On the Fly (22 page)

We stayed like that for so long my arm
fell asleep, but I didn’t want to move. The last thing I wanted to
do was spoil the moment. She’d finally allowed herself to be
vulnerable with me, to lean on me even if only to cry. I resolved
to stay exactly as we were until she wanted or needed it to
end.

Her breathing slowed, her back rising
and falling against my hand in deep, even motions. For a moment, I
thought she might have fallen asleep. Just as I was debating
whether I should carry her to her bed or be selfish just a little
longer and keep her where she was, she shifted her head
slightly.

“
I was sixteen when I got
pregnant,” she said, her surprisingly steady voice coming as a
shock to my system.

I hadn’t thought she would tell me
tonight. Maybe I should have had more faith in her, just like she
shouldn’t have doubted I’d keep my word. She pulled another tissue
from the box and wiped her nose with it until I wasn’t sure she’d
keep talking.

“
My parents kicked me out,
and I couldn’t bring myself to have an abortion, so I thought the
only real choice I had left was to marry the guy who’d knocked me
up. I knew he wasn’t any great prize, but I never thought he would
turn out like he did.”

I held her, stroking her back while
she told me in a flat, lifeless voice how this man had become the
sort of monster who could molest his own little girl. I knew men
like that existed. Three of them had stolen seven years of my
sister’s life in the span of twenty minutes in a janitor’s closet.
The thought of what Maddie had gone through, multiple times in her
own home…it left me as sick as I was enraged. The thought that it
had been the one man in the world she ought to be able to trust to
treat her with love and kindness made it even worse. If you
couldn’t count on your father, who could you put your faith
in?

“
Where is he now?” I asked
when she fell silent.

“
Serving ninety-nine years
in Huntsville, unless he gets out early for good
behavior.”

That was probably safer for me. If he
was behind bars, I couldn’t accidentally-on-purpose go hunt him
down and use his face as a punching bag. Besides, after I’d lost my
cool with Zee last season and hit him for going along with Dana’s
plan, I’d made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t use my fists to
solve my problems anymore. I’d nearly ruined the best friendship
I’d ever had that way. Outside of a hockey game, where it was an
acceptable and encouraged means of settling differences, physical
altercations tended to create more problems than they
solved.

“
Thank you,” I said once I
trusted myself to speak without letting my anger into my voice.
“For trusting me enough to tell me.”

She pulled away, and for a moment I
feared she was going to run and lock herself in her bedroom or
something like that. That was how Dana would have responded, as a
means of self-preservation. But Rachel just moved back enough that
she could look up into my eyes.

“
People in my life have
always let me down,” she said. “They break their promises, they
push me away when I need help, or they become something far worse
than I ever imagined. It’s what I expect, so I don’t know what to
do with you. I keep waiting on you to be like everyone else. Like
tonight. I thought you’d forgotten and left without us. And there
was a part of me that was glad because I felt like then I would
understand you. I’d know I couldn’t count on you, that you’d be
just like everyone else in my life has always been, and so it would
be easier. You would have proven you were like my parents, just
like Jason—everything I expected you to be but hoped you
weren’t.”

I wasn’t quite following. “What would
be easier?”

“
I’d be able to shut you
out and go on with my life, just me and my kids.”

Ah
. So she wanted to keep them all in this protective bubble
she’d built. “But I didn’t forget,” I said.

“
No. You didn’t
forget.”

“
So now what?”

Rachel’s hand was resting on my chest,
and she trailed her fingertips over my shirt—just enough that it
tickled and made me want more, despite the fact that the present
moment was absolutely and unequivocally the wrong time to want what
it made me want.

“
Now things get
complicated,” she murmured.

I’d thought they already were
complicated.

I guess I had a lot to
learn.

I’d been racing
around like a madwoman getting Tuck and Maddie
dressed properly for the Storm’s Christmas party. We were finally
ready to go—other than getting the buttons on Tuck’s shirt aligned
with the proper button holes—when it sounded like the circus was
gathering in the hall just outside our door.

In the weeks we’d been living here,
I’d never heard anything close to that kind of racket. My kids and
I were the exception when it came to the average residents
here—most of them were singles or couples with no kids. All in all,
the building was typically fairly quiet.

Easily half a dozen pairs of feet were
stomping around out there. Probably more than that, truth be told.
I couldn’t make out what any of the voices were saying, but they
were all talking over one another, multiple conversations going on
at the same time.

Tuck’s eyes lit up, and he showed off
his missing-toothed grin. “Hurry up! Let’s go see what’s going
on.”

Leave it to my boy to be excited about
a crowd. He was easily the most social of the three of us. Maddie
and I were far more inclined to keep to ourselves and stick around
the house. Tuck always wanted to be in the middle of the
action.

He’d hardly ever been more excited
than he’d been at the game last night, surrounded by thousands and
thousands of screaming fans in a jam-packed arena. I would have
preferred it to be more like the Winterhawks game we’d gone to,
where at least half the seats were empty and we weren’t crowded on
all sides.

I hurried through fixing the last of
his buttons and handed him his coat. “All right. Let’s go see.”
We’d have to go out in the hall to leave, anyway.

