Page 6 of Playboy Husband

MAISIE

Saturday morning sunlight filtered in through the windows beside our vinyl booth, catching the steam rising from my coffee.

Brody sat across from me, hunched over a plate the size of a truck tire, shoveling forkfuls of pancakes into his mouth like he’d just come off a twelve-hour shift at a lumberyard.

He was serious about eating, especially before and after practice. There were no small bites and no chit-chat right now, just methodical chewing and occasionally a quick pause to take a sip of his chocolate milk.

A soft smile spread across my lips. I sipped my coffee, watching him the way I could only do when he wasn’t paying attention.

That dark hair was already mussed, despite the fact that we’d only left home for the diner thirty minutes ago.

His thin arms had become more muscular in the last year or two, lean but getting stronger by the day.

It was in moments like these that I thought I could see the man he might become, broad shoulders filling the doorway, easily two feet taller than me by the time he turned sixteen.

I envisioned him with skates slung over one shoulder when he was eighteen, perhaps playing D1 hockey and eating four thousand calories a day but still looking as lean as he was now.

Or maybe it would be golf clubs he’d be carrying to his car. Or a gym bag with his football gear inside. It was hard to tell which sport was going to stick, but one of them surely would.

The thought made me sigh into my cup, sending steam scattering into the rays of sunlight falling across our table. I looked at Brody, wondering if he’d notice this time, but he was still shoveling those pancakes like he hadn’t seen a plate of food in months.

Pretty soon, he was going to be eating more in a day than I did in a week, and the knowledge drew my attention back to the tight knot in my chest that I hadn’t quite been able to shake. It had been there for the last couple of years, this feeling that in some way I was already failing him.

Not in any of the big, obvious ways. Despite the cost of living in San Francisco being significantly higher than it had been back in Michigan, where Brody and I had lived until a little over a year ago, I’d managed to carve out a reasonably comfortable life for us here.

Our little house in the suburbs was nice enough, small but comfortable.

Brody was healthy and mostly happy. He got good grades and he’d already made a bunch of friends.

Overall, I knew I was doing the best I could, but there were still some things I just couldn’t give him. Things I couldn’t be for him.

And some days, it felt like I was drowning trying to raise him alone. If I let myself think about it for too long, it scared the crap out of me how much his future depended on the choices I made.

I glanced at my watch. Brody had practice later this morning, but we still had time. As I looked over at him, he slurped up the last of his chocolate milk and his lips immediately parted to release the straw when those green eyes came up to meet mine.

He swallowed hastily and shot me a sheepish grin. “Sorry, but that was good. I didn’t want to waste any.”

I chuckled. “Don’t worry, buddy. You’re good. I know it was an accident and you stopped immediately when you realized the last sip was gone.”

His grin softened and he rubbed his flat tummy over his yellow and blue team T-shirt as he leaned back. “Man, I’m full. Can we go now?”

I lifted my cup a little higher. “As soon as I’m done here, but it’s still early. We won’t be late.”

Those lips pressed into a bit of a pout. “Okay, but can you drink fast? I want to talk to Coach Gage before practice.”

“Talk to Coach Gage about what?” I asked before I brought my cup to my lips. “What’s so important that you can’t give your mom five extra minutes?”

He shifted in his seat, suddenly looking a little uncomfortable, and it made that knot in my chest tighten.

While I knew this was likely something to do with hockey rather than being a guy thing, I knew it was only a matter of time before those sorts of questions and issues started coming up.

The ones he wouldn’t want to talk to me about, no matter how close our bond.

Before he’d been born—and even when he’d been little—I hadn’t really bought into the whole boys-versus-girls thing.

Brody had been my sweet baby boy and I’d thought he would stay that way, content to curl up with me in one of the little rainbow sleepers or butterfly onesies I used to dress him in before bed.

But then his first word had come, and it hadn’t been Mama, or Gah-ma, or Gahn-pa. It’d been truck.

We’d all thought it was adorable until his second word had come. It’d been big, as in big truck. That had been my first hint about what was to come.

By the time he’d turned two, he’d started rejecting the rainbow sleepers, pointing at Spiderman pajamas instead when we’d been out shopping.

By three, his favorite pastime had become wrestling with my dad, and now, at seven, his days pretty much revolved around hockey, food, and finding the highest object in the room so he could launch himself off it.

Yet, underneath the scrapes and bruises, the wild energy, and raw, natural talent for just about any sport, Brody was so, so smart.

He was a math whiz, though it was only at first-grade level.

