Page 5

FOUR

JACK

SEPTEMBER

“Where’s your mom?”

I stiffened hearing Aspen ask that question, wondering how Harper would answer. I hit my head on the door frame since I was bent to unclip Mara’s daughter from her car seat. She looked on the verge of tears, so I tried making a friendly face.

“Mommy and Daddy are divorced,” Harper answered Aspen. “That means I have a room at my mom and my dad’s house.”

“Mine too!” Aspen said, and they high-fived like it was another cool fact they shared. It’s funny—kids will share what shows they watch and how often they poop, but they won’t talk about basic things like where Mom and Dad live.

So that confirmed Aspen’s mom being single unless she was dating someone. Not that I cared. I wasn’t ever going to try loving someone again. All Sydney brought me was hassle and big bills. It was going to be me and the kids until they were eighteen. And then who knows? Maybe go coach somewhere. Maybe spend the rest of my life rotting in peace.

Peace sounded good.

The baby, Hazel, brought me back to the present, her little lips flipping into a scowl.

“I’m not scary! I’m not scary! Your mama will be here soon!” I tried. “Look! Your brother’s right there.”

Hazel eyed me with deep suspicion, huffing like she was deciding whether or not to cry. She was still in her pumpkin car seat, but she was too old to be left in it to nap. I was going to have to play with this baby for what, another hour or two?

“Hey, Aspen, what snacks does Hazel like?”

“Puffs,” he threw over his shoulder before dashing off with Harper and Jace to the backyard.

Four kids is a lot to juggle. I had to go back to the school to get Jace at 3, then to the daycare to get Hazel at 5. We’d been in and out of the car half the day. I’d thought smart and fed Aspen and Harper, taking them to the playground until I had to pick up Jace. Then it was back home to regroup before getting Hazel. Three pickups, four kids.

Hazel watched the three older kids run off. Mara had sent me a flurry of talk-to-text messages on her way back to work, some of which were half coherent. She warned me that Hazel couldn’t walk yet, but was trying and could stand. I peeked down in the diaper bag I was sent home with and found some of the prescribed puffs.

I put Hazel on my hip, grabbed the diaper bag, and closed all the car doors. “Whaddya think, kid? Should we follow them?”

We went out back to find the older kids climbing into the hammock I’d strung between two trees. I bought this house as a post-divorce gift to myself. I wanted the kids to have somewhere comfortable to be when they were with me, and that included a small yard with a pool where they could play. Plus, I didn’t really want to move after I retired from hockey, which could be sooner rather than later. I was thirty-five, which is borderline ancient for a professional hockey player. Even The Great One retired at thirty-eight.

And I had a little more incentive to quit early. I’d rather raise my kids myself if at all possible, and being on the road for such a big chunk of the year didn’t let me do that. I felt like a dick for not just hanging it up when Syd and I split, but I do still love the game. Did that make me a bad dad for not choosing my kids first over my sport?

“Sing,” Hazel said, pointing to the hammock.

“You want me to sing?” I asked, horrified as I looked at her. “Oh, swing . Yeah, we’ll swing in a minute.”

The kid started to chuckle, those little baby “hyuck hyuck” laughs. I couldn’t help but join her. Hazel had Mara’s crystalline blue eyes and a wispy version of her red hair. I was shocked that it was fun having a baby around again.

I say baby, but Mara informed me that Hazel was fourteen months old. Anything before preschool is basically a baby. Until they can wipe their own butts, it’s pretty much baby. Unless you’re like Jace and you resist potty training for poop and make a regular occurrence of shitting in your pants.

Sydney swore if I hadn’t “quit her” Jace would be fully potty trained. She said I upended his sense of normalcy by leaving her, and that’s why he wouldn’t shit on a toilet. I said it was him being three and a boy, something a simple Google search confirmed.

Sydney could shove it up her ass, along with all her other sniping about me.

At least it was cut in half after we signed the papers and she walked away with half of everything somehow. I’d rather her take the stuff. My peace was worth it.

But how did it work that I was doing more than half the parenting and she was still getting half the money and child support? Explain that one.

Legally, it was supposed to be 50/50, but she somehow always found a way to shift the schedule so I had the kids more. I didn’t mind—I was just petty and didn’t like having to give her half my money.

It was bullshit.

Then with the twenty-five percent of the time I did actually get a break, I was mostly on the road. Part of me wanted to get laid during that time, but I was gun-shy. Sydney had jumped on me so quickly after we fucked that it was just a few months before we were married. I was sucked into her charm, and the way she made me feel like we were the only two people who mattered in the world. And then, I couldn’t even recognize the man I became.

What if the next one did the same? Blinded me with love and stole all the things that made me, me. Would I see it coming, or would I make the same mistake twice? I hooked up a lot before Sydney, but finding someone who wanted to stick around, or who I wanted to keep around for that matter, was damn near impossible to find.

Let’s put it this way: I wasn’t the first hockey player someone goes for. As a center, I’m shorter than most of my team despite being a respectable 5’10”. I was also known for my assholery, which, yeah, probably. I don’t soften my personality for anyone, and I don’t care much for social norms. Basically, I had to make nice if I wanted to get laid on the fly. Usually by the time a game was over, I didn’t have it in me like my younger teammates did. And everyone close to my age was happily married and gaga with the love of their lives. Fuck ‘em.

I sat down in a pool chair and put Hazel on my knee, extracting the puffs from the diaper bag. She did that cute thing of clapping with her whole body, her little ruddy cheeks spread wide in a grin.

Mara made a cute kid. Okay, two cute kids. Wonder where her ex was?

Again, why did I care?

Hazel snapped me back into action, whining at me to hand over the puffs.

“Right, right,” I said. I opened the container and held it out to her. Once again, she looked at me like I was an alien. “What, you want a plated meal?”

I must have made a face, and faces and puffs were the only things keeping this kid happy around me. I guess she liked when I was a dick.

In short, I could get along with this kid. Anyone I could be myself around was a winner.

“Ay, kids,” I called out. “What can you eat for dinner?”

“Can we have dino nuggets?” Jace asked.

“And mac and cheese!” Harper added.

I usually tried to put on a well-rounded meal, but I was suddenly in charge of four children from toddler to kindergarten. This was survival mode. “Sure.”

I pulled out my phone to see if Mara answered my food allergy question.

Mara O’Connell

My kids don’t have food allergies. Thx for asking

They doing ok?

She’d sent that over an hour before. I needed to get back to her. I held out my phone. “Smile for Mama, Hazel.”

I kept my usual straight face until I saw how Hazel was looking at me. Not at the camera, but just looking at me. I turned to face her right as she bopped my nose. I snapped the picture and sent it off to Mara.

Never better