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“Jaycee Bishop brought her little LJ over to play with Benny over the weekend. We had a lovely visit. When the boys wanted to play outside, Claudia stayed in with me to do crossword puzzles. I wondered if I’d ever have a daughter-in-law or a grandchild and I couldn’t ask for more than you’ve given me with Bree and Benny.

Having Claudia here is the gift I never knew I wanted. ”

“I knew you’d love them.”

“You’d have to be crazy not to and I may be a lot of things, but crazy isn’t one of them.”

She got down maybe a quarter of the bowl.

Claudia knocked on the door frame before stepping in. “Ready to go down to the beach?” she asked and my mom smiled.

“You going to the beach?”

“Claudia or Bree wheels me down every day. I love feeling the warmth of the sun and the breeze on my face.”

I helped my mom into the chair, walking out behind them, carrying the tray with the bowls back to the kitchen.

Once those two were on their way down the boardwalk, I grabbed Bree by the hand, dragging her up to the bedroom, where I got to work out all my feelings with several rounds of sexual healing.

I gave it hard and she took every bit of it, even begging for more.

We only let up when the alarm on her phone went off, signaling it was getting to the time to pick up Benny, but I wasn’t finished with her, so I fucked her again in the shower.

“I really have to go get my son now,” she said, pushing me off her when I tried to get her naked again.

“Let me go with you. I want to see his school.”

“He’ll love seeing you,” she said, and damn if that didn’t hit me right in the chest. I couldn’t lie—it felt good.

I loved that kid. I’d challenge anyone to spend more than five minutes with Benny and not fall head over heels for him.

The more time I spent with him, the more I wanted to track down his deadbeat sperm donor and rearrange his face for walking away.

No child support. No visits. Not even a damn phone call.

What kind of man didn’t even try to know his own kid?

“But are you sure you don’t want to stay here and rest? ”

“I’m good. Let’s go get the boy.”

We walked downstairs and out to my truck, and I noticed her walking a bit funny. “You okay?” I asked.

She shrugged. “You gave me a run for my money today.”

“That’s from me?”

“You’ve got a big dick and you fuck hard when you want to. I’ll just soak in an Epsom salt bath tonight. Then I’ll be ready for your big dick again.”

Bree might’ve come at the situation with humor, but I hated knowing that I’d caused her any pain.

“Hey,” she said, bumping into me with her shoulder. “It’s okay. I like it when you go hard. If I didn’t, I’d tell you.”

Would she, though? With the terms of our arrangement, maybe she’d worry that speaking up would somehow put Benny’s schooling at risk. That thought landed hard, and right then, I made a quiet promise to skip the rough shit. From here on out, I’d go easy. Gentle. She deserved that much, at least.

We pulled into the school parking lot, and Bree reached for my hand as we walked inside together.

She led the way down the hall until we reached a classroom with the door propped open.

Inside, Benny was sitting on the floor, feet straight out in front of him, completely absorbed in a book, his small hands flipping through the thick cardboard pages with focused determination.

Bree squatted down to his level and called out, “How’s my boy?”

He looked up smiling at her, put the book down, and ran to her.

She hugged him, swinging him back and forth.

His damn giggle got to me and I let out a small laugh.

It was like he hadn’t noticed me before, which he probably hadn’t.

He looked up, and his eyes went huge right before he dropped his arms from around Bree to hug my legs .

I picked him up to hug him back properly. “How’s my buddy doing?” I asked. He pressed his head against my heart. God, this little guy was amazing.

“I heard we had a visitor.” The voice came from behind me. I turned, still holding Benny and the woman who looked maybe mid-forties with her black hair back in a loose ponytail sucked in a sharp breath when she saw me. Bree introduced her as Dr. Sharp, the director of the center.

“Mr. Reece, it’s wonderful to have you here. The staff are all big Copperhead fans.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“How do you know Benny?” she asked. “A special program?”

I had to laugh. “Not that big of a fan, I guess.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” I replied. The one person in Charleston who didn’t know about me and Bree. “Ms. Michaels and I are together.”

She shot a rather ugly look at Bree, or that was my impression, and it pissed me off. My normal inclination would’ve been to tell this woman exactly what I thought of her and her ugliness, but Benny needed her services, so to not make trouble for Bree or Benny, I let that go for now.

Dr. Shaw was keen to show me around the facility.

“We have several rooms where our children work with physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists.” She showed me each of the rooms, stopping in front of the last room in the hallway.

