hard skating. Cold air bites at the exposed skin of my face, but the rest of me runs hot. The arena always smells the same at practice. Ice. Rubber. Steel. Sweat. Effort.
“Puck movement needs to be cleaner,” I bark. “I don’t want pretty. I want fast. Again.”
Hayes corrals the puck and sends it down low. Morrison cuts across the slot a fraction too late, forcing the pass wide. It glances off a stick, bounces wrong, and the whole sequence falls apart.
I blow the whistle once.
Everything stops.
That’s one thing I’ll give them. This team knows how to listen when it counts.
I step closer to the boards, arms folded. “What was that?”
Nobody answers immediately.
Jake Morrison glides backward, expression carefully blank in the way veteran players get when they know they screwed up but aren’t interested in putting on a show about it.
“Well?” I ask.
Morrison shrugs once. “Timing.”
“Timing,” I repeat flatly. “Interesting. I was under the impression you all owned watches.”
That earns a few restrained smirks from the younger guys. Morrison’s mouth twitches, but he says nothing.
Good choice.
I point at him with two fingers. “You’re the captain. If you’re half a second late, everyone else is dead in the water. Again.”
Morrison nods once.
On the far side of the ice, Connor Hayes shifts his weight impatiently, bouncing on his skates like he wants the puck back already. Young. Fast. Talented as hell. Also too cocky by half when he’s feeling himself.
Which means he needs to be managed.
I blow the whistle again and the drill restarts.
The next ten minutes are relentless. Quick transition work. Retrievals under pressure. Reset. Go again. The sound of skates carving into the ice turns into its own rhythm, punctuated by my whistle and the occasional thud of bodies hitting the boards.
When I finally blow it dead and send them for water, the guys cluster near the bench, shoulders heaving, steam rising off them in the cold.
“Media wants ten minutes with you after,” my assistant coach, Nate, says as he steps up beside me. “They’re doing the whole new era, fresh leadership thing.”
My mouth flattens. “Of course they are.”
The media side of this job is my least favorite part. I despise it. It’s all presentation and optics instead of results.
Come to think of it, everything is optics lately.
Nate tips his head. “You heading home after?”
“Yes. Today I actually get to spend some quality time with Lily again.”
He smiles. “Give that girl a big hug from her uncle Nate, okay?”
“Will do.”
Then Nate adds, almost too casually, “Lily settling in okay with the new nanny?”
There it is.
I keep my expression neutral. “She likes her.”
“Good.”
Not good. Or maybe too good. That’s the problem.
Two weeks. Zara’s only been living with us for two weeks, and already—
If Lily were indifferent, this would be simpler. If Zara had walked in and been bland, forgettable, purely competent, I could’ve slotted her into the role and moved on.
Instead, she walked into my house looking like trouble in civilian clothes and then had the nerve to stand in my kitchen and tell me exactly where I was being unfair.
And since that argument, we’ve barely spoken.
She probably thinks I’m the grumpiest man on earth. I keep things short. Professional. Distant. It’s easier that way. I don’t want her in my space more than necessary. Don’t want the way she looks at me, like she sees right through everything I’m trying to keep locked down.
Because the truth is, she makes me feel… off. Like I’m getting things wrong. Like I’m not as in control as I should be. And I don’t like that.
Doesn’t help that the last two weeks with the Raptors have been insane. Back-to-back games, media, pressure from management. I’ve barely been home long enough to notice anything beyond whether Lily’s asleep and the lights are off.
Maybe that’s for the best.
Maybe once things settle down, this will too.
“She’s been here barely two weeks and already pushing back,” I mutter.
Nate glances sideways. “That a complaint?”
Yes.
No.
I don’t answer quickly enough, and that’s answer enough.
His brows lift. “Huh.”
“Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
He grins without much warmth. “All I was going to say is maybe someone not folding every time you snap at them isn’t the worst thing.”
I turn my head and pin him with a look.
Nate holds up a hand. “There it is. There’s the face. Definitely not saying anything else.”
Good.
Because I don’t need commentary on Zara Winslow from him.
I definitely don’t need anyone noticing the fact that the woman currently taking care of my daughter is the same woman I had against a wall not that long ago.
I rub a hand over my jaw.
“She was right,” I say before I can stop myself.
Nate goes still beside me.
And because I’ve already opened that door, the rest comes out with it, low and edged with irritation. “We had a fight. I expected something she couldn’t have known. I was being unfair.”
Nate says nothing.
“That doesn’t mean I have time for this,” I add.
For her.
For the way she stands there with those eyes locked on mine, making me feel like the unreasonable one in my own damn kitchen.
For the way my body still remembers exactly how she felt in my hands.
Nate clears his throat. “Sounds rough.”
I shoot him a look. “Your insight is invaluable.”
He grins. “Happy to help.”
I push off the boards before I say something I’ll regret and blow the whistle for them to line up again.
Practice ends ninety minutes later with enough fatigue in their legs that nobody chirps on the way off the ice. That alone tells me it was a good session.
***
The drive home is quiet in the way only New York traffic can be quiet.
Not silent. Never silent. There’s always the low hum of engines, the occasional impatient horn, the blur of pedestrians moving along sidewalks like the whole city is late for something.
But inside the car, with both hands locked on the steering wheel and the afternoon light cutting across the dashboard, it feels like the first real pocket of stillness I’ve had all day.
I stop at a light and close my eyes for one second.
And there she is again.
Zara in the bar, eyes bright over the rim of her drink.
Zara in the hallway, breath catching when I touched her.
Zara in my kitchen, furious and beautiful and so unimpressed by my attitude it should’ve been insulting.
Zara in my house.
That’s the part that keeps snagging.
Not the sex. Not the memory of it, even if that memory is way too easy to access.
