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He holds up his hand, waiting for me to give him a high-five, and I smack his palm, wishing this was something we did every day and not just when I come to visit.
When Blake sees Noah, his eyes light up. He runs over to him and drags him by the hand into the house, his voice growing louder as he tells him about all the fun games his parents bought for him.
Britt comes out from the house to hug my mother, Steve behind her and extending his hand to my father to greet them. The Hudsons are the nicest people I had ever met, which is why I knew they were the right family for Blake when Payton and our parents forced my hand, making me choose. I had no choice in the matter.
“Tyler,” Steve says, with a bright smile that reaches up to his green eyes. He looks so happy, and why shouldn’t he? Payton and I gave him the one thing he always wanted at the cost of my happiness. I got success and Steve got a family. And Payton just moved the fuck on as if it had never happened.
“How are you doing?” He opens the door wider to allow me enough room to follow him into the house. Shitty, I want to respond but let him carry on with the conversation.
“I caught the last game. That's a shame you guys didn’t make the playoffs this year.”
“Yeah, it sucks. There’s always next year,” I mutter, annoyed I am having this discussion again.
I am starting to get sick of hearing the same thing from every person I know. We didn’t make the playoffs, same as last year and the year before that. That was not a surprise. Regardless of the few good players we have on our team, we are nowhere near the shape we need to be in to have a real shot at making the playoffs.
Teamwork wins games, and we don’t have much of a rapport after calling up guys from the AHL and having zero cohesion with them. But it’s not like what we had was working, to begin with, which is why the organization made some bad calls with the team. Even with Parker and Donovan on the ice with me, I still need to rely on the other three players, and so far, none of the wingers on our team has meshed well with each other.
My mother and Britt stroll into the kitchen together, chatting non-stop and hardly taking a second to catch their breaths before they switch topics. With Payton at my side and Steve bugging me about hockey, I am not in the mood to sit in the living room with them and share the same couch as Payton.
I wish I felt nothing for her and that I could move on with my life after all these years, but the pain never goes away. If we didn’t have Blake holding us together, I would have at least tried to forget she ever existed. But she was the first and only girl I ever loved, and she took a piece of me with her that she has yet to give back.
I can hear Blake and Noah playing in the basement, the boys yelling and laughing so loudly that their voices carry up the stairs. The warmth and love inside the Hudsons home sometimes make me miss what I had with my parents before everything went downhill. Things are not the same between with us. Whether it’s me being stubborn and unwilling to let go of the past, I will never know.
But what I do know is the chemistry we have together is about as cohesive as my team, which is not saying much. You can cut the tension between my father and me with a knife when we are in the same room together. He asks me about hockey, as per the usual, and I give him the same premeditated answers, pretending our father-son talks don’t annoy the shit out of me.
Then we go without speaking for another month unless my mom calls beforehand to tell me she has a sweet girl she would like to fix me up with the next time I am in town. After that, my dad gets on the phone to tell me what he thinks I did wrong on the ice as if he has a fucking clue.
It’s a real blast.
“How’s Luke doing? He hasn’t made the drive in a while,” Steve says to Payton.
I find it hard to hide my disgust, looking away from them as she speaks.
“Oh, he’s doing good. Luke found this old boat at an auction that he’s been playing with for the last few weeks. He’s hoping to fix it up and take it out this summer. Noah is excited about it. Every weekend, he helps his dad polish the boat.” She stops to chuckle to herself. “Well, he thinks he’s helping, but Luke just gives him a microfiber cloth to wipe it down.”
“That’s great,” Steve says, sinking back into the leather recliner in the corner of the living room. “Blake helps me in the garage all the time. He loves handing me my tools and helping me cleanup after I’m doing working on the old girl.”
He talks about his late sixties Mustang he stores in the garage and never drives with such reverence, but it’s the way he speaks of Blake that catches my attention most. Setting my feelings aside, Steve is a good father to Blake. I just wish I had the chance to make the proper choice before it was too late. I’m lucky that the Hudsons were so relaxed about open adoption and that after eight years they have still held up their end of the bargain.
I wouldn’t sign the adoption papers knowing I would never see my son again. Now, I torture myself with these visits. E
ven though my parents pushed hard for me to go along with Payton and give Blake to the Hudsons, they took one look at him in the hospital and had a hard time saying goodbye. What surprised me most was how easy it was for Payton, which also caused the rift in our relationship.
She signed on the dotted line faster than she could get the paper in her hands, yet she has dragged not only herself but her family into this fucked up extended family thing we have going on, both of us punishing ourselves by coming here. But I still need to see Blake. Because even though I know Blake is better off without me, living his life with parents who love him and have the time to care for him, I still feel connected to him. He is still a part of me.
Ignoring everyone in the room—because I don’t give a shit about Payton’s husband or what they did last weekend with Noah—I zone out and play with my cellphone. I should go into the basement and see how Blake is doing, but I also don’t want to be an ass and disrupt his playtime with Noah just so I can spend some time with him.
After checking the first round playoff scores and highlights in the NHL app, a text message pops up on my screen. I’m surprised to see Kennedy’s name after the way I treated her the other day. I never meant to act like a piece of shit, but my first instinct was to be mean enough that she would want to leave without me picking her up and removing her from the house. She struck a nerve when she asked about Blake.
We made promises beforehand that in my mind she broke. I was starting to like her feistiness, able to look past her bizarre clothing and see her in a different light. My God, she’s sexy as fuck when she comes. And the things she does with her mouth…
Peeking at the message, I get a little excited at the prospect of another chance with Kennedy until I process her words.
Kennedy: I know your secret.
Anxious and freaking out on the inside, I grip the phone so hard my bones hurt, doing my best to maintain my composure. Before I can type out an angry reply, another message flashes on my screen.
Kennedy: I won’t tell anyone.
