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Lars

The combination of grilled meats, perfect August blue skies, and Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” blasting from the sound system could mean only one thing: A summer cookout at the Kershaws was in full flow.

These kinds of get-togethers tested the limits of my sociability, so I usually stayed away.

When you had addictive personality traits in your bloodline, it was best not to tempt them to make an appearance.

As this thinking coincided with my general desire to not get too close to my Chicago Rebels teammates, it worked out for everyone.

But today, my excuses had fallen on deaf ears, and those ears belonged to my captain and partner on the defensive line. Theo Kershaw, the man, the legend, and the player who showed no signs of stopping, had insisted I attend.

Be there or suffer the wrath of my better half!

That would be his wife Elle, one of the nicest people on the planet. Even a curmudgeon like me had a hard time playing killjoy to her kindness.

“NyQuil!” Kershaw was known for his nickname game, so Nyquist became NyQuil without too much effort. His grill apron said, Your Opinion isn’t in the Recipe . “You made it.”

“Course I did.” Said as if it was a foregone conclusion. I held up a six-pack of Pulaski Pils from Maplewood Brewery. “Where should I put this?”

“There’s a cooler over here.” Kershaw took the cans from me and guided me into his world, as he so often did. “Ellie? Look who showed!”

Plenty of heads turned at this announcement, Rebels old and new, a couple of them with readymade smirks. The guys on my team were great, but even after a few years a certain coolness remained between us. The stink of my dad’s misdeeds still stuck to me like a particularly noxious glue.

“Lars!” A tall, dark-haired woman approached, her blue-gray eyes warming as she neared. Elle Kershaw always struck me as the family’s heart, the person who kept their boisterous brood grounded. More reserved than her husband, she had an understated sense of humor I reluctantly enjoyed.

She kissed my cheek. “How’s your summer been? We’ve hardly seen you.”

“No complaints.”

Her smile was sly. “Heard you were working with Reid’s hockey camp for a few weeks. That must have been fun.”

“Oui, c’est bon.” That was the extent of my French, but hockey was its own language, thankfully.

Against all odds, I’d enjoyed volunteering with Reid Durand’s youth hockey group in Quebec.

Some players liked to use their summers to chill, regroup, and tighten the bonds with family.

Others liked to keep so busy their brains became too crowded to hold space for anything else. Guess which category I fell into.

“Well, I hope you’ll spend some time with current Rebels members this season, Lars.” She squeezed my arm to temper any perceived criticism, I supposed. “There’s always room at our table.”

“I appreciate that, though I imagine it’s been pretty full this summer.

” During the season, Theo’s grandmother Aurora and his daughters Adeline and Tilly kept the female energy high before things evened out during the summer with the return of their boys.

Their eldest son Hatch played pro hockey for Denver, and their twins, Conor and Landon, were rising seniors at the University of Michigan.

Golden Retriever, Eggsbee—short for Eggs Benedict because Kershaw had a tradition of naming the family’s pets after breakfast items—completed the picture-perfect postcard.

“Yeah, it’s been great,” Kershaw said. “But once the boys are gone, I’ll be the only guy in the house.”

I scoffed. “Which you love, you attention-whore.”

“Sure, but it gets old after a while. I’ve had that adoration my entire life, man. Help me out and bring your manly burps to dinner.”

Before I could comment in a way that neither promised nor refused, something wet and sticky grasped my hand.

Looking down, I found the youngest Kershaw, three-year-old Tilly.

The spit of her dad with a dark, wavy mass of curls framing her face, she peered up at me with a mischievous calculation in her shamrock-green eyes.

“Hey, you.” At the grand old age of thirty-five, you’d think I’d have kids figured out. Tilly was your typical little girl, so naturally I worried about swearing in front of her or not paying her enough attention or making her cry with my resting prick face.

On establishing eye contact, the kid used the back of my hand to wipe her nose.

“Tilly!” Elle pulled her away. “Sorry about that. She’s not figured out the social niceties yet.”

Kershaw was laughing his head off. “Making her mark on Uncle Lars.”

Elle produced a tissue and wiped her daughter’s nose, then picked her up. Tilly went for another sticky swipe—my cheek this time—and missed.

“I want Duckman!”

Elle chuckled. “That’s right, Uncle Lars is Duckman. She loves that thing, her favorite gift of all time.”