The house.
Lily.
The way those two things are now connected.
I scrub both hands over my face.
This woman is driving me insane.
***
The second I step into the duplex penthouse, the whole shape of the day shifts.
“Daddy!” Lily’s voice comes flying at me before I even see her.
Then she’s there, running full speed down the hallway with all the wild energy of a six-year-old who has absolutely no concern for personal safety or braking distance.
I barely get my bag off my shoulder before she throws herself at me.
I catch her automatically, lifting her against my chest in one smooth motion.
“Hey, bug,” I say, and something in me eases without permission.
Her arms lock around my neck. “You’re home early.”
“Looks that way.”
She smells like shampoo and outside air and whatever snack she had after school. Her cheek is warm where it presses against my shoulder. I kiss the top of her hair and hold her a little tighter.
This. This is the reset.
No matter what kind of day I’ve had, what fire I’ve been putting out, what pressure is building somewhere in the back of my skull, Lily in my arms has a way of cutting straight through it.
I keep her perched on my hip as I move farther into the apartment.
Lily pulls back enough to look at me. “Guess what?”
“That depends,” I say. “Is it about dragons?”
Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
“I made a dragon castle.” She points dramatically toward the living room. “Out of blocks. And Zara said it had excellent structural integrity.”
A corner of my mouth almost moves.
“Did she.”
“Yep. That means it’s really good.”
“I’m familiar with the term.”
She gasps. “Can I show you?”
“In a minute.”
I shift her slightly and head toward the living room, my gaze flicking briefly toward the kitchen without fully turning my head.
No sign of Zara.
I lower Lily to the couch and sit beside her, one arm stretched along the back. She climbs into my side automatically, all skinny arms and warm weight and complete trust.
“How was school?” I ask.
“Good. I did my reading and I got a sticker and I didn’t even get in trouble for talking.”
“High bar.”
“I know.”
She says it so solemnly I have to look away for a second to hide the smile that threatens.
“You have homework?”
“Already done.”
Lily goes quiet beside me. The shift is subtle—the kind that would be easy to miss if I didn’t know her.
Her fingers start playing with the hem of my sleeve.
“What is it?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away.
Then, so quietly I almost don’t hear it, “Mommy was supposed to call today.”
The words land like a blade slipped carefully between ribs.
I don’t let it show.
At least I hope I don’t.
I turn toward her fully. “Yeah?”
She nods, still focused on my sleeve instead of me. “After school.”
I lean forward and lift her onto my lap, settling her sideways so I can see her face.
It breaks my heart to see the disappointment there.
“I’m sorry, bug.”
Her mouth wobbles for just a second before she presses it flat again. “Maybe she forgot.”
There are a hundred responses I could give to that, and most of them would be honest in ways a six-year-old doesn’t deserve.
Your mother is unreliable.
Your mother keeps making promises she can’t keep.
Your mother loves you but she is drowning in her own life and sometimes I want to shake her until she understands that none of this gets to land on you.
None of that makes it past my teeth.
Instead I brush a hand over Lily’s hair and keep my voice low and steady. “Maybe she had a hard day.”
Lily finally looks up at me. “A hard day like when I cry because math is mean?”
I huff out a breath that might almost be a laugh. “Something like that.”
She leans against my chest. “Did I do something bad?”
Oh, shit.
Anger flashes hot and ugly—at her mother, at anything that made my daughter feel this way. But I don’t let it show.
I tip Lily’s chin up gently until she has to look at me.
“No,” I say, firm enough that she hears it. “Absolutely not. This has nothing to do with you.”
She searches my face, checking for cracks.
Kids always know.
Even when they don’t have the words for it, they know when an adult is feeding them something too polished to be true.
So I make sure what I give her is the truth.
“Your mom loves you,” I say. “I love you. That part never changes.”
“Then why didn’t she call?”
Because loving someone and being good at loving them are not always the same thing.
Because adults are complicated and selfish and broken in ways kids should never have to pay for.
I swallow all of that and go with the only version she can carry.
“Sometimes grown-ups have a lot going on,” I say. “More than they know what to do with. Sometimes they mess things up, even when they don’t want to.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “That’s dumb.”
A short laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Yeah. It is.”
She seems pleased that I agree.
I kiss her forehead, let my lips rest there for an extra beat. “But none of that is because of you. Do you hear me?”
She nods.
“Say it back.”
Her eyes flick to mine. “It’s not because of me.”
“Again.”
“It’s not because of me.”
“Good.”
I hold her close and feel her relax by degrees, little by little.
Underneath the calm I’m giving her, my own thoughts run darker.
This is exactly what I mean when I say I need stability.
A house where calls happen when they’re supposed to happen. Where pickup is on time. Where bedtimes are normal and lunches get packed and one adult’s chaos doesn’t become a child’s job to absorb.
“You’re my favorite daddy,” she murmurs against my shoulder.
I snort softly. “I’d be offended if I had competition.”
“You don’t.”
“Glad we cleared that up.”
She giggles, and the sound loosens something in my chest that had gone hard.
I press another kiss to her forehead. “Want to show me what you built?”
“Yes.” She starts to scramble down, then pauses. “Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re having a hard day too?”
The question catches me off guard hard enough that I go still.
Kids know. Always.
I brush a thumb over her cheek. “A little.”
She considers that with the grave seriousness only children can manage. Then she leans in and kisses my jaw.
“There,” she says. “Better.”
Something hot and fierce moves through my chest.
“Yeah,” I say roughly. “Better.”
And when I glance up, I realize we’re not alone anymore.
Zara stands in the doorway, quiet and still, one hand resting lightly against the frame.
I don’t know how long she’s been there or what she’s heard, but the way she watches us—silent, unreadable—makes something in my chest tighten.