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CHAPTER 1

ALEXEI

At the top of the list of key lessons I’ve learned about being a single father is that the safest time to stroke one out is really fucking early in the morning.

File that under “things nobody tells you”.

Of course, nobody knew I was going to be a father before I was suddenly thrust into the experience with an hour’s notice.

Two years later, I’m still figuring out how to balance my pro hockey career and raising a toddler—and finding reliable personal time remains a struggle.

You might think it would be late at night, but half the time I’m too fucking wiped, either from a game, or pushing myself too hard through workouts, or simply managing the complicated mess that is my new life. And the rest of the time, there’s a solid chance my parents will barge in because they’re night owls with zero sense of personal space.

Middle-aged Russian parents do not understand that a guy needs his privacy because he’s not getting laid, he might never get laid ever again, and the only thing that would get him off anyway is a memory he feels fucking guilty for indulging in.

Another reason I take care of business at dawn… this is when I’m weakest. This is the time of day I can’t stop myself from getting hard for an off-limits woman.

My best friend’s younger sister.

The woman I was with when?—

I don’t think about that part of it, the part that means it will never happen again.

In hindsight, it should never have happened in the first place.

I’m not proud of how much I enjoyed the way she looked at me, like I could build sandcastles in the sky for her.

And when I give in, like I am right now, and shove my shorts down to wrap my fist around my erection, I desperately reach for any fantasy but that one.

I imagine her fingers on my cock, something that never happened. Her breath, warm and sweet, against my most sensitive flesh. Licking at my tip with her pointy pink tongue.

Something else she never had a chance to do.

Most of my fantasies are basically alternate endings to that night. What if I hadn’t checked my phone? What if she’d gotten my zipper undone and her slim fingers into my boxers?

She’d been so fucking willing. So eager.

I stroke myself harder than she would have, punishing myself, jerking roughly. I never pretend my hand is hers, probably couldn’t even if I tried. But in my head, I see it play out. She climbs on top of me, curious fingers exploring my length. Teasing me. Making me buck into her touch, needing more. Needing so much more.

I would make her hold my gaze as she brought us together, replacing her hand with her entire body, her sweet pussy, that tight, wet?—

Fuck.

It’s a good thing it’s just a fantasy, because I just prematurely jizzed at her entrance like a teenage boy.

Chest heaving, I pump the last of my seed into the pooling puddle on my abs and shut my eyes.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” my fantasy of Emery says. “I’m so hot you couldn’t hold it.”

Real life Emery wasn’t that cocky. She was sweet and innocent, and the adoration in her eyes as I took that innocence was headier than any drug.

I put us both in a terrible position that night.

And right on cue, as the blood pounds fast and heavy in my ears, a rustling sound comes across the baby monitor on my bedside table.

The fantasy dissolves as quickly as that night did.

From now until late tonight, my time belongs to others.

I take a deep breath and remind myself of the daily goals: getting through the day without snapping at anyone, and being grateful for what I have.

The nearest thing I can find to clean myself off with is the t-shirt I took off last night. After wiping myself off, I dump that in the hamper in my bathroom—laundry I’ve made it clear to my mother I can do myself—and quickly wash up before pulling on a fresh shirt.

Then I head to the nursery at the opposite end of the hall, across from the spare bedroom where my parents sleep. A shared bathroom is in between the two rooms, and often my mother beats me to the task of getting Inessa out of my bed, but not today.

My tiny tyrant of a daughter is sitting up in her toddler bed, rubbing sleep from her eyes. I just built the white princess frame a week ago, after I found her climbing out of her crib. But she’s still not sure what to make of it, and when she wakes up in the morning, she waits for someone to come and get her.

A princess with tyrannical tendencies.

Silently, she holds up her arms, wanting to be picked up.

“Good morning, little one,” I say in Russian.

She presses her face into my neck.

“Can you say, good morning, Papa?”

A slow little sigh warms my skin before she mumbles a half-hearted Dobroye utro, papochka that runs together.