Last Christmas, I gave Tilly a fluffy duck toy I’d picked up in the drug store around the corner before I answered another summons for a Kershaw holiday gathering. I’d forgotten until Elle connected the dots for me.

“Hey, Mom, I can take her.”

“Addy!” Kershaw pulled the new arrival, his eldest daughter, into a hug. “Don’t leave me.”

Standing on tip-toes, Adeline kissed her dad on the cheek. “I’ll be back before you have time to miss me.”

Kershaw turned to me. “My beautiful girl is finally fleeing the nest.”

“After a couple of false starts,” she murmured, her cheeks filling with color.

I didn’t know Adeline all that well. While she had her dad’s green eyes and dark hair, she favored her mom with that stubborn chin and a reserve that bordered on shyness.

With the birth of Tilly, a surprise for Elle who had thought her childbearing days were long behind her, Adeline left college in Vermont and stayed home to help out.

She had returned to a local community college in the last couple of years and finished up an associate’s degree, and now she and her best friend, Rosie, were all set to embark on a bout of overseas travel.

Out of politeness, I asked, “Where’s your first stop?”

“Lisbon. Rosie’s already been, and she thinks it’s a good place to get our feet wet.”

“You’re going to have a great time.”

“Don’t say that!” Kershaw hugged his daughter tighter. “She might never come home.”

“How about this, Dad? I’ll come home when you announce your retirement.”

“I’ll announce it right now if it means you’re safe with us!”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll wait.” She smiled, a real heavy hitter even prettier for its rarity. But there was challenge in there. This Kershaw knew exactly what she was doing.

Her dad caved immediately. “Gonna miss you, Twinkle. We all will.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Okay, Tilly, let’s find Ducky! And when we do, we’ll sing his song.”

Elle waved at Jordan, wife of former Rebel Levi Hunt, and excused herself.

Kershaw watched his wife and daughters move away, his face luminous, his love for them so plain that I was embarrassed at witnessing such depth of feeling.

I couldn’t imagine having time for that and still retaining my edge on the ice.

“Man, I worry about her,” he said after a moment, and I knew he wasn’t talking about his wife or youngest daughter.

“She seems like she has a good head on her shoulders.” At twenty-two, Adeline was definitely old enough to be flying the coop.

Kershaw frowned. “Yeah, she does. But she’s spent hardly any time away from home. She tried with college, but it wasn’t for her, and now I feel like she’s just doing this to prove something.”

“Isn’t that a kid’s job? Test the boundaries while they figure things out?”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it. It’s a daughter thing, which I know makes me a complete sexist. One day you’ll understand.”

“A good soldier never disagrees with his captain.” I neglected to add that I would never know the feeling because I would never have kids.

He grinned. “Dick. Okay, let’s get you a drink and a burger. I left O’Malley on the grill, so God only knows what a mess he’s made of it.”

Dex O’Malley was another Rebels legend, a power forward who exuded all the maturity of a baby bunny rabbit yet had somehow managed to score an amazing wife, three gorgeous daughters, and a dream life.

Equally shocking, as assistant captain, he was in the running for the full gig once Kershaw decided to hang up his skates.

I had no idea how the cap did it, especially when he had so much else to occupy him: family, charity work, mentoring, various business ventures. I admired the fuck out of him, though I wouldn’t want his life.

Or maybe I thought a life like that would never want me.

I put in a couple of hours of mingling, ate two burgers and a “Moroccan lamb slider,” courtesy of Jude, Hudson Grey’s husband, and enjoyed a monosyllabic chat with Bren St. James, another retired Rebel who hated these gatherings as much as I did.

I was contemplating my exit when I was accosted by Aurora Kershaw on my way into the house to use the facilities.

Theo’s grandmother was a bit of a legend herself.

Having raised him single-handedly, she was his biggest influence.

After beating breast cancer about ten years back, she moved from Saugatuck, Michigan to Riverbrook, Illinois, twenty miles outside Chicago and home of the Rebels hockey franchise, to live with her grandson and his growing family.

She was also the leader of Theo’s Tarts, the fan club for women of a certain age, which she’d formed to cheer on the captain during his home games. They even had homemade jackets.

“Lars Nyquist! Come here and let me get a look at you.”

Petite, with a gray bob and sharp blue eyes, she grasped my arms. Though she barely came up to my pecs, she managed to land a lipstick-stained smooch on my neck. (I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there.)

“Oh, that beard burn must drive the ladies wild!”