“This room is special.” Her eyes lit as she reached for the doorknob, opening the door to reveal a large, circular machine on the back wall that looked straight out of a science fiction movie.

“We have special technologies invented by me and my partner to tailor treatments to each specific child. We use computer programs and the children receive regular CT scans that have been proven to show actual changes in the child’s brain as they progress through the program. ”

I liked the sound of it, but I had questions. “Does any of this hurt the children?”

“Never. When a child is slated for a scan, their cot is wheeled into place as they nap. If a child wakes and is frightened, we stop immediately. But we do introduce each child to the machine while awake—we allow them to look and lie inside to make it less scary. Everything we do is for the benefit of the children and scaring them wouldn’t benefit them in any way. ”

“That’s something,” I replied.

“We want the children to be excited about coming.”

“This can’t be cheap to run.”

“No, the program is quite specialized. Some of our machines are hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we work with a large number of insurers to help with the cost.”

“But if the kid has the wrong insurance or the parents can’t pay the difference?”

“We unfortunately can’t help everybody. Our professionals have bills to pay like everyone else.”

“Yeah, of course—I wasn’t suggesting they work for free. I was just curious.” When Bree tugged on my arm, I knew she was ready to go. “Thanks for the tour.”

The whole time we spent gathering Benny’s things, and even still on the drive home, Dr. Sharp’s words kept looping through my mind. Something about it all gnawed at me. It wasn’t that the school was doing anything wrong. They were doing great work.

But the idea of these young, innocent kids being left behind simply because their parents couldn’t afford that sky-high tuition sat like a stone in my stomach. Something had to be done, I just didn’t know what yet.

Mom and Claudia were in the den playing a card game when we walked inside the house .

Neither Bree nor I felt like cooking tonight, so I placed an order with my favorite pizza joint.

Mushroom and pepperoni because Bree and Benny loved it.

I ordered a large everything for me and Claudia and a small to-go bowl of an Italian wedding soup for my mom.

Garlic knots. Cheese sticks. Fried mushrooms. Then we put on a movie to go with dinner and settled down for a quiet night in.

No matter how I tried to focus on the movie, I still couldn’t shake that gnawing in my mind. I rolled over the facts: Benny needed those therapies. Bree had worked her ass off to try to afford them. But given the cost of it all, she couldn’t make it happen.

If I’d never made this deal, where would he be now?

Money shouldn’t ever be a factor. It got me thinking more. I needed to talk to my teammates.

“Hey—” Bree whispered, tugging on my shirtsleeve, and I turned to catch her eye. “You okay?” she asked.

I took in her face, and then the room. And then I nodded. “Yeah… I think I am.”

She dropped her head to my shoulder so I adjusted to pull her against me, draping my arm across the back of the sofa and went back to watching the movie.

As I walked into practice the next day, I was approached by Bishop and Jones before I had the chance to talk to them.

“So we’ve got something to discuss with you,” Bishop said.

“What you need?”

“We’re starting this program, Cookies with the Copperheads?—”

“I’ll do it, but I need something from you, too.”

“Don’t you want to know what it is?” Jones asked.

“Already know. Jaycee told Bree that day at dinner.”

“What do you need from us? Something with your mom?”

“No.” I paused thinking about how I wanted to explain it. “ Benny’s school has all these therapies for special needs kids, but a lot of kids can’t afford to go.”

“You want us to pay for them?” Bishop asked. “I’ll help.” Just that easy with him.

I shook my head. “It’s a nice gesture, but that won’t work long-term. I want a benefit. Like a yearly thing. We raise as much money as possible each year to help those kids get the therapies they need.”

“What are you thinking?” Jones asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe for a small donation, you get to skate with us. But, like, the big spenders get to play with us—not a real game, a benefit game.”

“That’s fucking amazing. Let’s talk to Antonov, Winstead, and Bonner.” Jones nodded several times.

“Whether they’re in or not, I’m in,” Bishop responded. “I’ll be calling my lawyer after practice.”

“Same,” Jones answered. “We’ll have them conference.”

“This was easier than I thought it would be. I’ll call my lawyer and we’ll get this thing set up.” I was stoked. We were about to help so many kids.

“Sorry to break up this tea party, ladies,” Coach yelled into the locker room. “But I need you on the fucking ice.”

Nothing Coach said would get me down today. I felt a hundred feet tall.

Time to stop those pucks.