Page 13 of Crack the Ice

I roll to a stop outside Tampa Bay High, putting the car in park before I pull out my phone and do some more research on adoption. Not that I haven’t already read every piece of literature my lawyer recommended. I can’t wait around, though. Plus there’s always something to be done.

We’re about to have to go through what I’m told is an abbreviated home study. The kids already live with me. They have for half a year, so that process should be shorter according to my lawyer.

There’s a light tap on my window, and my finger jams against the unlock button. Cade pulls open the door, slinging his backpack into the back seat before climbing into the passenger side. The hot Florida air smacks me in the face as he closes it behind him.

“Hey, Cap,” he says, turning to tap my fist with his own. His shaggy blond hair looks messier than it did this morning, and there are bags under his eyes that have no place being on the face of a sixteen-year-old.

“Rough day?” I ask, briefly looking at him before turning my attention back to the road.

His head flops back on the headrest as a harsh breath passes through his lips. “This feels like one big joke. She’s been gone for half a year.”

I stay quiet, waiting to see if he’s finished. “I’m so grateful for you, Reed. You’ve been the best, and I know you love us. But that’s my mom. I miss her, and I’m pissed that she left us here.”

My hands tighten around the steering wheel as I pull onto the main road. “Do you want some advice, or do you need someone to listen?”

“Yes,” he groans. “No. I don’t know.”

I let my hand come down on his shoulder, squeezing slightly before I open my mouth. “It’s okay to miss her. She didn’t leave you, though. She fought till the end, and still made sure she had a plan for after.”

He lets out a scoff, but looks up at me with tears clinging to his lashes. I haven’t been intentional enough with them and their grief journey. I need to get them both in with a therapist.

“I just,” he sighs, turning to rest his shoulders against the window. “What happens if you get tired of us one day? Or if it’s too much to keep us when you’re traveling? Where will we go then?”

My foot slams on the brake, shooting us both forward. My arm stretches across the front to keep him from hitting the dash. “Cade, I’ll retire right now if that makes you feel better. I’m trying to adopt you two, legally making you mine. I won’t be getting tired of you.”

“I don’t want you to retire. I love watching you play. I hate that I feel like we’re in the way.” He smacks a closed fist against his thigh, his anger at the situation rightfully growing by the second. “This is bullshit.”

“You’re not in the way,” I say, turning into Lily’s middle school. “Take it out on the ice, leave it there. But don’t lose yourself in the process. I wouldn’t have taken you in if you were in the way. I love having you with me. It gives me purpose outside the team.”

I put my car in park as we wait for the final school bell to ring. “You can’t be what your sister needs if you’re not dealing with what’s in here.” I push my pointer finger into the middle of his chest, and he immediately pushes it away. “I’ll take care of everything else, but I need you to take care of yourself. Deal?”

Cecilia had a similar talk with me one night. It’d been the first night I’d realized how far I let myself fall, consumed by the same grief her parents and brother were lost to when I first met her. God, did she let me have it. I swallow roughly, knowing he probably needs the same words I did back then. “Did you know Cecilia and I used to be best friends?”

He snorts. I don’t think the two of them have ever seen the two of us together outside the bakery. “She looks like she wants to claw your eyes out every time she sees you.”

I let myself laugh with him. I know how absurd that sounds, especially because he’s right. It fucking guts me that my love for that woman isn’t common knowledge.

“I know.” A self-deprecating chuckle fills the space between us. “She got mad at me one day, looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘I know you mean well, Mav, but you’re going to lose the ones you claim to care about most if you don’t start taking care of yourself.’”

Guess she was right about that one.

“Did you?”

I let my eyes fall shut, recalling the look on her face when I ran out of the house, seconds before her and I were supposed to go to an event together. “No.”

It was shock, then pain. But the worst was that it didn’t even hit me until I was already halfway across town that she would now be showing up alone. Alone to an event she’d spent months helping to plan, months she spent talking about with me. I left her, and that wasn’t the only time.

I clear my throat, opening my eyes as a chill runs through me, over the fact that she didn’t even stop to turn around as she walked out of the house the next time she’d come over. She always turned around. It was the coldest she’d been to me in the seven years I’d known her.

“My point is, this isn’t easy, Cade. I’m pissed to hell that you two are even in this situation, but grateful that it’s me who gets to take care of you now. You’ve gotta find a way to cope, feel, and process it. Not bottle it up.”

The school bell rings outside, and seconds later, hundreds of middle schoolers are pushing through the doors, scattering across the grass like ants looking for which car is theirs.

“Thanks, Reed,” he says quietly as his sister bounds toward my car with a smile on her face.

“Always, man.” And I mean it. I can’t imagine a world where these two aren’t part of it. I joke about them being the original rink rats. Which is what we’ve lovingly started calling all the kids my teammates’ wives keep having.

“Reed!” Lily cheers as she pulls the back door open. “Are we going home or to the rink?”