Page 110 of Home Ice

“Cool. Barrett’s up. I’m going to go and call Grandma.” He stands, towel around his shoulders, but pauses before he walks away. “Thanks, Hawke. I’m really glad I came.”

Kasen leaves, but I’m stuck on that moment, the sunshine on my skin, the smell of chlorine surrounding him, and my heart fucking bursting at those words.

He didn’t call me Dad.

And I’ve never been happier about it.

Chapter Thirty-Six

TAI

Overhearing that Hawke would give up hockey for me has me choked up for days. Like Kasen, I know what hockey means to him. I was there through all the highs and lows before his professional career got started, and knowing how hard it was for me to walk away, when I didn’t have a tenth of the love for the sport as Hawke does, makes it that much more impactful.

I never want Hawke to have to choose. My answer would have been the same as Kasen’s—well, except for the nepotism—that Hawke’s not allowed to quit.

With his confession and our feelings out there and the way being in St. Louis opened my eyes to a lot of things, I’ve started to take stock of my life since I got back.

And I don’t like what I see.

Other than my bedroom, the house has me in a constant state of panic. I’m working too much. I’m cutting friends out of my life before they can properly enter it, and I’m tired.

Hawke will leave because he has to, and up until now, I’ve been convinced that I’ll fall back into a spiral and live there forever.

But I don’t want to do that.

I want to be able to come home and relax like I could at his place. I want to be able to enjoy weekends doing nothing. I want my time back.

The first thing I tackle is the kitchen. Another sleepless night, another junk and donate pile, and I scrub the cabinets and bench tops and tiles until there isn’t a speck of dirt left. It’s still too full with the trash bags waiting to go out, but it’s an improvement.

Dad notices the next day. “You were the one making all the noise last night?”

“Sorry. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Don’t be sorry. It looks great out here.”

It does, if I don’t turn around and look at every other inch of the house. “It’s a start.”

The foyer is next. For a small space, it’s a big job, and I fall asleep on the floor halfway through the night.

Dad wakes me with a nudge from his walking stick. “Last I checked, you have a bed.”

I groan as I sit up and blink sleep out of my eyes. “Must have crashed.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard.”

He knows full well that I always do. “Thanks, Dad. But I think they call this motivation?”

“Well, you tell your motivation that you need sleep.”

Even being as tired as I am, I can’t shake the good mood. Elise and Hawke both notice it at training, but it’s like a fire has been lit in my chest, and I want to keep it there for as long as possible.

Until I get home that afternoon, ready to tackle the other half of the hallway, but as I walk through the front door, all my momentum screeches to a halt.

“Dad?” I call. “Were we robbed?”

He chuckles as he appears in the doorway. “Don’t be ridiculous. Told my walking group to come on in and take whatever they wanted from here. Abel grabbed all that trash from the back door as well. Said he has room in his dumpster at work for it.”

I’m not sure how to feel about people being in here and seeing what it was like. All that’s left is a pair of Dad’s boots by the hall table, a bowl with some keys in it, the mirror that’s lived on the wall forever, and three new hooks on the opposite wall. One of them is holding Dad’s jacket.