31. Nora
NORA
It's been two weeks since I slapped Reaper, and Tyler's a completely different person when he comes home from practice.
"Daddy's home," I tell her, and she squeals.
The door opens, and Tyler walks in with actual energy instead of that defeated exhaustion he used to carry. His face lights up when he sees us, and there's no bruising, no split lip, no careful movements to hide injuries.
"There's my girls," he says, dropping his bag and coming straight for us.
He kisses Harper's head, then kisses me on the mouth—properly, now that we don't have to be careful about it inside the house—and I can feel the difference in him. The lightness.
"Good practice?" I ask.
"Great practice. Danny set me up for two goals during the scrimmage. Rodriguez asked me for advice on his backhand." He's grinning. "It's like I'm actually part of the team now."
"You always were part of the team. They just finally pulled their heads out of their asses."
Harper chooses now to lunge out of my arms toward the floor, determined to continue her crawling mission. Tyler catches her, laughing.
"She's fast now," he says, setting her down carefully and watching as she immediately takes off toward the kitchen. "When did she get so fast?"
"This week. I can't turn my back for two seconds without her getting into something."
We spend the next twenty minutes taking turns chasing Harper around the house. She's discovered she can pull herself up on furniture, which means everything at her level is suddenly fair game. The coffee table, the couch, the TV stand—she's grabbing at all of it with delighted determination.
"We need to baby-proof better," Tyler says, catching her before she can pull down a lamp.
"We need to wrap her in bubble wrap."
"That too."
By six-thirty, we give up on cooking and order Chinese takeout. When it arrives, we spread it across the coffee table, with Harper between us in her little seat, and eat straight from the containers like college students.
Tyler offers Harper a tiny piece of steamed rice, and she examines it seriously before shoving it in her mouth. The face she makes—surprised, contemplative, then pleased—has us both laughing.
"She likes it," Tyler says, offering her another piece.
"She likes everything. Yesterday she tried to eat a sock."
"A clean sock?"
"Does it matter?"
He grins, feeding Harper more rice while I work on the lo mein. This—eating takeout on the floor with Tyler while Harper tries new foods and makes hilarious faces—this is everything I didn't know I wanted.
"Tell me more about practice," I say. "About the team."
Tyler leans back against the couch, Harper now in his lap, trying to grab his chopsticks. "Danny sits with me at lunch now. Like, regularly. We actually talk about hockey, about plays, about the game. Not just small talk."
"That's good."
"And some of the first-line guys, Carter and Williams, have been acknowledging my assists during games.
Saying “good job,” and asking what I saw on certain plays.
" He's still got that slightly disbelieving tone, like he can't quite accept this is real.
"Coach pulled me aside yesterday to talk about moving me to the first power play unit. "
"Tyler, that's amazing."
"Yeah. It is." He's quiet for a second, watching Harper try to grab a noodle. "I keep wanting to say it's all because of what you did. And it isn't. Not all of it."
"Tyler—"
"Hear me out." He looks up at me. "Coach had documentation on Reaper he'd been keeping for months and never used.
Carter and Williams already thought Reaper was running shit badly—they told me as much in the locker room the morning after.
They just weren't going to be the ones to say it.
The crack was already there. You—and then me, in his stall—we leaned on it hard enough that it actually opened up.
But the crack was there before either of us got near it. "
"So you're saying I committed assault for nothing?"
"I'm saying you did the unthinkable thing.
And then I did the thing I should have been doing since October.
And both of those mattered, but I don't get to hand you all the credit for it, and you don't get to hand it back to me.
It was—all of it. Coach. The team. You. Me. The thing that finally gave."
He pauses and looks at me carefully.
“Coach lifted the ban today.”
The words hit before I fully process them. “What?”
“He said the policy was a mistake and that you’re welcome back at the arena effective immediately. He’s having operations issue a family-section credential by the end of the week.”
“So… he apologized for barring me?”
Tyler shrugs. “Not in so many words. He said something about how the original decision was ‘informed by a culture this team is no longer prioritizing.’ Which is corporate speak for we got it wrong.’”
“Hm.”
“I told him I’d pass on the news. It’s up to you whether you want to come back or not.”
I think about it. Two weeks ago, I walked into that arena, did what I did, and walked out under an indefinite ban.
The thought of going back makes my stomach tighten.
But the thought of Tyler scoring a goal and looking up to find me in the family section—looking up and finding us there, me and Harper—that does something else entirely.
“I’ll think about it,” I say eventually.
He grins. “That’s all I’m asking.”
