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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

LEDGER

“ I ’m thinking about visiting my father,” I finally say after a long comfortable silence sitting with my Dad.

I drove out here on a whim not knowing exactly what I wanted to say or how I was going to talk about what’s been on my mind.

Somehow I knew if I could just make it home, Nick would know how to handle the situation. And I was right.

The moment I walked in the house he gave me a beer, took one for himself, and then sat quietly with me at the kitchen bar, sharing a space with me and reminding me I’m not alone, until I was ready to speak.

Dad glances sideways. “Okay.”

“My… biological one, obviously.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just waits.

I swallow hard. “I’ve hated the man for my entire life. What I can remember of it anyway.” I turn my head toward my dad. My true dad. The one who helped turn me into a decent human being. “Why didn’t we ever talk about him? What he did. Did I ever ask you about him? Mention him to you at all?”

Dad shakes his head. “Nope. Maybe you don’t remember this but one of the first things you said after you got here was that you didn’t want to talk about it. You didn’t want to know anything and you didn’t care.”

I vaguely remember saying something along those lines.

Doesn’t surprise me that I would say something like that.

“He killed my mom. He was a monster who left me in the system and never looked back.”

“So why the visit?” Nick asks quietly. “Why now?

I rub my jaw, eyes tight. “Because I’m about to be a father of three and I’m all kinds of fucked up about it. It’s easier to keep my father a villain in my mind, you know? Makes everything make sense, but then with that comes this nagging fear and anxiety that I’ll end up just like him.”

Dad leans forward, resting his arms on the countertop, his fingers wrapped around his beer. “You’ve spent your whole life surviving hurt you didn’t deserve, Ledger. That’s not on you. But maybe it’s time you stop letting that version of the past define you.”

I glance down at my hands. “Marlee thinks I should talk to him. Say my peace, so I’m trying to talk myself into doing it. But…but what good will it do? I know it’s going to fucking suck the moment I step in that place.”

“Maybe it won’t do any good,” Dad answers honestly. “Maybe it just opens old wounds. Or…”

He always gives an or.

“Or maybe it gives you something you didn’t know you needed.”

I look at him, surprised, my brows arched. “You think I should go?”

“I think you should do whatever brings you peace,” he tells me. “But Ledger… if there’s even a chance the story you’ve lived with all this time isn’t true, wouldn’t you want to know? Don’t you want to take the power back and decide who you are, without someone else’s ghost hanging over you?”

I don’t answer right away. My stool creaks under my weight. The bottle in my hand finally sweating through to my palm.

“My mom died at his hand. That’s not something I can just forgive.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive,” Dad says gently. “But maybe understanding isn’t about letting him off the hook. Maybe it’s about letting you off the hook. So, you can be the kind of father you want to be without constantly looking over your shoulder, afraid you’ll turn into him.”

My throat tightens and my eyes glisten with unshed tears. “I’m scared, Dad.”

He puts a tender hand on my shoulder. “Good. That means you care, Ledge. And that right there already makes you a better man than you think.”

“That’s what Marlee says too.”

Dad tips his bottle back against his lips, sipping his drink. “Smart woman, that Marlee. You better keep her around.”

“If I have my way, she’ll be around forever.”

He smiles. “Good to hear.”

We sit in silence again, the night thick with things unspoken.

Finally, I murmur, “How do I even start that kind of conversation?”

Dad twists his mouth and then gives me a half-smile. “The same way you’ve handled everything in your life. Headfirst. Honest. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but real. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not to someone you’ll inevitably see as a stranger. You owe him nothing.”

I nod slowly, heeding Dad’s encouragement. My chest finally feeling a little lighter.

“Okay, I’ll go.”

Dad clinks his beer bottle gently against mine. “I’ve got your back. Always.”

25 WEEKS

The team insisted I show up at the arena early today. They claimed it was for “film review,” which is the universal code for surprise nonsense incoming .

I walk into the players’ lounge, already suspicious, and freeze.

“What the fuck?”

The room has been transformed.

Sort of.

Streamers in team colors hang crookedly from the ceiling. Balloons are tied to sticks shoved in puck buckets. Someone has taped a sign to the wall that reads:

CONGRATS ON THE BABIES, LEDGER! HOPE THEY DON’T HATE HOCKEY!

There’s a pile of oddly wrapped gifts in the corner, including one in a hockey bag.

Griffin appears wearing a party hat. “Welcome to the Bro Shower, Daddy!”

Bro shower?

Oh, my God.

“I…have questions,” I say very slowly.

Harrison appears holding a tray of cupcakes with tiny plastic hockey players stuck in them. “You like vanilla, right? They were out of blue frosting, so we just used icing tape.”

My brows furrow. “What the hell is icing tape?”

“Don’t ask,” August mutters.

“Is that?—”

The fuck?

I point to the odd-looking structure in the far corner of the room. “Is that a baby stroller made out of goalie pads?”

“Yep!” Barrett grins proudly. “It rolls and everything. Slight risk of tipping though, but super protective!”

I toss my head back in laughter already overwhelmed with gratitude that these guys would even try to do something like this.

