Chapter Nine

With the housewarming out of the way, it was like the team – and Trevor – had permission to bring up Gabrielle whenever it was appropriate. It felt good to be able to interject into conversations about dream girls with, “my dream girl is my baby,” and tell the guys bemoaning the fact that Halloween approaching meant they’d have to deal with kids and that they should be so lucky to get a visit from his daughter. Though he had been laughed at and mocked, the idea of experiencing his first Halloween with Gabrielle was kind of a thrill.

There was a three-day break in games, giving Trevor time with his daughter, and a few days off for Nick. The first morning, Nick joined them for breakfast.

“It’s routine,” Nick complained, even though the entire time Trevor had known him, he was generally grumpy in the mornings. He still managed to get Gabrielle up and eating before Trevor stumbled into the kitchen, but he looked worse for wear until he’d had several cups of coffee. “I’m used to getting up and eating with you guys.”

“Duh,” Gabrielle said, and Trevor regretted letting his teammates around her. She was going to pick up the worst language in no time. Hopefully, Nick was teaching her not to pick up everything.

“Gabrielle,” Trevor said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s not nice.”

“Sorry, Daddy.” Gabrielle turned a sad expression on Nick, who bought it. He was clearly weak when he was tired. Something worth noting for the future. “Mr. Nick, I like it when you eat breakfast with me.”

“I love it when I eat breakfast with you too, Miss Gabrielle.”

How Nick always remembered to call her that, Trevor didn’t know. He assumed it was similar to how he would call her princess or sweetheart. There was something to be said for repetition.

Gabrielle was satisfied with that, tucking back into her cereal with gusto. She was wearing most of the milk in her enthusiasm, though it wasn’t often she made a mess anymore. Trevor was eating his own breakfast, the protein shakes Nick had managed to shoehorn into his diet, and the fact that he was talking with Trevor’s nutritionist should have been a little creepy and not make Trevor feel as touched as he did.

“This is actually pretty good,” Trevor said, squinting at the green liquid. Nick didn’t label the bottles, so he had no idea what was actually in it. “You’re not forcing these on Gabrielle, are you?”

“The gross green drinks are for you, Daddy,” Gabrielle informed him primly before Nick could say anything. “Mr. Nick only gives me juice and milk when I ask for it.”

Nick was smirking, one hand cupped around the mug of coffee still steaming in front of him, the other tucked against his stomach. Trevor rolled his eyes and drained the rest of the bottle. “So, I was thinking, Princess.”

Gabrielle looked up, settling her spoon back in the bowl. There was a shit ton of milk left in the bowl, which was a waste, but Trevor had long since given up getting her to try and finish it. He was grateful she drank it as much as she did.

“Maybe we could spend the day working out what you wanna be for Halloween?”

Brow wrinkling in confusion, Gabrielle poked her tongue between her teeth. “What’s Halween?”

“Halloween, sweetheart,” Trevor said, though he suspected she wasn’t going to repeat it well. “It’s a really special holiday that Daddy loves best, maybe even more than Christmas.”

“Daddy,” Gabrielle said, stressing the last two letters. “Nothing is better than Christmas!”

Nick looked between them, amused. He had his phone out on the island and was scrolling through it. Trevor scowled, wondering whether he was going to help Trevor explain – how did you even begin to describe Halloween to your daughter? – when Nick slid his phone toward Gabrielle. “This is Halloween.”

Gabrielle played the video and Trevor watched her face morph from confusion to apprehension and then to happiness. “It looked a little scary first, but look at these clothes, Mr. Nick!”

“I think Daddy’s excited to find a costume you’ll love,” Nick said, looking pointedly at Trevor.

There was a wide grin on Gabrielle’s face. “I can be anything I want to be?”

“Anything,” Trevor said with a shrug. Even if she had an outlandish request, he had no doubt that somehow, he would find a way to make it a reality. Nick was hiding a smirk behind his mug of coffee, eyes on Trevor, and if Trevor’s daughter wasn’t right there, he would probably thump him one.

“Well,” Gabrielle said thoughtfully. “There are so many things I want to be.”

While Gabrielle listed off the many animated and live-action characters she was currently in love with – “Or an octopus!” – Trevor exchanged a look with Nick, who was still amused. Trevor resisted the urge to flip him off. “Don’t you have something to do?”

“Don’t be silly,” Gabrielle said. It was turning into her favorite phrase. Trevor wasn’t sure whether it was something he should try and head off at the pass. Pick his battles, wasn’t that what his mother had told him? “Mr. Nick needs to help us, Daddy, if he’s going to dress up too.”

