Page 8 of Heartbreak Hockey

“I miss your spark so damn much, Jack. I could fucking kill Rhett, and Sutter just by association.”

That gets a laugh from me. Especially because Sutter was a Rhett and Jack advocate, but since Sutter plays for Boston, I have no choice but to hate him on principle.

“Seriously, though. I’ll do anything to get it back. I saw a little bit of it tonight and I know it wasn’t because of Rhett,” he adds.

I drum up my signature smile, crooking my lips and flashing my brows. “Know how you start a do-over?”

“How?”

“Off-season, baby!”

Chapter2

Trouble

Mercy’s Log August 2025

MERCY

Some motivational guru convinced one of my sisters that writing in a journal is the way to heal your soul. If I have a soul, it definitely needs healing, but I’m not much of a writer. I am a sucker for my family even when they piss me off.

And then, that sister—Bea—convinced two more of my sisters and one of my brothers that writing in a journal would soothe me somehow. With the three of them staring at me, their worried eyes praying for me to just take the goddamn book and promise to jot a few words down, how was I to resist?

Manipulative bastards. Every last one of them. I took the book and was roped into pinky swearing that I’d write in it too. I’ll probably ramble lots, but here goes.

Mondays are shit. Everyone knows that. I’m on a plane right now because I received three calls on an extra-shitty Monday.

The first came from Ari with news about Dad.

“Remember not to shoot the messenger,” he said. “Sandra is pregnant.”

Sandra. Dad’s current girlfriend.

“Fuck.” A long line of expletives followed. “So help me that man is getting castrated.” Forget vasectomy. He should suffer. We’d do it to him like I’ve heard they do it to bulls and I won’t bother to check on the facts and proceed with what I think I know because I’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos about it.

“You might be right, Merc, but I dunno, they seem happy.”

I was in my kitchen making tacos for three of my dad’s other children, my half-siblings, with only one ear pod in so I could listen for any wars that might break out in the living room. I was also doing calculations. My dad had us in batches. There was the first era, which Ari, Bea, and I call the “Mom Era” since that’s when he was with our mom.

We haven’t seen her since nineteen ninety-nine.

Then we had the Deb era, which lasted from two thousand and six to two thousand and twelve. After that was Kerri whom we haven’t seen since Theo was two—he’s five now—and he was number three from that “batch”.

If anyone draws a family tree of us, it’ll look like an overgrown hedge.

Sandra is a new era, and this is baby number one for them. My blood heated and I pledged that I’d be damned if they were going to have two more after that. Dad can’t handle the children he has. He can’t afford the children he has. He’s the “I want to have a puppy, but I don’t want to take care of it”, person. He keeps bringing puppies home for us to look after. They’re cute puppies and we fall in love with them, but they pee on the furniture and eat us out of house and home.

“He always seems happy and then they leave.” We don’t know why they leave. My theory is his children. Three of us are adults now, but we’re still around and hard to deal with. Three of us are teenagers and that phase is never fun for anyone. The youngest of us need a second parent. Dad is into dudes as much as he is ladies. I wish he’d marry a dude for once, but it would be my luck that he’d find a way to get one pregnant.

“Aw, fuck. Just a sec, Merc. Rachel’s pounding the shit out of Dawson. Hey! Knock it off.” I pictured him throwing a pillow at her like he usually does, kinda like when you spray a puppy to get him to stop biting. “You just had to teach her that, Mercy.”

“What? Her sweet uppercut? She needs that if she wants to make the Premiere league.” I’ve coached her team since she started, off and on.

“They’re not on the ice—no fighting off the ice. That’s your rule.”

Yeah, guess it is. “Since when do you listen to me?”

“I always listen to you, big brother.”