I quickly glance around the room assuming Ella or Layken or Scarlett or even Blakely Rivers might be around helping the guys, but nope.

Not one of them is here. These dumb fucks did this all on their own.

“You guys are insane.”

Griffin puffs out his chest. “Thank you for noticing.”

Bodhi forces me into a folding chair by the makeshift gift pile.

Guys keep filtering in. A few of the staff are already shot-gunning cans of Sprite, burping loud enough to rattle the drywall.

Harrison starts a playlist that is ninety percent pump-up tracks and ten percent children’s cartoon themes, the same ones that play in the background behind my nightmares.

I look around the circle. “Who planned this?”

There’s a simultaneous silence and cacophony of finger-pointing which makes me belt out a laugh.

Oliver says, “Technically, it was my idea. Harrison bought the cupcakes, we all brought the presents, Griffin—for whatever reason—was in charge of decorations, and Pickle Pants over there,” he says pointing to Bodhi, “brought the drinks.”

Griffin beams, standing proudly in a pair of pajama pants with pink and blue footprints all over them, streamers in his hair, “Pretty fucking great team effort if you ask me.”

Barrett wheels over the goalie-pad stroller. It’s balanced precariously on four mismatched skate wheels. “Want to try it? We can strap you in, see how it handles the corners.”

“Pass,” I say with a chuckle, but Barrett’s already yanking out one of the seats to show the shock-absorption system.

“It has a cupholder,” he announces reverently.

“And a…what’s this?” He pokes dramatically into a mesh pouch.

“Emergency binky compartment?” His jaw drops and his eyes bulge like he didn’t plan this whole thing himself.

“That’s for when one of the babies loses their shit,” August says, looking a little pale at the thought.

Bodhi has arranged three empty beer cases in a pyramid and drawn faces on them in sharpie to simulate “Triplet Dad Mode.” And there’s a fiercely competitive diaper-changing relay, Griffin versus Harrison, about to begin except the diapers are on watermelons and duct-taped at the seams. I start to laugh again and feel a weird, electric fizz in my chest.

Fuck, this is amazing.

And as crazy as it is, it could all be so much worse.

I try to keep my cool as the gifts start circulating. I rip open Oliver’s hockey-bag first; inside is a full set of custom onesies, each emblazoned with Future Penalty Box Resident in bold silver letters. Two of which are sparkly.

“Sorry.” Oliver shrugs. “Ella told Scarlett to make sure she bedazzled two of them because…well…”

“Ella,” we say in tandem.

“I love it. Thanks, man.”

The next package is a toddler helmet, dipped in glitter, “For when your girls play roller derby,” Harrison assures me.

After that comes a hilariously oversized baby monitor, the kind with two-way video and a military-grade intercom, which August claims is for “Screaming into the void in solidarity, or you know, spying on your children like tiny criminals.”

“Thanks August.”

The next package—still inside a duffel bag—contains a breast pump.

Uuh…

“Is this…?”

“Dude, I thought it was a protein shake blender,” Barrett confesses. “I got confused in the baby aisle and panicked. You said Marlee’s into late night smoothies so, you know…thought I could help.”

The guys laugh at Bear’s expense but he takes it all in stride. I know sometimes Barett Cunningham can be a cranky douche but today, I see him as nothing but a loveable teddy bear.

“Thanks Bear. This might actually come in handy.”

We go through bags of diapers, a plastic sippy cup painted to look like a Gatorade bottle, and fuck if I know how they came up with it, but a full baby sleep sack stitched to resemble a referee’s jersey. The tag reads To train them young in the ways of injustice .

Those assholes.

Really though, this is amazing. I keep expecting the floor to drop out, for the room to get cold, or the noise to turn sour, but the longer it goes, the more I believe this is real.

That these guys that I call my friends, my teammates, my brothers, really are this ridiculous and that they’re actually happy for me.

I don’t care how many years I’ve known these guys. I never saw this one coming.

Harrison shoves drinks into everybody’s hands before we play ‘Pin the Puck on the Baby’.

Then we cut and eat a cake shaped like a diaper—which is deeply upsetting given the chocolate filling on the inside—and then they make me give a heartfelt speech I didn’t know I’d been preparing for my whole life:

“Wow. Fuck,” I start, wiping my hand down my face and staring back at my teammates.

My family. “I never thought I’d say this, but I hope my kid ends up with teammates like you guys.

Weird, chaotic, overly involved but…loyal.

And hilarious. And the worst at wrapping presents.

Thank you so much for…for all of this,” I say, gesturing around the room.

“Marlee would be beside herself if she were seeing this right now.” My eyes grow huge and I gasp just before I say, “And I hope you won’t mind doing all of this again because I want to throw Marlee the biggest most bad ass baby shower I can because she fucking deserves it. ”

“Hell yeah, we’ll help you,” Oliver says.

Harrison scratches his head. “But maybe next time we’ll get the ladies involved too.”

I smirk and nod in agreement. “Good idea.”

The guys cheer and Griffin fires a confetti cannon I’m positive he isn’t cleared to use indoors. And I just stand here in the middle of it all, icing tape on my shirt and another cupcake in one hand, thinking, fuck. These kids are gonna be so loved.