It was Trevor’s turn to be amused by Nick’s expression. Trevor hadn’t doubted that he would have to dress up with his daughter, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, even if he had to be a giant lobster, but the fact that she was dragging Nick into this as well was too hilarious to discount.

“Fu-dge,” Nick said, glaring at Trevor. He managed to school his expression into something more neutral for Gabrielle. “I thought you would want to do this with your daddy.”

“I will be doing it with my daddy.” The expression on Gabrielle’s face told Nick exactly how ridiculous she thought he was being. Trevor didn’t know who she had learned it from, though he suspected it was one of his sisters. “You’ll just be there too.”

Nick was a little shell-shocked, so Trevor jumped in, not wanting Nick to be uncomfortable, or doubt that he could tell Gabrielle no.

“Gabby, sweetheart, you have to ask. You can’t just tell him he’s going to be doing something.” Trevor kept his voice soft, but he could tell from the expression on Gabrielle’s face that she thought she’d done something wrong.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Nick.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Gabrielle,” Nick said. The fact that he didn’t call her Miss Gabrielle had Gabrielle looking at him with wide eyes, fiddling with the phone she had to return to him. “If you ask me, you never know what I might say to you.”

There was a long moment where she didn’t say anything. “Mr. Nick, would you like to come with me and Daddy to get a costume for Halloween?”

Nick looked to Trevor, raising his eyebrows in question. Trevor shrugged, smirking because it didn’t matter to him whether or not Nick came along. He was still of the opinion that Nick looking like an idiot could only be a benefit. He was having to convince himself that it had nothing whatsoever to do with being given a reason to continue hanging out with Nick.

It was getting harder to keep thinking of him as the nanny and not to want to spend copious amounts of time with the guy that didn’t involve Gabrielle.

“I would love to come with you,” Nick said.

Gabrielle squealed and launched herself at Nick. There was a heart-stopping moment when Trevor thought she was going to fall, but there was a reason he trusted Nick with her after all; Nick caught her, swinging her up onto his lap as she threw her arms around him. The surprised expression on his face gave way to fondness, and Trevor had turned to the sink to wash his bottle because the look was making his chest tight. He really didn’t need to keep feeling like this. It was frustrating because Nick was his nanny and Trevor didn’t want to mess anything up.

The picking of the costumes actually went a lot easier than Trevor was expecting it to. Gabrielle wanted to be a swan, which was easy enough to arrange given her already extensive wardrobe, but as soon as he sent a message to his mother, she demanded to be able to arrange the costume – though Trevor suspected his grandmother would be doing the making – and Nick and Trevor were given permission to be whatever they wanted, as long as they didn’t show her up.

The team Halloween party was kid-friendly and held as part of the drive to make the team look good to a League that was starting to get tired of their constant appearance in the playoffs. It would be a fun day, and now that the team had met Gabrielle, Trevor was less apprehensive about taking her. Nick accompanying him, however, was going to be the challenge, especially for Jetty and Pears to keep their mouths shut about his bachelorhood – and the potential Nick offered up.

As if Trevor needed reminding.

Though he and Nick were completely unoriginal in their costumes – the two of them went as superheroes – but it was the easiest thing to do when they wanted Gabrielle to be the one to shine.

“Right,” Nick said, grabbing the keys from the counter and tossing them to Trevor. “We have the candy in the car – for the kids, Trevor, you’re not messing up your meal plan – and Gabrielle, you’re ready to go?”

Gabrielle struck a pose in her swan costume, and Trevor still couldn’t believe how much work his mom and grandmother had put into the costume. The neck and head of the swan were pretty elaborate, made of something that hardened, and didn’t seem as if it would break, no matter what Gabrielle would put it through. They’d actually sewn actual feathers onto the costume, and with her yellow leggings and custom slippers, she actually looked like a swan. Trevor wasn’t ashamed to say he’d taken a shit ton of photos and sent them to everyone, including teammates he was about to see.

Nick had also taken a few of Trevor and Gabrielle, though she had complained about Trevor’s claws and not getting them near her feathers. Trevor had rolled his eyes, ignored Nick’s comment about being wrapped around a certain small finger, and done as Gabrielle requested.

With a lot of maneuvering, they managed to fit Gabrielle and her costume into the car, and Trevor climbed into the driver’s seat.

“How many kids are going to be there, Daddy?” Gabrielle asked.

Trevor looked at her through the rear-view mirror, grinning at the huge swan’s head taking up most of the backseat. He’d had to change cars when Gabrielle came along, trading in his sports car for one that would actually suit a family and having a soccer mom car was definitely not something he’d ever expected to have to do.

