TYLER

On the last Sunday of each month, unless I have a game or hockey related event I cannot miss, I have the same plans. I always know what I am doing on that day because it haunts me the entire month, rips me apart from the inside. I drive over to the home of Britt and Steve Hudson, all the way from South Jersey to Long Island just so I can be confronted with the worst mistake I ever made.

I choose to do this because I have so much pain, guilt, and shame on a constant basis that I need to see that my decision turned out well for at least one of us. Parked in front of their house, I sit in my car, gripping the steering wheel as I try to compose myself before getting up the nerve to go inside. For the few hours I spend in their home, I remember what it is like to have a family, feel the love and warmth of a mother and the strength and support of a father.

I am always the first one to arrive and the last to leave, stuck waiting out front for the rest of our clan to show up. From the rear view mirror, I spot my parents dark gray Mercedes coming down the street followed by Payton’s black Range Rover.

I’m always torn about how I feel when it comes to my parents and Payton. I love Payton and hate myself for it because she doesn’t deserve my love. And I hate that she drove the wedge between my parents and me, yet she has somehow brought us back together, no matter how dysfunctional the relationship.

My father is the reason I am a professional hockey player. He made sure of it. For whatever reason, he was obsessed with the sport and thought I had the athletic ability. Well, at least he was right about that. Growing up in a middle class neighborhood with a mom who didn’t work and a father who had to work two jobs just to make ends meet, we never had any money.

Dad had taken on a side job mowing lawns every summer to stash away enough money to pay for my hockey equipment and rink time. Even though we barely speak, except brief texts and our monthly visits, I did everything in my power to ensure my parents are financially set for the rest of their lives. I owe my father that much after everything he did for me.

I suck in a deep breath and let it out before I get out of my car and lock the door. My dad parks behind me, giving me a quick nod as he takes off his seatbelt. Mom holds up her hand and waves. For a few seconds, this all seems real and normal, as if we’re one big happy family. That is until Payton shuts her door and walks toward me with her four-year-old son, Noah, holding his hand.

Noah looks just like her with those big blue eyes that dominate his face, making it impossible not to notice, and the same blond hair—except his is short, and Payton’s stops right below her shoulders. The first time I saw Payton, I was fourteen and thought I was hot shit at our high school after making it onto the varsity hockey team my freshman year and could have just about any girl I wanted.

But the only girl I wanted was Payton once I spotted her in the crowded lunchroom. She made me chase her for weeks, earned my respect, and by the end of the school year, I was crazy in love with her. I had my first everything with Payton, thought she’d be alongside me once I made it big. I guess life had other plans for us.

“Tough break this season,” Dad says to me, slamming his door shut.

Of course, that’s the first thing he would mention. Because why would we have a conversation about anything other than hockey?

“Yeah, we’ll get them next year.” I try to play it off as if all the losses this year wasn’t a big deal.

When we lucked out and scored Alex Parker on a trade to the Flyers, I had thought we’d hit the jackpot. Until he went through some rough times with Coach and sulked his way through the last half of the season, leaving us with zero chance of securing a wild card spot in the playoffs.

Dad runs a hand through his messy dark hair and blinks from the sun in his eyes. He flashes a tiny smile when he meets my gaze and stalks toward me. “Have you started your off-season training yet?”

I try my best not to roll my eyes and keep my irritation at bay. “No, not yet. The season ended for us a week ago. I’m planning to take a few more weeks off to allow my body to recuperate.”

He throws his hands on his hips, his disappointment with my response written all over his face. “Well, it’s never too soon to start.”

We are complete opposites in every way. He has dark hair, hard features, and the attitude to match, where I have my mom’s light hair and eyes. I suppose I have his fly-off-the-handle temperament.

“Dad, I know what I am doing, thank you very much. I’ve been playing hockey for almost as long as I’ve been alive.”

“Leave the poor boy alone, Carl,” my mother says, leaning over the hood of the car and shaking her head at my father in disapproval. They have this fight every time.

He glances in her direction and shoots her a pointed look. “You don’t get to where Tyler is in his career and stay there without the proper structure. The boy needs to work hard if he wants that paycheck, and maybe he’ll even win us a Stanley Cup.”

Not this shit again. Every time my parents start up over my career, it turns into a fight that my mother never wins, even though she tries her hardest to prove my dad wrong.

“Hi,” Payton says in her singsong voice, coming up from behind my father. ‘How are all of you doing on this beautiful Sunday afternoon?”

Most of the time, it eats me alive to be in the same proximity as her, but at this moment, her intrusion is a welcome relief. I cannot have another conversation about my career or the shitty season with my father again. For the brief periods we do speak, he chooses to spend the time ripping apart my game or the team, telling me I can do better and pull our team out of the gutter.

He thinks I am the key to the Flyers winning the Stanley Cup. I hate to break it to him, but we are nowhere near the Cup with our current roster, regardless of my talent. And just because he’s a real fan that believes in his team that doesn’t mean miracles are about to happen if he wishes hard enough or prods me to death.

