“A baby,” I whisper, the word feeling foreign on my tongue. “Your baby. Our baby. A child who would never know fear or walking on eggshells or having to be quiet to avoid setting off their father.”
Dex goes very still. “Are you saying you want to have another child?”
“I’m saying I’m not sure anymore. I’m saying the door I thought was permanently closed might be... cracked open.” Imeet his eyes. “But I need to know what happens if it stays closed. If I decide I really am done with babies and diapers and sleepless nights. If Tyson and Blythe are enough family for me.”
“Would that be a dealbreaker for you?” he asks quietly. “If I said I needed more than that?”
The question terrifies me, because I don’t know the answer. A month ago, I would have said yes without hesitation. But now, with this man who’s shown me what partnership looks like, what unconditional love feels like...
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I hope not. But I can’t ask you to give up something you’ve always wanted without knowing if I can give you what you need.”
We stand there in my kitchen with coffee mugs and homework scattered around, and I can feel how big this conversation is. This could change everything.
“Can I ask you something?” Dex says.
“Yeah.”
“When you think about having a baby with me, how does it feel? Does it feel right, or does it feel like something you think you should want?”
I close my eyes. Dex holding a baby. Teaching three kids to skate instead of two.
“It feels like possibility,” I say finally. “Scary, but not wrong.”
“Then maybe we don’t decide tonight,” he says. “Maybe we see how we feel in six months, a year.”
“That’s not fair to you. You shouldn’t have to wait around hoping I’ll change my mind.”
“Goldie.” He takes my hands. “A year ago, if someone told me I’d fall in love with a single mom and that her kids would become everything to me, I would have laughed.”
“And now?”
“Now I know family isn’t about biology. It’s about choice.” His thumbs brush my knuckles. “I choose you and Tyson and Blythe. Every day. And if that’s all we ever are, it’s enough.”
“But if I wanted more...”
“We’d figure it out.”
I study his face, looking for doubt. But all I see is patience and the same certainty that’s gotten us through everything else.
“What if I can’t?” I whisper. “What if I decide I really am done? What if wanting biological kids is something you can’t give up?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I hope it wouldn’t be. But I don’t know.”
The honesty hits harder than reassurance would have. Because this is real. This matters. And we might not be compatible on the thing that matters most.
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“We take it one day at a time. And hope like hell we figure it out.”
20
DEX
Three months into playoff season,and I’m starting to understand why most guys keep their personal lives separate from hockey. Not because I want to—hell no—but because having something this important outside the rink changes everything about how you think, how you play, how you handle the pressure.
Case in point: I’m supposed to be reviewing game film right now, analyzing Calgary’s power play setup for tomorrow’s game. Instead, I’m watching Golda make breakfast through the kitchen doorway, wearing one of my old practice shirts and nothing else, and my brain has completely abandoned hockey strategy in favor of cataloguing the way her legs look in the morning light.
“You’re staring,” she says without turning around, amusement in her voice.