“A few,” Trevor said. “You know Abby and Sadie already. But there are a few boys and girls that you haven’t met yet.”

“Okay,” Gabrielle said, turning back to look out of the window.

Trevor couldn’t deny that he had been worrying about Gabrielle socializing with other children. His mother had told him it was important to make sure she played with children her own age, and though Trevor was determined she should attend school as soon as possible, he didn’t want to do it until she was at least four. He had missed so much of her life and didn’t want to take more time out of their limited interactions before he had to. It would make playing hockey even harder.

“If you like them,” Trevor continued. “Maybe we could set up play dates with them?”

Gabrielle shrugged, making the swan’s head bob. Though she looked at him right after, frowning. “What if I don’t like them?”

Trevor didn’t know how to answer that.

“Gabrielle,” Nick said, looking over his shoulder. “What did we talk about when we spoke about friends?”

Smoothing out her face, Gabrielle gave Nick a small smile. “That we should try really hard to make them, ‘cause they will be there for us all the time, like Daddy and Nana and Mr. Nick.”

Nick grinned at her in the mirror, and Trevor couldn’t wipe the stupid smile off of his face, even if the sight of it in the mirror made him want to shake it before Nick noticed.

“So hopefully you’ll make some today?” Trevor asked.

Gabrielle giggled. “If I try hard, Daddy. Will you try hard?”

“I don’t know if there will be anybody I don’t know.” Trevor grinned at his daughter in the mirror and stuck out his tongue. “But if you’re going to try and make friends, I’ll have to do the same, won’t I?”

“And Mr. Nick too.”

“And Mr. Nick too,” Nick echoed. He was smiling, but there was a tension around it that Trevor could empathize with; the last time around the team had been hard for Nick, and now he was obviously going to stick out like a sore thumb, given the family element to the Halloween party.

Waiting until Gabrielle was occupied with what was out of the window, Trevor kept his voice low as he nudged Nick at the next stop light.

“If you wanna leave early, it’s fine.”

Nick frowned. “Why would I want to leave early?”

Trevor turned his attention back to the road but shrugged with the arm closest to Nick. “You’re my nanny,” he explained. “You didn’t have to come here when I know the team can be overwhelming for you.”

Looking back over his shoulder, to where Gabrielle was humming to herself, Nick raised his eyebrows. “You think she would have let me stay behind?”

“If you told her it was what you wanted, yeah.” Trevor was almost certain. As much as he suspected that Nick was as weak as he was to Gabrielle sometimes – even when he was working – Gabrielle seemed more than willing to listen to Nick about things, even when she didn’t like what he had to say.

Silence fell over the car, broken only by Gabrielle muttering to herself as she doodled in her coloring book, and Trevor tried not to get uncomfortable. Trevor was Nick’s boss, he could hardly forget that, but that didn’t mean Nick had lost the ability to fight for what he wanted. Today should have been Nick’s day off and instead, he was coming to a Halloween party that he didn’t need to be at just because Gabrielle had asked him to.

“Back home,” Nick said eventually, still staring out of the passenger side window. “I didn’t really have many friends. I wasn’t the easiest kid to get along with.”

Trevor didn’t know how that could possibly be the case. Though, he considered, some of the quirks he found appealing about Nick probably wouldn’t be the same for somebody else.

“Crowds are kinda weird for me because I don’t know how I should be acting. Sports teams are like that, probably because I was in so many as a kid. Too many,” he added when Trevor made a considering noise. “It didn’t give me time to form friendships, you know? I was nervous around your teammates because I felt out of place.”

There was a disconnect between them; Trevor was hiring Nick for a specific job, and as easy as it was between them sometimes, Trevor forgot that they weren’t just friends hanging out.

“I don’t wanna stop hanging out with you,” Trevor said quietly. “But I get it if–”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Nick hurried to say. Even though he was wearing stripes on his face, something to do with his superhero character, his eyes were as intense as they ever were, and Trevor’s heart skipped a beat. There was something serious about Nick’s general expression, but there was a wealth of emotion in his eyes that were intense and obvious if Trevor was looking for it. “I feel out of place with them because it’s strange. Not with you.”

Trevor couldn’t help but smile at that. “Yeah?”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” Nick said, and it was a testament to how far they’d come that Nick didn’t immediately apologize for his sass. “It’s easy with you. You’re not just my boss,” he admitted softly. “I think we’re friends too.”

“Yeah, we are,” Trevor said, just as softly.

Nick’s answering grin was wide and unashamed, and Trevor didn’t care what the Halloween party threw at him; it would be worth it just for that.