Chapter Thirty-Two
DINOSAUR PANCAKES
Tori
It’s Sunday morning, and I’m standing in Zayden’s kitchen making pancakes.
Not just any pancakes—dinosaur pancakes. Maisie informed me very seriously that round pancakes are “boring” and dinosaurs are “scientifically superior.” She’s currently perched on a stool at the counter, supervising my technique with the intensity of a tiny Gordon Ramsay.
“The T-Rex needs bigger arms,” she says.
“T-Rexes have tiny arms. That’s their whole thing.”
“But he looks sad with tiny arms.”
“Maybe he is sad. It’s hard being an apex predator who can’t reach things.”
She considers this. “Can you give him a friend? So he’s not lonely?”
I add a blobby shape next to the T-Rex that’s supposed to be a triceratops but looks more like a lumpy potato with horns. “There. Now he has a buddy.”
“Perfect.”
Zayden appears in the kitchen doorway, hair still damp from the shower, wearing gray sweatpants that should be illegal and a faded Canadiens T-shirt. He takes in the scene—me at the stove, Maisie on her stool, batter splattered across the counter—and a tender look crosses his face.
“Please tell me there’s coffee and that one of those dinosaurs is for me.”
“Of course,” I answer.
“Tori’s teaching me about dinosaur feelings,” Maisie adds.
“Dinosaur feelings.” He reaches for a coffee mug, brushing up against me.
“They have them, Daddy. Even the scary ones.”
He catches my eye over her head, and I shrug. “She’s not wrong. Emotional intelligence is important across all species.”
“Even extinct ones?”
“Especially extinct ones. They never got closure.”
He laughs—that low, warm sound I’m becoming addicted to—and crosses to the coffee maker. His hand brushes the small of my back as he passes, casual and intimate, and I feel it everywhere.
Part of me still can’t believe this is real. That I’m standing in Zayden Bishop’s kitchen, covered in pancake batter, falling deeper every day.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I flip the triceratops—nailed it—and check the screen.
Winnie: GUESS WHO OFFICIALLY STARTS MONDAY
Winnie: Dana just emailed. I’m in. Team yoga instructor. This is real life!!!
Winnie: I’m going to throw up. In a good way.
I grin and type back a quick response.
Me: You’re going to be amazing. The guys don’t know what’s coming for them.
Winnie: Challenge accepted.
I pocket my phone, still smiling. Winnie starting with the team is the best news I’ve heard all week. She’ll be brilliant—she’s always been brilliant—and maybe now she can rebuild everything Derek tried to tear down.
“Good news?” Zayden asks, handing me a cup of coffee made exactly how I like it. He remembered. Of course he remembered.
“Winnie got the job. She starts Monday.”
“The yoga thing?”
“The yoga thing.” I take a sip. “Fair warning though—she’s going to make your life very uncomfortable. Lots of stretching. Lots of breathing exercises.”
Maisie tugs on my shirt. “Is Winnie your best friend?”
“She is.”
“Is she nice?”
“She’s very nice. She’s going to teach the hockey players how to do yoga.”
Maisie wrinkles her nose. “Daddy can’t do yoga. He’s too big and clunky.”
“Hey.” Zayden sounds genuinely offended. “I’m not clunky.”
“You knocked over the lamp last week with your elbow,” she reminds him.
I bite back a laugh as Zayden sputters. He’s got no defense, and he knows it. Maisie just watches him with those big brown eyes, completely unimpressed with her father’s athletic credentials.
“I could do yoga if I wanted to,” he mutters.
“Sure you could.” I pat his arm consolingly.
Once the pancakes are ready, we settle at the table with an ease that still surprises me.
Maisie chatters about her friend Sophie’s new puppy, about the book they’re reading in class, and about whether mermaids are real (she’s convinced they are, just very good at hiding).
Zayden listens to every word, asking follow-up questions, nodding seriously at her theories.
After breakfast, Maisie announces that we’re building a blanket fort. This is apparently non-negotiable.
“It has to be big enough for all three of us,” she instructs, already pulling cushions off the couch. “And it needs a door. And windows. And maybe a chimney?”
“How would a blanket fort have a chimney?” Zayden asks.
“I don’t know. You’re the adult. Figure it out.”
Twenty minutes later, we’ve constructed something that looks less like a fort and more like a fabric explosion in the middle of the living room. But Maisie’s delighted, crawling inside with her stuffed dinosaur and a flashlight, and that’s all that matters.
“Come in, come in!” She waves us through the “door”—a gap between two couch cushions. “There’s room!”
There is not room. Not for two adults, anyway.
Especially not when one of them is as large as Zayden, but we squeeze in anyway, and suddenly I’m pressed against Zayden’s side in a tiny space that smells like laundry detergent and maple syrup, with a six-year-old shining a flashlight directly in my face.
“This is cozy,” I manage.
Zayden chuckles beside me, flashing me a conspiratorial grin.
