I’D BEEN RIGHT. Jim Sutter wasn’t simply on board with me going up to area schools with Mackenzie when she was volunteering, even if I couldn’t go every time. Frankly, he was ecstatic about the idea. I still had to spend plenty of time rehabbing my ankle, and some of the sessions Mackenzie had set up with the schools wouldn’t work out for me. She’d have to do those on her own, like she’d originally planned. But taking on this sort of volunteer work would keep me, and therefore the team, in the public eye by doing good in the community. Or at least that was the way Mr. Sutter saw things.
As a matter of fact, he was so excited about it that he had Rachel Campbell put together a huge assortment of Portland Storm swag items we could give out to the kids: pucks I could sign, foam hockey sticks, magnets, calendars, kid-sized Storm T-shirts and jerseys, keychains, bumper stickers, and virtually every other thing imaginable that bore the Portland Storm logo—as long as it was appropriate for kids, at least.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was that Mackenzie expected me to be the one to read to the kids when I accompanied her—something she neglected to tell me until we were parking in front of the elementary school where Bea Castillo taught.
“I thought you were going to read to them,” I spluttered, my utter surprise making me lose my cool. “I thought I was just coming along to give out prizes.”
Mackenzie laughed and gave me a pitying look. “You don’t get to be the Vanna White in this scenario. You don’t get to just stand there and turn the pages while I read. The kids want to engage with you much more than with me.”
“Never said I should be,” I muttered. Absentmindedly, I tugged on the hem of my sweater. Jim had insisted I wear it instead of a suit or something more formal and fussy so the kids would immediately understand who I was when I walked into the building. He wanted there to be no doubt that I played for the Storm. I wished tugging on it would help calm my nerves, but I had no such luck.
Put a stick in my hands and send me out on the ice, and I was your man. Calm, cool, in charge. I got shit done out there. Send me out in front of a bunch of kids and ask me to read to them, and I forgot how my brain worked.
The thought of reading to them scared the ever-loving fuck out of me, never mind the fact that I was old enough I should be able to fake it until I made it. Or something like that.
This wasn’t going to end well. It couldn’t possibly.
“I did read to them the first time I came,” Mackenzie said, perfectly put-together.
It was as if we’d switched identities or something. I was a fucking mess, ready to fall apart at the drop of a hat, but she was in her element, as though she was born for doing this kind of thing. Was it the kids who brought out this side of her? Or maybe the books?
Either way, it was a nice change of pace. I could get used to seeing my wife like this.
“And I’ll be the one reading to them next time, too,” she continued after a moment, before I could formulate another logical argument against her plan. “But what’s the point of you coming with me today if you aren’t going to read to them?” she countered.
“I don’t know,” I hedged, practically squirming with nerves. “I thought I could just sign some shit and be a representative of the Storm. That’s what I normally do at these kinds of things.”
She rolled her eyes, which might have been the first time she’d ever showed signs of being a bit snarky with me.
I had to admit, I liked it even if I didn’t like the reason she was doing it. Showed some spunk and sass. And that she was starting to be more comfortable with me—comfortable enough that she wasn’t afraid of my reaction.
“You can’t curse in there,” she said. “They’re kids, and you can bet that if you do, that’s the only thing they’ll be telling their parents when they get home, and the team will be hearing all about it. And if there’s such a thing as what you normally do at these kinds of things, then you’re already more prepared for this than you give yourself credit for.”
Fucking hell.
This was exactly why I shouldn’t have to talk to them. My palms were already starting to sweat. The last time I could remember feeling this nervous was when Ghost had shoved me out of an airplane.
“How many kids?” I demanded.
“Four classes of first graders plus Bea’s special education students. I think about seventy-five to a hundred, all told.”
“I can’t read to that many kids.”
I couldn’t read to a single kid, let alone dozens of them. I wasn’t cut out for this sort of scenario. It was one thing to hang out with my teammates and their kids. I didn’t have to do anything. The parents took care of it all.
And as long as Mackenzie was around, she would apparently be willing to step in and help out wherever she was needed. That day when she’d tried to rescue Kiara Sorenson from my dogs was proof enough of her motherly instincts.
