Page 14 of Hockey Nanny

The team captain looked back at me, plain horror written on his face. “We fucked up. Henry’s locked himself in the bathroom, and he won’t come out.”

“What?” I dumped my bag on the floor, already storming down the hallway as I yelled over my shoulder. “Why!? What happened? How long has he been in there?”

“Going on an hour.” Dawson jogged to keep up with me, and Boone and Gage trailed along behind us. “It all spiraled out of control so quickly, I didn’t know what to do.”

“He’s been in there for an hour?!” I whisper-hissed as I approached the bathroom door. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“We tried. Several times,” Boone chimed in, looking more distraught than I’d ever seen him, not even when Gage drank the last of his orange juice. “Your phone’s off, or dead. Or I don’t know, we thought maybe you were ignoring us.”

“Why would I—?” I cut myself off, shooing him out of the way as I leaned my ear toward the door. “Henry, love, are you in there?”

The faintest sounds of sniffing and sniveling reached me through the wood. I glanced back at Dawson, whose face had gone white. Gage, behind him, looked equally pale, and all three guys stood there dumbfounded, completely at a loss on how to handle the situation.

I would have rolled my eyes at their blank expressions had the circumstances not been so dire. Turning, I knocked gently on the door again, listening with an ear near the keyhole. “Henry? It’s Carissa. Do you want to come out?”

Another sniff, followed by a pitiful: “Go away.”

“Okay.” I straightened up and put a hand on my hip, running the other one through my hair. I looked at Dawson. “Tell me, from the top. What happened?”

The three of them exchanged glances, then Dawson cleared his throat. “Things were fine after you left. Henry was still hopped up on sugar, but he was playing helicopter, and we were all hanging out in the living room.”

His pause went on a second too long, and I windmilled my hand to speed him up. “And then?”

“And then Henry wanted to watch a movie,” Boone piped up, folding his arms and leaning against the wall in a huff. He shot an accusatory look back at Dawson. “Which wasfine.”

“Itwasfine,” Dawson said through his teeth. “But the movie he picked was some B-list horror movie, and the rating was thirteen and up.”

“So you told him no, and he threw a tantrum?” I raised a brow. That didn’t sound like Henry. Sure, the kid got temperamental occasionally, but it was usually because he was struggling to communicate how he was feeling, not because he wasn’t allowed to do something.

“No, not exactly.” Dawson threw a brief glance in Gage’s direction. “Henry was just pretty insistent, and he kept going on about how he was big enough to watch the movie, and Boone wasn’t helping—”

“Oh,come on,” Boone rolled his eyes. “I just said it wasn’t a big deal. If he wants to watch the movie, he can watch the movie.”

“Boone, shut up.” I pointed a finger at him, still keeping my eyes on Dawson. “Go on.”

“And then Gage chimed in and told him to stop whining.” Dawson finished in a rush. “Henry teared up after that and ran to the bathroom. He’s been refusing to come out ever since.”

In the corner of my eye, I caught Gage’s shoulders stiffening, but the guy looked away when I glanced at him.

“Okay.” I blew out a breath, running a hand over my face and wondering how the hell three grown men were laid low by one solitary seven-year-old. “This is not as much of a disaster as you think it is. I think I know why he’s upset.”

“Can you get him to come out?” Dawson’s eyes were stricken and pleading. In fact, all three of them were silently begging for help, pleading in their own special ways.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” I waved aside their puppy-dog eyes and stepped up to do my job. “I can fix this.”

7

~

Dawson

To say I was relieved to let Carissa take the reins was the understatement of the century. With Gage and Boone both on my back and a crying kid hiding in the bathroom, I was sufficiently rattled, shaken in a way not even a game against the Chicago Blackhawks could make me feel. God knows what would have happened if Carissa hadn’t turned up when she did.

For all my eagerness to be a good caretaker to Henry, it seemed I had fumbled at the very first step of parenting and landed in the worst possible timeline. Hell, I didn’t even know the kid knew how to lock the bathroom door in the first place, or else I would’ve made a point of hiding all the keys. A part of me wondered if I would have been better off just wrapping the whole house in bubble wrap and calling it a day.

I was still struggling to wrap my head around just how things had gone so wrong so quickly when Carissa succeeded in coaxing Henry into opening the door. It creaked open just an inch, and Carissa waved a placating hand at the three of us when Boone, Gage, and I all tensed up at once.

“Hey, little man.” Carissa kneeled to talk with Henry, whose one teary eye was visible through the crack. “Can I come in? The other three will stay out here.”