BABS HAD THE puck, heading into the offensive zone. Ghost and I were right behind him, spread out to cover plenty of ice and give him lots of options. The three of us had been flying all night so far, really synced with one another, but we hadn’t managed to score.
Yet.
It was coming. I could feel it.
I swerved and got free from my defender, my ankle thankfully behaving exactly as I wanted it to, then headed straight for the Coyotes’ goal.
“RJ!” Babs shouted, but I already knew he’d sent a pass my way. I could sense it. That was how connected the three of us were out there.
The puck hit my stick right on the tape. The goaltender zeroed in on me, which was exactly what I wanted him to do. Without even looking over my shoulder, I dropped the puck back to Ghost, who was primed for a slapper.
Red lights. Goal horn. Crowd going wild. My teammates and I all dog-piled on top of Ghost.
I lived for this shit.
It was our last game before the Thanksgiving holidays here in the States. My line, in particular, was on fire. At this point in the season, the three of us were leading the league in almost every offensive stat they tracked.
This just added one more notch on each of our belts.
“RJ, you’ve got to head back to the room,” Bergy said when we reached the bench.
“What? Why? What’s wrong?”
There was no fucking reason I should be pulled out of this game. None. We were winning, my line had just scored the go-ahead goal, and there was still almost a full period left to play.
But he didn’t answer me, just stood there with his arms crossed, staring.
Bull fucking shit. I wasn’t having any of it. “You’re not pulling me out of this game without a good fucking reason.”
“Fine,” Bergy shot back. “Keep playing if you want, but don’t complain to me that you missed the birth of your firstborn baby.”
“My firstborn—” I cut myself short.
Mackenzie couldn’t be in labor. Not yet. She wasn’t due for another fucking month. We were supposed to be having a Christmas baby.
“You’re shitting me, right? Please tell me you’re shitting me.”
“Get the fuck out of here, Daddy,” was all he said, laughing.
I flew back to the room and got changed out of my gear faster than I had ever changed in my life.
Jim Sutter met me on my way out to the parking garage. “She’s already at the hospital. Elaine and a few of the other girls went with her.”
“She’s okay, though? This is too soon. Everything’s fine?”
“She should be just fine. Babies come early all the time.”
I turned left, but Jim put a hand on my arm, stopping me and turning me to the right, where his car was waiting. Even though I knew he’d played hockey, himself, for a long time, the amount of strength in his grip still surprised me. He hadn’t been on the ice in probably close to two decades other than for charity games.
“I’m driving you,” was all he said.
Probably a good idea. My head was a fucking mess. I might cause a wreck in my current state, which would be the worst thing I could possibly do.
But we hadn’t gotten very far from the arena before I was already silently cursing Mr. Sutter for how slow he was driving. I kept looking at the clock on the dashboard and then stealing a surreptitious glance at his speedometer, then trying to rein in my temper.
I shouldn’t blow up on the team’s general manager. That would be a bad move.
He reached over and switched the radio to the local station that aired the Storm’s games just in time for us to hear the crowd roaring.
I didn’t want to listen to the game. I wanted to be in the game, and listening only made the itch worse.
But I needed to be with Mackenzie.
Fuck, this was hard.
“That makes it three to one for the Storm after a brilliant goal by Chris Hammond.”
“Did he really just say Hammer scored a goal?” I spluttered.
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Mr. Sutter replied, cool as a cucumber.
“He even called it brilliant.”
“He certainly did.”
“No fucking way. Hammer fucking scored.” Then I remembered who I was speaking to. “Sorry about the cursing.”
“No need to apologize to me. But I think the boys wanted to be sure you know they’ve got you covered. You take care of what you need to do, and they’ll take care of what they need to do.”
I nodded, trying to focus my thoughts, but they were still racing.
The second Mr. Sutter pulled into the drive at the hospital, I was racing out of the car and inside.
“Labor and Delivery?” I said to the first person I saw.
She pointed me down a long hall, and I took off running. I saw Rachel Campbell and Katie Babcock first, so I knew I was in the right place.
“You might have missed it,” Katie said. “This one’s happening fast. Anne’s in there with her. Room 14D. Go!”
“Fast? The first one’s supposed to be slow. It’s supposed to take hours.”
“Well, this baby has a mind of her own, then, doesn’t she?” Rachel said. “Babies like to be ornery like that sometimes.” She shoved me toward a waiting orderly, who took me through a set of double doors and through a maze of corridors.
Finally, we arrived at room 14D, just in time for me to hear my wife let out the most blood-curdling, godawful sound in the history of mankind.
“We’re having a baby?” I said in awe. No clue why it came out like a question.
“You’re definitely having a baby,” the doctor replied. “Too late for second-guessing, Daddy. This is happening right now. The baby’s crowning. Get over here.”
I wasn’t second-guessing anything, though. I was so fucking happy it should be illegal.
Mackenzie let out another awful scream, and the nurses guided me over so I could see the most amazing thing I’d ever witnessed in my life. I reached for Mackenzie’s hand. She squeezed so hard she nearly cut off my circulation, but I didn’t care, because I felt happier than I could ever remember feeling before in my entire life.
The head came out, and then shoulders and a torso, and finally legs. And…
“I thought we were having a girl,” I said, awestruck.
Because I had a son.
“Well, you have a beautiful baby boy,” one of the nurses said, as she put a clamp on the cord and wrapped him soft towels. And then he cried. It was the most amazing sound I’d ever heard. The doctor passed my son over to the nurse. She placed him on Mackenzie’s stomach and handed me the umbilical scissors before putting the other clamp in place. “Care to do the honors, Daddy?’
Daddy. I liked the sound of that. I could definitely get used to hearing it.