I should just drop Mackenzie off with all the stuff and then turn right back around and get the hell out of Dodge. A school was no place for me. I was good with animals. And adults. I could handle myself around my teammates’ kids, but it wasn’t something I made a habit of very often.
But a hundred of them? Nope.
Actually, Ghost would be a hell of a lot better at this than I would. He was good in front of people. And he was definitely the smarter one of the pair of us. You needed to be smart to be around kids, right? They could spot an idiot from a mile away, or so I’d always assumed. Maybe I could talk him into doing this the next time Mackenzie wanted to drag someone from the team along with her.
Or at least he could come with me to help. That seemed like a good plan.
“What am I supposed to be reading?” I finally asked, dreading the answer.
She shoved a couple of picture books toward me: My Granny Loves Hockey by Lori Weber and Z is for Zamboni by Matt Napier. “Read what’s on each page and then turn it around so the kids can see the illustrations. Let them look for several seconds before you read the next page. Easy as pie.”
Two books? The thought of one was bad enough… “But I can’t—”
Apparently it didn’t matter what I could or couldn’t do, because Mackenzie rolled her eyes, threw open the passenger-side door, and was climbing down, her purse slung from one shoulder, leaving no more options to me but to follow her. I had to at least carry the box of prizes inside and make an appearance. Maybe the teachers would let me off the hook, even if Mackenzie didn’t want to.
I could hope so, at the very least.
We checked in with the front office, and the secretary gave me a huge grin while Mackenzie printed our names on the sign-in sheet.
“Ms. Castillo told us that you’d be here today, Mrs. Jezek, but she didn’t say you’d be bringing your husband. The kids are going to be so excited they won’t know what to do with themselves.”
“We thought it would be a good surprise,” Mackenzie replied after a brief hesitation.
Was she finally rethinking bringing me along to read to these kids? Or was it just that she wasn’t used to being called Mrs. Jezek? I’d have to ask her later, when we were alone. At least if I couldn’t suss it out through my investigational skills before then.
The secretary’s smile might very well split her cheeks if she didn’t tone it down soon. “I hope you’re both prepared for some ear-splitting shrieks. Our librarian, Mrs. Austin, isn’t going to know what hit her.” With that, she nudged her head for us to follow her, and she led us through the halls of the school until we reached the library.
Dozens of kids were already seated on the floor, some bouncing on their knees because they couldn’t contain themselves, others leaning back on their elbows with their legs bent. They were all whispering amongst themselves, multiple groups of children having disparate conversations, until one of them recognized me.
“Mrs. Castillo, he’s a Storm!” a little boy near the front said, practically bouncing on his heels in his excitement.
The teacher he’d been talking to glanced over, and her eyes lit up when she saw us. “That’s right, Casey. That’s Mr. Jezek. He plays for the Storm. And this nice lady with him is his wife, Mrs. Jezek. They’re here to read to you today.”
I wasn’t so sure what to think about being called Mr. Jezek by a bunch of kids. It made me feel old all of a sudden. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was their age. Was it?
But then again, maybe someday Mackenzie and I would have kids of our own, and their friends might call us Mr. and Mrs. Jezek. It might not be so bad, those names belonging to the two of us and not to my parents.
Besides, my parents hadn’t been around enough for any of my friends to call them anything back when I’d been growing up.
I didn’t really want to think about my family right now, though. Unless I could think about Mackenzie and me, and about the kids we might have someday.
If she even wanted to have kids.
Did she?
I chanced a glance over at her, but she was already moving among the children, smiling and talking to them, perfectly at ease. This was her element. This was where she belonged, surrounded by little ones. She bent over and shook a boy’s hand, treating him as if he were an adult, and he lit up like a Christmas tree.
Mackenzie was a natural. She’d be a fantastic mother. It should have already been obvious to me based on how she’d been with Kiara, but for some reason, I hadn’t allowed my thoughts to go there.
Yeah, I wanted to make babies with her. Definitely.
Lots of babies.
I only hoped she was on board with that plan. We’d have to talk about it soon. Although, I wasn’t so sure I was cut out to be a father. My own parents had been shitty examples of what parents should be, so how could I possibly be better?