Tuck raced ahead of me to the door,
pulling his coat on as he went but getting it upside down so it
covered his head more than his torso. Maddie hung back closer to me
and reached for my hand. I undid the dead bolt and checked all
around for Pumpkin to be sure he wasn’t going to make a mad dash
for freedom as soon as I opened the door. No orange ball of fluff
in sight. He wasn’t a big fan of noisy crowds, either, so hopefully
he’d stay put wherever he was right now. I opened the door, and
chaos reigned.

“
Hi!” Tuck shouted over the
din.

Two adults and six boys of different
ages were crowded around Brenden and Jamie’s door. Several of them
spun around at Tuck’s greeting, and I knew immediately who they
were—Jamie’s family. The boys all had his out of control hair, in
varying shades of blond and brown, and several shared his dimples
and easy smile.

Maddie moved closer to my side than
she already was, almost plastering herself to me.

The oldest boy was almost a carbon
copy of Jamie, easily as tall, almost as solidly built, and every
bit as adorable when he smiled down at Tuck, who’d completely
abandoned me and Maddie to go immerse himself in this crowd of
Babcocks. Jamie’s brother crouched down. “Are you the Ginger Ninja
my brother’s told me about?”

“
You’re Mr. Jamie’s
brother
?” Tuck said in
awe.

“
We all are,” one of the
younger boys said. He looked a couple of years older than Maddie
and had darker hair than the rest, more like their
father.

“
I wanna be his brother,
too.”

With that, the oldest tousled Tuck’s
hair and helped him sort out his coat. “From what Jamie tells me,
the Ginger Ninja gets what the Ginger Ninja wants…”

Jamie’s mother smiled at me, and I
attempted to return it. Since I knew who they were, I didn’t worry
too much about turning my back for a second to close and lock my
door. Especially since Maddie was still right by my
side.

As soon as I turned around, I realized
I’d left the door open too long. Pumpkin was making a mad dash for
freedom. I barely got my foot across in time to squish him between
the doorframe and my leg, hoping that would be enough to stop his
escape. I only caught his back end, though, and in no time he
fought his way free and dashed down the hallway as fast as his four
legs would carry him. Even in his old age, that cat could scoot
when he wanted to…and considering how much noise was filling this
end of the hall, he really, really wanted to. The commotion created
by my two kids was pretty much his limit.

Brenden seemingly materialized out of
thin air by my side, his warm hand coming down on my shoulder in a
comforting manner. I probably just hadn’t seen their door open
because of all the activity in the hall, but his sudden appearance
took me by surprise.

“
Come on,” he said. His
voice soothed my nerves somehow. “You, me, and Maddie will go catch
Pumpkin and bring him back. Tuck’ll be fine with Babs and his
family for a minute, okay?”

The thought of leaving one of my kids
alone with a huge crowd of strangers ate at me on the inside. But
it was Tuck, who positively adored all the attention he was getting
from them. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Jamie, too, had
made his way out into the hall with his family and was right by
Tuck’s side. I may not know Jamie’s family, but I did know him.
Tuck would be okay.

“
All right,” I finally
conceded, mainly because I couldn’t think of any better way of
going about it. If I made Tuck come with us, he’d be devastated
that he wasn’t with all of Jamie’s brothers. I pulled my door
closed and took Maddie’s hand. “Jamie?” I said loud enough to get
his attention. “We have to go catch Pumpkin.”

He nodded. “We’ll keep an eye on Tuck
for you.”

With that, the three of us made our
way off in the direction Pumpkin had run. When we came to the end
of the hallway, I looked both directions. To the right, there were
only a few doors and then a stairwell going both up and down. The
left was a considerably longer hall, and it led to another hallway
parallel to ours.

“
What do you think,
Maddie?” I asked. “Did he take the stairs or go the other
way?”

“
The other way,” she said
decisively. “He doesn’t like jumping up and down much anymore
’cause of his hips. I bet the stairs scared him.”

She was probably right. In recent
years, he’d started getting arthritis. I’d even bought him a set of
steps that we kept by Maddie’s bed, so he could get up easier. A
few steps he could handle…but a whole flight of them would be
intimidating.

We’d barely turned to the left when I
saw a streak of orange race past us.

“
Good guess,” Brenden
said.

We moved quickly to the end and turned
the corner. Pumpkin had already sped to the far end of the hallway
and was flying back toward us. It looked like he just wanted to
run. Every now and then, he still got a dose of the kitty crazies,
where he bounced off the walls like he had back when he was a
kitten. It always gave Tuck a giggle-fit when Pumpkin did that. The
trick now was catching him and getting him back to our
place.

Since he was headed our way, we slowed
down and let him come to us. “Be ready to block him if he tries to
dart past us,” I warned.

It turned out that wasn’t necessary.
Once Pumpkin got within spitting distance of us, he skidded to a
stop and hissed at Brenden. That gave Maddie enough time to move
over to him and pick him up.

Once he was in her arms, he instantly
started purring—loud enough that we could hear it over the ruckus
back by our doors. When we turned around to head back, Maddie moved
in front of us with Pumpkin, his fluffy tail wrapping around her
back.

Brenden reached down and took my hand,
the heat of his palm somehow warming my whole body. “Do you and the
kids know how to skate? One of the things we’ll do today is get
everyone out on the ice. It’s a lot of fun for the guys to get
their families out there.”