“Oh, we’re wonderful, dear,” Mom says to Payton. “How was your drive?”

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles, revealing a set of white teeth just as perfect as the rest of her appearance. “I hit a bit of traffic coming into New York, but overall, it wasn’t too bad. Noah likes the bridge so being stuck on it ended up working out for us.”

I can’t help but stare at Payton. Even after our lives had changed forever, she was still like a ray of sunshine, always smiling and full of life. She could light up a room with the aura she gives off. On the other hand, I was and still am a miserable fuck who deserved to lose her in the end. But I still hate her or at least resent her for the permanent damage she did to my heart and my life.

“Hey, Ty,” Payton says with a wide grin, holding her hand up to her face to shield her eyes from the sun, her grip slipping on Noah once he sees my mother on the other side of the car.

“Hey,” I mutter, keeping my distance.

Noah says hello to me and then runs over to my mother who has her arms open wide, ready to lift him up and into one of her bear hugs. For someone who is so good with kids, my mother should have been more on my side when it had come to Blake. But we both allowed my father to make our decisions for us, only to regret it after I had signed the papers and it was too late.

My father joins them on the sidewalk, playing in the driveway with some toy Noah has in his hand. I’m just happy he has a distraction.

“You don’t look too hot.” Payton closes the distance between us, and the choking sensation that creeps up the back of my throat threatens to suffocate me. “I heard about your season ending early.”

Around her, the air is denser and harder to breathe. Despite how many years we have repeated this encounter in front of this very house, it never gets easier for me. Unlike Payton, I am unable to move on from the past.

“It didn’t end early,” I correct, annoyed that she still does not understand how the seasons work after all these years. “We played all eighty-two games, same as always. We just missed out on the playoffs.”

“Oh, well, you know what I mean.” She shrugs it off, nonchalant. “How are you doing otherwise? Are you sleeping? You look tired.”

She reaches out to touch my face, and I take a step back. “I’m fine. Can you not pretend like you’re my girlfriend and that you still care and just do what we need to do right now. Blake is waiting.”

“This is not some obligation anyone is forcing on you.” Her expression darkens from her usual sunshine and light, the storm brewing beneath her eyes. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to be, and we both know you would never miss a date with Blake.”

“I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for you,” I say under my breath, but she hears me and grinds her teeth together.

“You made the decision, Tyler. We did it together. When are you going to accept it and move on?” She doesn’t stop long enough to allow me to respond. “Blake has two parents who love him so much that they let us be part of his life. He has a normal life because of them. We had no money and nothing to offer him. It hurts me just as much as you.”

“You have a family. I have nothing. So, don’t act like you know what I am going through, what it’s like to be me, because you have no clue.”

She narrows her eyes at me, the two of us in a mental face-off. If this were a hockey game, I would win this no problem. But Payton has a way of creeping into my mind, body, and heart and destroying me from the inside out.

“Are you kids ready?” My father calls out, shielding his eyes from the mid-afternoon sun.

“Yes, we’re coming,” Payton announces, the smile already back on her face. She turns to me for a second, her mouth twisted in disgust. “Noah and Blake have a play date. Please don’t ruin this for them.”

“I would never think of it,” I spit back.

Following behind Payton, Noah, and my parents, I make an attempt to turn my frown upside down and find it almost impossible until my father knocks on the door and it swings open a few seconds later. Blake answers in a black-and-white striped tracksuit, a big smile on his face when he sees me.

“Uncle Tyler,” Blake calls out to me, and I almost break down and cry. His words gut me.

“Hey, buddy,” I manage to choke out, the pain of this situation killing me, same as it does every month.

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. Even 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.

Me: Can I see you?

Kennedy: After what you did last time, I think I’ll pass.

Me: I’m sorry. I was a jerk. Now you know why.

Kennedy: That doesn’t change your behavior. You embarrassed me to try to protect your secret when all it did was make me want to find out what you were hiding.

Me: Please. Let me make it up to you. I was an asshole. You deserve an apology in person. Let’s do coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, jewelry, a massage…whatever you want.

Everything about what I am doing right now is so damn pathetic. Waiting for the typing bubble to pop up again drives me crazy. When Kennedy responds a few minutes later, her answer gives me hope and something to look forward to tomorrow.

Kennedy: I still hate you, just so you know, but I will meet you at Broad Street Beans tomorrow at noon. Don’t be late.

Me: It’s a date.

Kennedy: No, it’s not a date. You will grovel and buy me coffee and pie, but we are not going on a date together. And if you want my forgiveness, you had better start talking to me.

Me: Fine. See you there.

She knows the truth about Blake, which scares the hell out of me. I was always afraid this would happen one day, after all these years of being in the league. Ever since I kicked Kennedy out of my house, the guilt has been eating me alive. I cannot screw this up again.