“You guys can call me RJ,” I said, once I’d reined my thoughts back in to the kids in front of us instead of the kids we might make together someday. “That’s what all my teammates call me. And you’re right,” I said to the boy in front who’d recognized me. “I’m Riley Jezek, and I play for the Portland Storm. Or at least I do when I’m not injured.”
These kids didn’t need to know that I was thinking about making babies with my wife. They were here for me to read to them.
Shit, yeah… I had to read to them.
Then, quick as lightning, an excited buzz gathered strength in the library, spreading from those children closest to us to the other side of the room.
A small girl up front raised her hand, bouncing on her knees with excitement.
The librarian whistled gently and held up her hand with all five fingers raised. Then she slowly lowered one finger at a time until she’d made a fist. With each lowered finger, the talking slowed until it came to a stop. I couldn’t remember ever being so well behaved when I was their age. She nodded with a broad smile, looking from one side of the room to the other to be sure all the kids had quieted and were paying attention.
“Excellent,” she said. “I know it’s hard to contain your excitement when we have a real-life celebrity in the library today, but being on your best behavior is going to pay off. Now, Michaela, it appears you have a question for Mr. and Mrs. Jezek?”
The girl nodded so hard she looked like a bobblehead.
“What’s your question, Michaela?” I asked her. A bit of Q and A might help ease me into the reading part, anyway.
“Can you bwing Authtin Coopuh and Axuwh Johanthon with you next time?” All her front teeth were missing, and she was probably the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Just like that, I wanted a little blond-haired girl with no front teeth and a lisp. I wanted one so badly I could taste it, and the desire had come up on me out of nowhere.
Bam. Done deal. I wanted a baby girl.
Hell.
I glanced over at Mackenzie, but that was a mistake, because now I was picturing a tiny version of my wife, with adorable blond curls and big brown eyes, wearing a too-large number-ninety-one Storm jersey that read Daddy on the nameplate.
Out of nowhere, I wanted to make a baby with Mackenzie. I wanted it more than I could explain. Maybe even more than one. I wouldn’t mind having a son who wanted to grow up to be a hockey player just like me.
Hell, in all honesty, I didn’t care if any of them wanted to follow in my footsteps. I just wanted them, and I wanted them with Mackenzie.
At least half the girls in the library giggled in high-pitched voices that took me straight back to their age and reminded me what I was here to do, even if I’d rather be at home, working on making babies with my wife.
Authtin Coopuh and Axuwh Johanthon, huh? I could easily guess who she meant. Austin Cooper and Axel Johansson, better known as Coop and Jo-Jo to the rest of the guys, were the youngest players currently on our roster. Something told me Babs was no longer the crush material of the day. Now he was one of the old, boring married guys.
I guessed that meant I was one of the old, boring married guys now, too.
I cleared my throat to buy a moment. Mackenzie didn’t jump in to rescue me, either, darn her. I supposed this one was up to me. “Not sure if I can swing that, but I’ll have to see what I can do about bringing some of the other guys along. They’ve all got practices and team meetings to attend.”
“How come you’re not at practice?” a slightly larger boy near the back interjected.
“Remember to raise your hand,” one of the teachers admonished from the outskirts of the group.
He shot his hand up in the air and repeated his question without waiting to be called on.
I pointed down to my ankle. “Not allowed to play right now. I got hurt, and I have to let my ankle heal before they’ll let me back on the ice with the rest of the team.”
“Did you have surgery?” another boy asked, his hand high in the air even though he didn’t wait to be acknowledged, either.
“Not this time,” I answered.
“If you don’t have surgery, you’re not really hurt,” he retorted. “You’re just a pansy. That’s what my older brother says.”
I snort-laughed because he was just as full of shit as I’d been at his age. All piss and vinegar.
“It looks like Mr. and Mrs. Jezek brought prizes!” the librarian interjected before I could get into an argument with a six-year-old. Probably for the best. She swooped in front of the kids and set up a stool front and center, then offered it to me. “So let’s all sit quietly and listen with our ears and our hearts, all right?”
The animated murmurs didn’t fully die off, but they diminished by a huge margin. Besides, I doubted I’d have been able to sit quietly and be still when I was their age, either, if an NHL player had come to my school.