“Isn’t it?” Maisie beams. “Okay, now we tell secrets. That’s what you do in forts.”
“It is?”
Maisie nods. “Sophie told me. She knows everything about forts.”
“Sophie sounds like an expert.”
“She really is.” She settles cross-legged, looking between us expectantly. “Daddy, you go first.”
Zayden shifts, trying to find a position where his shoulder isn’t jammed against a dining chair. “Uh. Okay. My secret is... I sometimes eat cereal for dinner when you’re at your grandma’s.”
“That’s not a secret. I knew that already.” She turns to me. “Tori’s turn.”
I think for a second. “My secret is that I’m thinking about starting my own business. A sports medicine clinic where I’d be the boss.”
Zayden’s head turns toward me. “You are?”
“Maybe. I’ve been looking into it.” I haven’t told anyone this yet—not even Winnie—but it’s been bouncing around in my head for weeks.
All the upheaval with Dana, the reassignment, the realization that I don’t want to spend my career at the mercy of someone else’s policies.
“I could work with athletes from any sport. Set my own rules. Build something that’s actually mine. ”
“Tori, that’s amazing.” He smiles, like he can envision the whole thing.
“It’s just an idea right now. I’d need funding, a business plan, a location—”
“You’ll figure it out.” He says it with complete certainty, like there’s no doubt in his mind. “You’re the most capable person I know.”
Something warm blooms in my chest. “Thanks.”
“Okay, okay.” Maisie waves her flashlight impatiently. “My turn for a secret.”
“Go ahead, little shadow.”
She’s quiet for a moment, fiddling with her dinosaur’s tail. When she looks up, her expression is serious.
“My secret is that I used to wish for a mom.”
The air goes still. Zayden tenses beside me, and I don’t dare move.
“Like, a real mom,” Maisie continues. “Not my mom, because she’s... she’s fine, but she doesn’t really do real mom stuff. So I would wish on stars and birthday candles and on pennies thrown into fountains for someone who wanted to do real mom stuff with me.”
“Maze...” Zayden’s voice is rough.
“But I stopped wishing,” she says, “because wishes are for things you don’t have yet.”
I can’t breathe. I literally cannot draw air into my lungs because I know what’s coming, and I’m not ready for it.
Maisie looks directly at me, her brown eyes—Zayden’s eyes—wide and earnest.
“I don’t have to wish anymore. Because now there’s Tori.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. My vision blurs, and I realize I’m crying—actual tears sliding down my cheeks—in the middle of a blanket fort on a Sunday morning.
“Maisie.” I have to stop, swallow, my voice breaking. I pull her to me, and she climbs into my lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I just wanted you to know,” she whispers, “so you won’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
I look at Zayden over her head. His eyes are red-rimmed, his jaw tight with emotion. He gives me a small nod, barely perceptible.
“I promise,” I whisper into her hair. “I’m staying.”
She relaxes against me with a sigh, and I hold her tight—this little girl who wished on stars for someone to show up, who guards her heart because she’s learned the hard way that people leave, who just handed me something precious and fragile and trusted me not to break it.
Zayden’s hand finds mine under the blanket, his thumb tracing across my knuckles. When I glance at him, he’s watching us with an expression that makes my chest ache in the best way.
We stay like that for another few minutes, Maisie warm and heavy in my lap, the three of us tangled together in this ridiculous structure made of couch cushions and dreams.
Then Maisie squirms.
“It’s really hot in here.” She’s already crawling toward the exit. “I’m getting sweaty. Can we get out now?”
So much for the moment.
Zayden laughs, that low rumble I love, and starts dismantling our “door” so we can escape. Maisie bursts out into the living room like she’s been trapped for hours instead of minutes.
I crawl out after her, my knees protesting from too long on the hard floor, and Zayden follows with a groan, stretching his back like he’s aged thirty years in the last hour.
“I’m too old for blanket forts,” he mutters.
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“Trust me, in hockey years, that’s ancient.”
I watch Maisie dig through her toy bin, already onto the next thing, the fort forgotten behind us in a heap of blankets and pillows.
And I think about all the years I spent building walls instead of forts.
All the rules I made to keep myself safe from exactly this—Sunday mornings with pancake batter on the counter and a little girl who wished on stars for someone like me.
I never expected this. Never let myself want it.
But it’s here anyway, and I’m so grateful.
Zayden’s arms wrap around me from behind, his chin coming to rest on top of my head. “I love you,” he murmurs, low enough that only I can hear.
I lean back into him, into the solid warmth of his chest, into this life I somehow stumbled into when I wasn’t looking.
“I love you too.”
Maisie glances up from her toys. “Are you guys being mushy again?”
“Extremely,” Zayden confirms.
She rolls her eyes—a move she’s definitely picked up from me—and goes back to her dinosaurs.
And I just stand there, wrapped in his arms, watching his daughter play, feeling safe and loved and happier than I thought possible.
This is it? This is what I was so afraid of?
Turns out, it feels a lot like home.