“How about some breakfast?”

That gets a silent nod.

“How did you sleep?”

No answer.

Inessa is not a morning person.

I change her diaper, but she whines at the idea of getting dressed, so I leave her in her PJs for breakfast.

As we step into the hallway, my father opens the bedroom door. His hair is standing on end. “Dobroye utro.”

And then he mumbles something about coffee.

None of us are morning people.

If I didn’t have some basic adult needs that couldn’t be met any other time of the day, I’d probably be as silent as the two of them, but orgasms have a way of kickstarting me better than caffeine.

My dad opens the baby gate at the top of the stairs, and we file down to the kitchen. Inessa doesn’t let go of my neck until I get her a sippy cup of milk. Then I find some blueberries for us to share. Yesterday, raspberries caused a meltdown for being wrong , so I don’t want to risk those again.

“She needs bacon,” my father mutters as I put three blueberries on Inessa’s tray.

I love my parents.

I am grateful to my parents.

I am tired of explaining toddler food preferences to them when they spend as much or more time with her as I do, especially to my dad. My mom at least can read my body language and tries to keep the peace.

Also, she has the magic ability to talk Inessa into trying new things, or having a bite of something she doesn’t enjoy, like bacon. I do not have that ability and neither does my father. And a day that starts with a tantrum is twice as long as one that starts with a quiet, peaceful breakfast.

Tension crawls up my back as the coffee maker hisses its way through an espresso.

But when my father goes to the fridge and pulls out the bacon and eggs, I need to say something. “Maybe wait for Mama, yeah?”

“She’s sleeping.”

I frown. My mom never sleeps in. “What’s wrong? Is she sick?”

This is terrible timing if she is. I have a home game tonight, and then tomorrow we get on the team plane and fly out to St. Louis and then Detroit for two road games.

He shrugs. “Indigestion,” he replies in Russian. “She was up all night. I can cook.”

He can, but in his own way.

Not to my nutritional needs and not to my daughter’s preferences.

“I’ll make eggs,” I offer. “If you want some bacon, go ahead, but none for us.”

Hopefully my mother is feeling better by the time I need to leave for morning skate at the arena. My dad is a doting grandfather, but he doesn’t know how to care for a toddler the same way my mother does.

So, we’ll let her sleep in and hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Like tiring out my tiny tyrant girl. “Maybe I’ll take Inessa out for a walk this morning, hmm?”

My daughter’s eyes light up. “Walk?”

My dad mutters something else in Russian under his breath, and again I restrain myself from engaging.

He doesn’t think I should speak English to Inessa. But she gets enough Russian from them, and I want her to be fully bilingual.

I want them to speak more English as well, but that’s a harder fight.

They’ve been in Canada for two years, and they don’t believe me that this is the hardest part. I’ve been here for ten years, since I was eighteen, and to them, my English is beyond reach. I know it’s not, because I remember just how much my vocabulary has grown in the last two years by being really conscious about using it more and no longer relying on teammates to translate for me.

And in the last year, it’s been supercharged because I don’t have a Russian teammate, unlike in Calgary. The team does have a Russian-speaking trainer on staff, but the only conversations where I’ve allowed myself to rely on her to translate have been very technical discussions with medical jargon.

My dad puts an espresso in front of me, then makes one for himself. I sip at it as we eat blueberries, then Inessa finally starts talking. “Papa make toast?”

“Of course.” I pick her up out of her highchair and set her down. “Do you want to help?”

When she nods, I prompt her.

“Get the bread you want.”

She opens the bread drawer and swings a bag of sandwich loaf at me with the enthusiastic aggression of a rookie D-man, whacking me on the leg. “This one.”

“Gentle,” I remind her.

She laughs, an out loud cackle.

We definitely need to go to the park. As soon as she has toast in her little belly, she’ll be zooming upstairs looking for her babushka.

I sweep her into my arms and spin around before depositing her back in the highchair.

“Papa,” she chastises.

I grunt at her, unswayed. I need her confined while I cook.

