Page 3 of Meant for Mayhem

Of all the people in the room, both players and staff, our head trainer was probably the only guy bigger than me. He had his arms crossed over his broad chest, looking every bit the former linebacker turned trainer he was.

Sound returned to me as I sat there. Frankie dropped into a squat in front of me and grabbed my wrist, pinching my pulse point. “I forgot Thor doesn’t need to breathe like the rest of us. Or is it Chewbacca now?”

I focused on his fingers, the color dark against my own clammy skin, trying to push away the panic. “Leena,” I started, my voice sounding wrong. “She’s⁠—”

“Would you like to check on her?” Frankie said, still concentrating on my heart rate.

“On it.” Logan reached over my head into the locker holding my personal items. He swiped across my phone screen, then held it in front of my face until it unlocked.

Before I had time to question what was happening, my mother’s voice echoed through the locker room. “Mikko?”

“Nah, it’s your favorite Yeti,” Logan said. His dark hair was wet and curling against his forehead, and he swept it back from his face with a grin. “The Giant’s right here, though, and⁠—”

I pulled my hand out of Frankie’s grip and reached for my phone. “Is she still upset?”

My mom smiled at me through the video call, but it was all wrong.

“What?” My heart rate sped up more somehow. “Is Leena okay? Are you okay? I knew I shouldn’t have left.”

“Breathe, Miksu.” She put her phone in her lap, then pushed herself down the hallway from my living room to Leena’s bedroom, nudging open the door with the footrest of her wheelchair. The wheels squeaked softly as she moved toward the modified crib, making it so my mom could access Leena quickly if she needed to. “She’s perfect.”

The camera flipped, and there was my daughter. Leena was fast asleep, her dark lashes splayed across chubby cheeks, white-blonde hair curling at her nape. She was on her stomach, butt in the air like she so often did, cheek pressed into the mattress. My name was written across the back of a Denver Yetis onesie my former teammate Beckett Conway had gifted her, dressed for game day. Her pacifier moved in and out of her mouth, soothing her in the same way having my eyes on her seemed to soothe me.

She was so perfect, so pure, and so very dependent on me to get my shit together.

I couldn’t pinpoint the feeling in my chest every time I saw her face. Was it adoration for the precious little girl she was? Anger that I’d already missed the first year of her life? Guilt that I was missing more?

Maybe.

But with every beat of my racing heart, all of it was overshadowed.

Fear that I was all she had.

Worry that I would, or already had, mess her up.

Panic that something would happen while we were apart, and the only person left in her life would let her down too.

“She’s fine, my boy.” Mom set the phone in her lap and made her way back out to the hallway. “Are you?”

And wasn’t that the question?

“Working on it,” Frankie said. “Thank you, Mrs. Laaksonen. I’ll take care of him.”

“We’ll be waiting for you,” my mom said before she hung up, her expression more worried than before. Which was great—now I could add a burden to my mother to the list of failures.

Frankie sat down next to me, then picked up my hand again. “Do you have one of those cameras that looks into her crib?”

“A baby monitor.” I looked down at my palm. “Are we holding hands now?”

“I’d like that, thanks for asking,” Frankie said, still not letting go of me. “I love a man comfortable in his masculinity.”

I sighed, then pulled up the monitor app on my phone and got it going, propping it on a shelf nearby.

“That’s some great child’s pose positioning. A little athlete in the making.” He looked over my shoulder at what I could only assume was Coach Tremblay behind me. Despite the playful tone of his voice, his body language said I wasn’t in the clear yet. “Is she always that cute?”

“She’s mine,” I said, not sure if that was even an answer to his question.

My teammates laughed, the tone in the room lightening.