“Thanks for letting us come and read to you today,” Mackenzie said, taking over. And within moments, the kids were quiet and listening, thoroughly enraptured by her. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I hung on her every word most of the time, too. She winked over at me. “If everyone can sit really still and quiet, we’ve got some fun prizes to give out after we read the stories. But you need to pay close attention, because you’ll have to answer questions about the books to win the prizes. Does everyone understand?”
Dozens of tiny heads bobbed as the kids nodded while most of them said, “Yes, Mrs. Jezek,” in unison.
She was born for this.
Yeah, I absolutely needed to make babies with her. Babies, as in plural. Even if I’d end up being a shit dad like my own had been, she was a natural with them. She could more than make up for any deficiencies I might have in the parenting realm.
But I didn’t want to be a shit father. I didn’t want to be anything like my parents. I wanted to be better, the kind of father that every kid deserved to have. The kind of dad that neither Mackenzie nor I had ever had.
How could I be something when I’d never had a good example of it? But that kind of logic didn’t make sense if I believed Mackenzie would be an amazing mother, and she’d never had one of those to speak of. If she could do it, so could I. We could do it together.
I supposed a good place to start would be with figuring out how to read a book to kids. Practice for bedtime stories, right?
I can do this.
Later, we’d have to talk about starting up a family. But for now, I had a job to do, and I had to figure out how to do it.
HE MIGHT NOT be a natural at reading to kids, but Riley wasn’t too bad at it for a first-timer. He stumbled over a couple of sentences in the beginning, but the kids didn’t notice, and since everything to do with hockey was second nature to him, he soon settled in.
He did better than I would have done, even, because he knew what all the words meant. I was getting better, after watching the games with him or with the other WAGs during home games, but my hockey knowledge was sorely lacking. The books he read them taught me things I didn’t know yet.
The kids laughed in all the right places, and that seemed to put him more at ease than he’d been at first. It didn’t hurt that he knew the right way to pronounce all of the hockey terminology, too, like Zamboni. He even took the time to answer the kids’ questions and explain the parts they didn’t follow on their own.
Most of those questions seemed to come from Bea Castillo’s special ed students, and a few of the other kids started to get impatient, rolling their eyes and loudly sighing. But Riley took all the time necessary to explain things to the kids until everyone understood, never begrudging any of them an answer.
He might not have thought he’d be good at this, but he did a fantastic job of interacting with the children. They brought out a goofy side of him that I hadn’t seen much, to be honest.
After he finished reading the books, they held a brief question-and-answer session that the librarian moderated, and the way he bantered with one cheeky girl made my heart flutter.
“You must not be very fast if they’re not letting you play,” she said after he finished reading the second book.
“They’re not letting me play because I got hurt.”
She raised her brows dubiously. “You look all right to me. No blood. No scars. My dad and I watched a hockey game last year and the guy got his neck cut open. He was gushing blood everywhere.”
Riley raised a brow. “You mean Drew Nash? The Thunderbirds player?”
She nodded.
“Well, that one was pretty gnarly. But the truth is, you can’t see all injuries. They don’t all make us bleed. Just because a guy’s not bleeding all over the ice, that doesn’t mean he’s not hurt.”
“Yeah, but he came back to play already,” she shot back.
“And he was injured, what, almost a year ago? Mine was just in January. Not that long ago.”
“Tough guys would play through it,” a boy cut in.
“You saying I’m weak?” Riley responded, but he said it in a joking tone, not confrontationally. “Wanna arm-wrestle?”
“Arm-wrestle who? You?”
“Yeah, me. Who else? Come on. We’ll put a bet on it.”
The boy turned bright pink, but he eagerly nodded.
I wasn’t sure he should be betting in the school, and I was almost positive that he shouldn’t be challenging the kids to an arm-wrestling match, but this was the most engaged any of them had been since we’d arrived. And if the teachers weren’t going to step in to stop it, I had no intention of getting involved.
“Come on, then.” Riley headed over to one of the tables nearby and pulled out a chair for his opponent and another for himself. “How’s this? You beat me, and I’ll autograph a jersey for you. I beat you, and you have to pick the book my wife will read to you the next time she comes to visit.”
“I don’t even like books,” the boy said.
