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CHAPTER1

Naomi

From the backseat of my little Honda, my dear, sweet, wonderful son pipes up with yet another hockey fact. “Hockey players weren’t required to wear helmets until 1979. Did you know that?”

I’m pretty sure the question is rhetorical, as the only hockey things I know are the ones Liam has been telling me. I answer anyway, trying to make it sound like the words aren’t coming through clenched teeth. “I did not.”

Nor do I particularly care, but that seems irrelevant.

“But players who signed contracts before that year could choose whether or not to wear one. The last player who skated without a helmet was Craig MacTavish, who retired in 1997.”

“Playing hockey without a helmet sounds dangerous. Like riding your bike without a helmet,” I say pointedly.

Liam ignores my comment and goes on to tell me what year visors on helmets were mandated (2013) and to list the only four players who don’t wear a visor now.

“Jamie Benn is known for his visorless death stare.”

“Good for Jamie Benn,” I mutter.Whoever that is.

On the seven-and-a-half-hour drive from Oakley Island, Georgia to Harvest Hollow, North Carolina, I’ve been forced to listen to my son share no less than one thousand three hundred fifty-seven hockey facts with me. Approximately. Which, according to my best mathing, is an average of one fact every two minutes.

Somehow, it feels like more.

Liam’s stupid hockey kick, which started months ago but is currently at a fever pitch, is all my fault for (briefly) dating a hockey player last summer. Except I’m choosing to blame the aforementioned hockey player for Liam’s obsession. Because it’s far more mature to shrug off your own responsibility and dump it on someone else’s shoulders.

Someone else’s broad, sculpted shoulders.

No! Bad Naomi. We are not even thinking about his shoulders. Even if they are?—

Nope. This train of thought ends now.

I force myself to picture Liam’s first-grade teacher from a few years back. The one who always had a little bit of spittle in the corners of his mouth and who talked to my chest—insignificant though it may be—rather than making eye contact. This mental image always helps exorcise any unwanted romantic thoughts, even if it’s rude and shallow.

Actually no, I think, remembering the way Mr. Gull’s gaze always fixed a few inches below my collarbone.I’m not the shallow one.

“Goalies are also known as netminders,” Liam continues. “Or goaltenders. They have a different kind of stick with a wider paddle to block shots.”

Facts number one thousand three hundred fifty-eight and one thousand three hundred fifty-nine.

“Marc-André Fleury is my favorite goalie, even though he retired.”

“Mm-hm. And why is that?”

Do I sound convincingly like I care? I sure hope so.

Thisis the part of parenting no one tells you about. It wasn’t included in the well-meaning but unsolicited advice I received from friends and strangers alike or the books or blog posts I devoured as a nineteen-year-old trying to prepare for a surprise baby. I was prepped for late-night feedings and having a sick baby while I was also sick and trying to keep Liam from ingesting common household chemicals. Knowing didn’t make it easy, but it was easiersince I had some level of expectation.

But I was wholly and woefully unprepared for the emotional weight of feigning an interest in a sport you’d like to see wiped from the face of the earth. The strain of having to talk about hockey has my eye twitching.

“They call him Flower. He’s one of few players who’s loved by everyone. He was known for pranking people.”

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“I won’t.” Liam pauses, and I can hear the smile in his voice when he continues. “Probably. He talked to the goalposts and thanked them in both French and English. And he’s the only goalie in NHL history to record a shutout as a teenager and after the age of forty.”

“He sounds … neat.”

And I sound dorky. Who saysneatanymore?