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“Really?”
But it’s not Tiffany talking. I glance down, realize my little girl has come close enough to hear.
“I can get my nails done like Tiffany?” she exclaims, bouncing on the toes of her skates. Red-cheeked and sweaty, still clad head to toe like a little marshmallow in her hockey gear, and excited about a manicure.
I grin, and it’s a real one this time.
“Yeah, baby,” I tell her. “You can get your nails done like Tiffany.”
She whoops.
“But we need to get you changed, and then you have to wash your hands”—because gloves are the stinkiest, no matter how hard I try to keep them smelling fresh—“and face”—because that’s just a good habit—“but then, yes, you can go with Tiffany and get your nails did.”
I draw out the last word, wiggling my fingers in her direction, and getting that little giggle from her that settles in my belly, my heart, my soul.
“Let’s go, stinky,” I tease, thumping her lightly on the top of her helmet and nodding at Tiffany. “Be out in a few.”
Tiffany is bouncing slightly, her excitement about spending time with my daughter as palpable as Roxie’s.
It hurts.
But I’ve always said that the more people around Roxie who love her, the better.
So, I go into the locker room. I help my daughter take off her gear. Walk her to the bathroom so she can wash her hands—and her face.
Then I send her off with Tiffany to get her nails done.
And my car is subjected to the stink of wet, dirty hockey gear the entire way home.
Three
Stefan
“As your lawyer, I would highly advise you don’t agree with these terms,” my attorney, Russ Laughlin, says, flipping through the thick-as-shit file on his desk and shaking his head.
Because…
Brit hired Bec Darden?—
Or Bec Darden’s firm, anyway, because Darden herself focuses on employment law, but as a partner in a nationally recognized law practice and a total shark, she has plenty of family law attorneys under her purview.
Including the one who’s handling Brit’s side of our divorce.
“Give her anything she wants,” I mutter. “I just need to have fifty-fifty custody.”
“She’s not contesting the custody arrangements,” Russ says, “the house, on the other hand?—”
“She can have it.”
“And the property up in Tahoe,” he says, flipping the page on his legal pad. “I know you haven’t started building yet, but it’s worth?—”
“She can have it.”
“And—”
I glance up, meet his eyes, locking our stares, trying to make this man understand something he has absolutely no ability to comprehend. “She. Can. Have. It.”
“Stefan—”