We go back to the lo mein, and Harper steals a noodle she absolutely should not be eating, and I realize as I'm pulling it gently out of her mouth that this is the first time Tyler has refused to credit me for something in months, and I love him for it.
We finish dinner, and I take Harper upstairs for her bath while Tyler cleans up.
By the time I get her in pajamas and bring her back down, he's got the living room tidied and a bottle warming.
We do Harper's bedtime routine together like we always do now—Tyler holds her while I read a story, then I hold her while he gives her the bottle, then we both stand in the nursery doorway watching her fight sleep in her crib.
"She's getting so big," Tyler murmurs.
"She’s going to be nine months old soon."
"Oh, wow." He sounds amazed. "Feels like yesterday she showed up on my doorstep."
"You were terrified."
"I was." He looks at me. "And then you showed up and made everything manageable."
"I helped with the logistics."
"You did so much more than that, Red. You know that, right?"
I do know. But hearing him say it makes the air catch in my throat anyway.
Harper finally gives in to sleep around eight, and we head back downstairs. The couch has become our default spot—close enough to hear the monitor, comfortable enough to actually relax, and private enough that we can be ourselves.
Tyler sits first, and I settle next to him, close enough that our thighs are touching. His arm comes around my shoulders automatically, and I curl into his side, my hand resting on his chest.
"This is nice," he says quietly.
"It is."
We sit in comfortable silence for a while, existing together. His thumb strokes small circles on my shoulder. My fingers trace absent patterns on his shirt. The yearning is there, constant and insistent, but we've gotten better at living with it.
Or maybe we've just gotten better at pretending we're okay with waiting.
"How much longer do we wait?" The question slips out before I can stop it.
Tyler's hand stills on my shoulder. "For what?"
"For all of it. The story's out; people know we're together.
Your team knows. But it still feels like we're hedging.
" I take a breath. "Like I'm letting people treat me as the situation that came with Harper.
The girlfriend, in quotes. I want—I want to stop hedging.
I want us to be public the way you're public about Harper.
Not careful about it. Not waiting for permission. "
"This feels pretty real to me."
"You know what I mean."
He's quiet for a moment, and I can feel the tension in his body. "How much longer do you need?" he asks softly. "Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? How long do you need to feel safe?"
"I don't know." My voice comes out small. "I'm scared she'll—"
"Red." He shifts to look at me. "A month ago, you were terrified Jessica would come back and that our relationship would look bad to a judge. And I agreed to wait—to keep some distance in public, to not lean into it—because you needed that security."
"But?"
"But it's been months. No contact, no custody claim, nothing. Any lawyer would tell us her case gets weaker every day." He tucks my hair behind my ear. "So maybe the question isn't how long do we need to wait, legally. Maybe it's how much longer do you need to feel safe?"
The words hit me hard because he's right. This isn't really about Jessica anymore. It's about me being terrified to fully claim something I'm scared to lose.
"What if she shows up?" I whisper.
"Then we deal with it. Together. With evidence that Harper's been in a stable, loving home since she got here.
With my paternity established. With a judge who'll see she abandoned her baby.
" He takes my hand. "But Red, if we wait for absolute certainty, we'll be waiting forever.
At some point, we have to take the leap. "
"I'm scared."
"I know. But I'm not. Because what we have is real. Harper is ours, and Jessica showing up wouldn't change that." He kisses my knuckles. "So, you tell me. How much longer do you need?"
I'm quiet for a long moment, really thinking about it. Not about what's legally safe, but about what I actually need to feel secure.
"I don't know," I admit. "A few more months? Until it's been a year since she left? That feels... significant somehow."
"A year," he repeats, considering it. "That's June. Harper will be turning one."
"Her first birthday." The idea settles over me, feeling right. "We could fully claim it then. Make it this whole... new chapter thing. Harper's first year, our first year as a family."
"I like that." He pulls me closer. "June. Harper's first birthday. That's our deadline."
"You're okay waiting that long?"
"Red, I'd wait forever if that's what you needed. But I'm glad it's not forever." He grins. "Four more months and then I get to fully claim you publicly? I can survive that."
"Four months," I echo, and it feels both impossibly long and surprisingly close.
"Four months," he confirms. "And then no more hiding. No more separate bedrooms. No more pretending we're still figuring out what we are."
"What will we be?"
"Everything." He kisses me, soft and sweet and full of promise. "We'll be everything, Red."
We stay on the couch until almost midnight, talking about futures and promises and all the things we're waiting for. And when we finally separate to go to our own beds, the yearning is still there, the wanting still aches.
But so does the hope.
Because we're waiting for something real.
Something permanent.
Something worth every second of torture.
And that makes the waiting bearable.
Barely.
But bearable.