Page 173 of The Home Game

“Like, um, something other than Matty or Uncle Matty? Like … if you adopt us. You’re not my dad but you’d be kinda like a dad and …”

“What about Papa?” Antoni asked, wiping away a tear on his cheek and damn it, Matty was about to cry too now. “Matty kinda reminded me about a papa bear earlier. All growly and protective.”

Eli’s face lit up, despite tear tracks on their face. “Yeah, that’s perfect. Can I call you Papa, Matty?”

“You can call me whatever you want,” Matty said roughly. “Except for late to supper.”

Antoni rolled his eyes, his smile fond.

Matty gave him a sheepish grin. It was a family joke back in Oklahoma and well, this part of his family better get used to the dad jokes too.

Alexis chewed her lip. “Can I still call you Matty? Papa feels … weird to me.”

“Sure,” Matty said easily. “Whatever feels right.”

“What about Antoni?” Eli asked. “What do we call him? He’s more than Uncle Antoni, now.”

Antoni blinked. “Oh. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. Why don’t we think some more on that, okay?”

“Okay,” Eli said. “Can I tell you about the book I’m reading right now, uh, Papa Matty?”

“Yeah,” Matty said thickly, leaning against the counter and grabbing his bowl. “Tell me all about it while I eat my chili.”

Antoni settled beside him, their shoulders pressed together, and Matty let out a contented sigh.

This was it. This was the good stuff.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The next morning, Matty awoke to Antoni sleeping soundly beside him. He blinked, unsure why he was awake. A glance at the clock told him he had at least forty minutes until he had to be up to help get the kids ready for school.

The vibration of his phone on the nightstand answered that question though and with a quiet groan, he rolled over to check it.

A text from Kate popped up. Mandatory meeting at my office one hour before practice. We need to talk.

Fuuuck, Matty thought, scrubbing a hand over his face. That wasn’t a good sign.

By the time Matty walked into the practice facility, his stomach was in knots.

Video clips from last night were all over the internet. And they’d been edited in such a way that they looked damning as hell.

It made Matty look like the aggressor and made the Swansons out to be the helpless victims. Oh, there were the longer videos from different angles that showed the real story but those weren’t the ones going viral right now.

Matty and Antoni had talked as they got ready for the day and they’d come to the same conclusion. There was nothing they could do to stop it. Matty had talked to his agent on the drive in and he’d confirmed that the story was too big to be contained.

Matty’s agent would release a statement explaining the situation but most people were going to see the edited clips, rather than the whole video.

They didn’t know the backstory or what was at stake. They only saw Matty threatening an older couple like some sort of … brute.

And it seemed like most of the internet already thought he was an asshole and this confirmed it.

Unfortunately, that was the way it went in hockey, sometimes. The guys who played an aggressive game, the ones who were an agitator like Trevor Underhill or an enforcer like Matty, they got painted as the bad guys.

Fans of the guy’s team loved him and fans of their opponents loved to hate him.

Of course, in this case, even the non-hockey-watching side of the internet had jumped on board to get in their talking points about how hockey was a vicious, brutal sport and what did people expect when violence was glorified that way?

It made Matty feel a little sick.

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