“You don’t like books? Everybody likes books.”
“Not me.”
Riley narrowed his eyes at him as if studying him. “Well, do you like movies?”
“Everybody likes movies,” the boy said, rolling his eyes.
“Everybody, huh? So what’s your name?”
“Josh.”
“What’s your favorite movie?”
“How to Train Your Dragon.”
“Hmm. Any idea if that one was based on a book?” Riley casually asked over his shoulder in the direction of several teachers.
The school’s librarian immediately nodded. “Written by Cressida Cowell. I can check to see if our copy is on the shelves right now. But it might be a bit beyond your reading level at this point, Josh. It’s kind of long.”
The boy narrowed his eyes defiantly. “Then maybe she has to come back again to finish the book or something.”
“I’m sure you can convince her to do that,” Riley said. “If you beat me, at least.”
“Why would I want her to read that book to me if I’ve already seen the movie?”
“Because the book is always better than the movie,” one of the teachers answered from the back of the crowd.
“Exactly,” Riley agreed. “So do we have a deal?”
Josh took a seat at one of the tables, and Riley sat down across from him. They reached for one another’s hands in the middle and grabbed hold.
“All right,” Riley said. “Normally, the rule is that your elbow has to stay on the table. But I’m going to let you use both hands to try to beat me, got it? Both hands are allowed, but keep your elbow on the table.”
Josh nodded, his brows drawn together and a determined set to his mouth.
They reached for one another in the middle of the table. I glanced up and caught Bea Castillo’s eye. I knew there was bound to be a question in my expression, but she just grinned and nodded, as if this were the best thing that could have happened.
Alrighty then. At this point, we might as well run with it.
The librarian stepped in to act as the referee. She put her hand over the tops of theirs and counted them down. “Three, two, one, go!”
Riley was obviously holding back but still trying just enough to force Josh into giving it his all. The other kids all gathered around, some of them cheering for Josh but the large majority of them chanting for Riley.
Josh’s forehead broke out in a sweat. He tugged and pulled and jerked, but Riley’s arm barely budged.
“Can another kid help me?” he squealed in between panting for breath.
“No kids,” Riley replied.
No kids, huh? Well, that didn’t rule out adults. Before I could second-guess myself, I headed over to the table and added both my hands to the equation, pushing against Riley and bearing down from above with all my weight.
He looked up at me in surprise.
I shrugged. “You said no kids. I’m not a kid.”
The roar of approval from our audience was deafening. I doubted there’d been this much noise in the school library all year.
He shook his head with a wry grin, but he didn’t contradict me. Besides, there wasn’t a chance that Josh and I could truly beat him. Not if he intended to really give it his all.
Something told me he’d never intended for this to be a fair fight. He was absolutely going to let Josh win. But now Josh might feel as if he had a better shot.
The two of us pushed hard, and Josh’s elbow came up off the table multiple times even though he struggled to keep it down. He even added his other hand to the mix, and I topped them all with my free hand. Josh’s arm shook, but slowly, ever so slowly, Riley’s arm started giving way. And then…we…had him.
The entire library full of kids and teachers broke out into cheers and applause, and Riley gave Josh a high five. “Nice one, buddy. Good job.” He reached into the pile of swag that the team had sent with us and pulled out a jersey and a Sharpie marker, then signed his name over the number stitched onto the back.
Josh pulled it on over his clothes, grinning from ear to ear. Something told me he might end up sleeping in it tonight. Heck, he might refuse to take that jersey off again for weeks. And why should he? He’d just beaten one of his idols in an arm-wrestling contest. He ought to be proud of himself.
Reading might not be Riley’s calling, but working with kids like this? He was a natural. It was as if he’d been training his entire life just for this moment.
I watched him move through the sea of children, passing out the swag we’d brought with us, shaking hands as if they were grownups, giving out high-fives and hugs indiscriminately. Seeing him like this made me feel all warm and ooey-gooey inside, like a chocolate-chip cookie straight out of the oven, before it had time to set up.
That was when I realized I might have made a mistake.
A huge one, no less. The biggest mistake I could have possibly made.
Because I was falling in love with my husband. And if I loved him, it would hurt me that much more when he decided I no longer fit in his life.