That gets another laugh, and I distract her with more grumpy dad noises until there’s buttered toast on her tray.

I’ve also managed to cook some scrambled eggs in the same time. They’re basic but good enough. I’ll eat again when I get to the arena for morning skate.

Once we’re both fed, I get Inessa changed into warm clothes. They don’t match, and she keeps her unicorn nightgown on underneath, but nobody at the park will care about fashion choices.

Outside, it’s brighter than it has been maybe all winter, and Inessa throws her hands up at the sky in delight.

“It’s sunny,” I say in English.

She doesn’t repeat it, and I don’t prompt her. I’ll save my Dad voice for when she needs to listen to me for safety reasons on our walk.

Learning to pick my battles has been another frustrating curve as a single parent—especially when the people who parented me are actively watching and judging.

And getting traded at the same time as Inessa discovered her attitude was a challenge.

After spending almost ten years in the Calgary organization, from getting drafted to slowly developing in their farm teams, I honestly thought I might spend my entire career there.

The trade calls blindsided me.

“We appreciate everything you have done here in Calgary…”

“Welcome to Hamilton, son. We understand you have a young child and your parents live with you? We have people in the organization who can help them get settled. We need you to fly out today…”

The next three weeks were the longest stretch of Inessa’s life without me. She was used to seeing me on a video call on Baba’s phone, but road trips are rarely longer than a week, and the team would keep me at home if they knew I wasn’t going to play.

From the second I landed in Hamilton, I was playing, and playing a lot. Plus, I needed to find a vacant house we could buy immediately, and I had a laundry list of requirements. Walking distance to a park, a separate suite for my parents, and a space that could be customized for a gym.

I had help from the team, but by the time we found it, the season was well under way. I only had one free day to pick them up from the airport and bring them to our new home before I had to get on the team plane again for a few days.

When I finally returned, Inessa clung to me and refused to sleep in her own bed for the next three nights. My parents abandoned their plan to live in the separate suite, and moved into the spare room across from the nursery instead.

It was a long, dark winter of trying to find a new normal like the one we’d had in Calgary. My parents, too, are struggling.

Inessa stops and squats down, looking at a patch of frozen ice on the sidewalk. In ten minutes, we’ve gone about two hundred metres. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets and my thoughts about my family into the back of my mind.

We have a game at home tonight, and I’m the starting goalie.

After a rollercoaster of a season, the Hamilton Highlanders are on the cusp of making the playoffs again for the second straight year, only their second year in the league.

Last year, though, they bombed out in the first round.

Everyone in the locker room is painfully aware of the internal pressure to be better this time. To make the playoffs handily, and excel once we get there.

And our biggest acquisition at the trade deadline—veteran defenceman Luca Carter—was injured in his second game with the Highlanders. He’s now on long-term injured reserve, and we’ll be lucky if we get him back for the second round of the playoffs, if we make it that far.

“Papa, come on,” Inessa urges, as if I’m the slow one.

Taking off at a terrifyingly unstable run, ignoring my stern reminders to be careful, she laughs and leads me the last fifty metres to the park, then immediately climbs to the top of the slide and waves down.

Fearless little girl.

I sigh in secretly proud defeat. “Show me how you slide down. But be?—”

She flings herself into the plastic mouth of the slide and catapults down it, somehow landing on her feet.

Bouncy is in her genes, I suppose. “Careful,” I finish saying, laughing with her.

She climbs up and goes down again, and then again, until her cheeks are pink and she’s out of breath. While she recovers with the speed of a professional athlete, I do some pull ups on the climber.

“Me do it, too, Papa.”

I pick her up and she holds on to the bar, mimicking me and giggling.

When I suggest it’s time to go home, she protests and runs back to the slide.

I hear my mom’s voice in my head. You can’t ask her, Alexei. You must tell her. Or better yet, let her think it is her idea.

I scoop up a handful of wood chips from the edge of the playground and start juggling them, a habit I picked up from a coach in the minors. It’s good for my hand-to-eye coordination, and also for tricking my daughter into coming closer.