I took the scissors and cut the cord like they told me to, my first act as a father.
Life sure looked different now.
And I couldn’t be happier about that.
“YOU’RE THE ONE who only wanted to think about girl names,” Mackenzie pointed out to me again, laughing.
“Because I knew she was going to be a girl!”
“But he isn’t a girl, is he?” She rolled her eyes at me before looking back at our little boy, asleep in his car seat in the back, with a sense of wonder.
“He’s definitely not. So do you think his name fits?”
“He’s a Zachary, through and through.”
“Little Zackie?” I said. “Zack Attack? ZJ?”
“You’re already putting him on the ice, giving him a nickname like he’s going to follow in your footsteps.”
“He might,” I said, sounding slightly wounded even if she was right and that was exactly what I was doing. “A lot of little boys want to grow up to be exactly like their fathers.”
“And he might not. You didn’t want to be like your father, did you? And besides, even if he does play hockey, won’t his teammates be the ones to give him his nickname?”
“Spoilsport.” I pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, then carefully unlatched the car seat from the back and lifted the entire thing out of my SUV. Mackenzie was already getting out on her own, though, which wasn’t what I’d planned. I wanted to help her walk inside. Maybe she didn’t need my help, but I still wanted to. Wasn’t that one of the perks of being a first-time father? Or one of the responsibilities, I supposed, even if it wasn’t quite a perk.
I still beat her to the front door and had my key in the lock by the time she caught up to me. Max and Lola were barking like crazy on the other side of the door, but the noise didn’t seem to bother our baby boy any.
He was probably already used to the barking, anyway. Babies could hear things in the womb. That was what the doctors had told us, encouraging us to talk to Mackenzie’s belly regularly while she was pregnant.
I’d done exactly that, having a full conversation with our baby every night. Even when the team had been on the road, I’d called Mackenzie every night and had her put me on speaker, and then she’d held the phone to her growing belly so the baby could hear my voice.
I’d even called her on the nights after she had her speaking engagements. The first one she’d done had gone so well that it’d led to about half a dozen other organizations asking for her to be a guest speaker.
Max, Lola, and Phoebe had gotten a kick out of all the phone calls, too. Max and Lola always barked their hellos to let me know they were there, standing watch over my wife and baby while I was gone. The kitten tended to go nuts for sounds coming from phones. No clue what that was about, but she purred like crazy every time anyone had a phone call. The speakerphone only intensified her need to purr.
Once I got the door open, I tried to shove the animals out of the way and clear some room for Mackenzie to come through. Max and Lola started sniffing as soon as I was through the door with Zack’s car seat.
My dogs were smart. They knew something was different immediately.
“Back,” I said.
They whimpered, but they moved out of the way…eventually. Phoebe tended to do whatever the dogs did, so she backed up, too. It wasn’t so much that she listened to commands as that she wanted to fit in. In some ways, I thought she was under the impression that she was a dog.
She even went for walks with them. Mackenzie had started out taking her in a kitten carrier she strapped onto Lola’s back, kind of like a doggie backpack, but before long Phoebe wanted to run around with the dogs.
We had to get a special harness and leash made just for her.
The next thing on my list was to see if she’d go for a swim with the dogs, but Mackenzie still wasn’t sold on the idea. Cats don’t like water, she was always telling me. But I reminded her that Phoebe didn’t realize she was a cat, so it was worth a shot.
It hadn’t happened yet, but I was going to try it sometime soon. Anne and Ghost were fully on board with my plan, and the Eye of the Storm crew would be there to witness Phoebe’s first foray into the pool.
But for now, we had to introduce all three animals to Zachary.
They were sitting in a row. Well, Phoebe wasn’t exactly sitting. She was standing up on her back paws and craning her neck, trying to see what was in the car seat. But that was about as close to sitting on command as she would ever get.
“Good dogs,” I said, and all three animals acted as if I’d been praising them, specifically.
Mackenzie made her way over to the couch and took a seat. I followed and sat next to her, but I set the car seat down on the floor in front of us so the animals could check Zack out on their own level.
Lola was first. She sniffed our boy from head to toe, letting out sweet, excited sounds that let me know she understood exactly what was going on. When she finally backed away, Max nosed his way in. He licked the baby on the top of the head. I was so proud that Mackenzie didn’t jump to rescue Zachary; she knew Max wanted to love the newest addition to the family, not eat him.
I chuckled. “Told you they’d love our baby.”
But then it was Phoebe’s turn, and none of us were quite sure what to expect out of our kitten. She was almost fully grown now, as far as her size was concerned, but she still had a lot of crazy, kittenish tendencies.
I sat on the edge of the couch, ready to snatch the baby away at a moment’s notice if Phoebe got nervous or if her claws came out.
She sniffed him thoroughly, her tiny pink nose moving over every inch of his small body, working like crazy. When she came to one of his hands for what must have been the fourth or fifth time, she licked him with her rough little cat tongue. Then, apparently deciding that he was all right and part of the family, she climbed into his car seat and curled up next to him, giving me a look that said, Go on, human. I dare you to try to move me. This is my baby brother.
Once Phoebe was comfy, both Max and Lola curled up on the floor next to Zachary, their snouts resting on the edge of the car seat.
“Well, then,” Mackenzie said. “I guess our family is complete.”
I raised a brow. “I don’t know about that.”
“No?”
“No. I still need a baby girl with blond curls like yours who can wear a number ninety-one Daddy sweater to my games.”
Mackenzie laughed, and I dragged her onto my lap, nuzzling my nose into her hair. Maybe our family wasn’t quite complete yet, but it was pretty fucking perfect just the way it was.