He loved reading a story with me before bed.

He’d always tuck his head against my shoulder, his voice stumbling over the words but getting better every week.

In that way, he was still my sweet baby boy, but in many others, whenever I looked at him, I saw nothing but his father. They had the same crooked smile. The same fierce spirit and the same intense sportsmanship.

That was where it got harder. Because that guy? The one Brody was basically a clone of? He didn’t even know Brody existed.

Hence the knot. The feeling like I was failing him. Because I could be many things to him, but I could never be his father. I could never relate to the person he was becoming the way his father would be able to.

The worst part of it was that he was starting to notice.

Lately, he’d been asking more and more often why his friends’ dads come to practice and his doesn’t.

Why Cody and his dad play catch in the park after school and Mason’s dad helps him build Lego castles after dinner.

Why he doesn’t have a dad to do those things with him.

I’d been trying to be enough. To be both Mom and Dad, but sometimes, I wondered if I was failing at fooling both of us.

Brody cleared his throat and shrugged, his gaze drifting toward the window instead of holding mine as he fidgeted with his fingers in his lap. “It’s nothing important, I guess. I just wanted to get some pointers from him, but if we don’t catch him in time, that’s okay.”

My stomach clenched, but my coffee was almost done anyway, so I swigged the last sip and signaled for our check, smiling at my son and hoping he didn’t see how much it bugged me that I couldn’t give him the pointers he wanted.

“We’ll catch him in time. Don’t worry.” I paid for our meal when the check came, then ruffled Brody’s hair as we got up and started making our way around the other tables to the door. “Are you sure there’s nothing else? If you need to talk to me—”

“Mom,” he groaned, ducking away and smoothing over his unruly hair like I had been responsible for messing it up instead of all the running, bouncing, and spinning he’d done after we’d brushed it this morning.

“It’s nothing. I told you. I just want to ask him for pointers.

Mason isn’t backing me up the way he should be on the ice.

He’s too slow, but Coach Gage keeps putting him on left wing anyway and we’re not going to win if he can’t keep up. ”

“Winning isn’t everything, baby,” I reminded him gently as we walked into the bright sunshine on the sidewalk. I slipped my sunglasses on and unlocked the car. “Mason is your friend and he’s still learning, too. That’s why you’re all there. To learn.”

Brody shook his head, bouncing in his seat the entire drive over to the rink. “After practice, can we go to the driving range?”

I glanced at him in the rearview. “I was thinking maybe we could go to a museum, or maybe the library.”

He groaned. “Mom, that’s boring.”

“It’s educational.”

“So is golf,” he shot back, dead serious.

I smiled, but it didn’t quite reach my eyes. Brody was still small enough that his feet were only just above the floor of the car instead of touching, but as the days went by, it was like I could feel him slipping further away from the little boy who used to cling to me in grocery stores.

Now, he wanted slap shots and tee-offs, not story hours and art projects, and the truth was that I wasn’t sure I could give him everything he needed to grow into the man he was meant to be. That was a big part of the reason I’d answered that silly ad.

It hadn’t been for romance but for security. I’d been hoping to meet someone who could fill in the spaces in Brody’s life that I couldn’t quite reach.

“Let’s decide once you’re finished up here,” I said as I parked.

Then I followed him into the ice rink and crouched down to help him tug the laces of his skates nice and tight once he had them on.

I looked up, meeting his gaze and ignoring the echoes of laughter and shouting from the other kids in the rink.

“Listen to your coach. Keep your head up and don’t push anyone, okay? ”

He grinned, his gaze already mostly focused on the ice. “Got it. Oh, yes! There’s Coach Gage! See ya, Mom.”

Pumping his fist in the air, he weaved his way through a cluster of kids warming up, bursting through the gate and onto the rink all without a second look at me.

I watched him for another beat before I climbed the stands and settled onto a cold metal bench, pulling out a stack of homework I’d brought along to grade.

Halfway through the first worksheet, I heard practice getting underway with the familiar chant Gage had taught the kids, and I looked up, smiling until movement beside Gage caught my eye. Right there next to him was another grownup.

A familiar face. Too familiar.

I froze at the sight of him only a few feet away from Brody, the paper in my lap forgotten. It couldn’t be, but as I leaned forward to get a closer look, I realized that it absolutely was.

The very last person I would have expected to see here today, at my son’s hockey practice, was not even just here, he was helping with Brody’s team. That knot in my chest quadrupled in size, my gaze glued to the scene I never thought I’d see.