“Me juggle, Papa.”

“Sure thing, little one.” I put her on my shoulders and hand her a couple of the wood chips, stashing the others in my pocket. They’re light enough that when they fall on my head, it’s not a problem, but I don’t need them all raining down on me at once.

She tosses the ones I gave her up, and I catch them, my hands snatching them mid-air…one, two, three.

“More juggles.”

I give her those three back, and we repeat it as I walk back home.

We’re halfway there when she realizes she’s been tricked.

“Papa!”

“I know, I know.”

She kicks her feet, protesting. I just hold on tight and put up with the complaining, because when we’re not going at her speed, it’s a pretty short walk.

And then she sees a bunny rabbit on the edge of our lawn, and all is forgiven.

We look at the rabbit until it darts away, then climb the stairs and head inside.

As we take off our coats and boots, I hear my parents talking in the kitchen, so I hope that means my mom is feeling better.

“…Granger road trip,” my dad says, laughing.

My pulse turns sluggish at the heavily accented way he says Emery’s last name. But it’s not about Emery, of course. My parents don’t know Forrest’s sister. They know of her, of course, but they’ve never met because Emery Granger won’t come within a hundred miles of an Artyomov.

My fault.

“Baba!” Inessa calls out.

“We’re…in the kitchen.”

I frown, not liking how tired my mom sounds. But when we find them, she has a bright smile for my daughter. “Why are you still wearing your nightgown?” She clucks as she quickly, deftly works the pyjamas out from under Inessa’s sweatshirt. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

“No,” Inessa says, scowling.

I close my eyes and count backwards from five.

When I open them again, I see my mother rubbing her chest.

“Papa says you aren’t feeling well,” I murmur after kissing her forehead.

“I’m fine, don’t fuss. It’s just heartburn.”

“Do you want me to take Inessa with me to the rink?” It wouldn’t be ideal, but I don’t need to skate this morning, and she can come with me to the team meeting and to get the scouting reports.

But my mother shakes her head. “No, of course not. My sweet girl is no trouble.”

“She’s an Artyomov. She’s nothing but trouble.”

“Shush.” She laughs, though. “I’ll be careful about what I eat today. And I won’t let your father talk me into drinks with our friends tonight.”

“The Grangers?” I ask, as casually as I can, pretending I’m barely interested.

I’ve already put the pieces together. My buddy Forrest, a former teammate in Calgary, is one of five kids. Emery is his younger sister, but he has three older brothers, who also all play in the NHL.

Out of the 82 games a year I play, at least ten percent are played against a Granger. Tonight is no exception—Minnesota is in town to face us, and the oldest Granger, Camden, is their captain—and Forrest’s parents love to watch their kids play hockey.

“They asked about tickets,” my father explains.

Discomfort squeezes my chest like a fist. “How many do you need?”

He shakes his head. “Our regular seats are fine.”

Someone from the team helped arrange four season tickets for my family. Sometimes it’s just my parents who come to the games, sometimes they invite Russian speakers they have met through local community groups. Last week it was a Ukrainian professor from the university and his daughter.

Tonight, it will be Emery’s parents. Two people only, to fill the two empty seats. But nobody else in their extended family.

The discomfort fades to something that feels like irrational frustration.

I like the Grangers. They stayed in Calgary when I discovered I was a new dad, and they helped me through the initial shell shock, taking me shopping for a baby car seat and then a house.

Emery didn’t stay, of course. I didn’t see her again after that night. She went back to her college team in Boston. Her parents, though, became de facto grandparents until my own parents could get visas and plane tickets. And once the Artyomovs landed, the Granger-Artyomov Hockey Parent Bond was officially forged. Despite the language barrier, our families have stayed fast friends ever since.

A friendship Emery Granger has pointedly kept herself removed from.

I deserve that.

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking hurt, but I did that to myself when I followed her to her hotel room and took something that wasn’t mine to take.