Page 16 of Coyotes Ever After

Her smile is amused. “We’re clear.”

Since my right femur was shattered in a car accident a few years ago, ending my hockey career, I’m not the same. The surgeons had to put a titanium rod in my leg. No matter howhard I’ve worked at rehab, I can’t get back where I was before. I can’t run anymore and it took me forever to learn how to go up and down stairs again. And the worst part is not being able to be on top of my wife during sex for long anymore. I have to support all my weight on my good knee and it only lasts so long.

I didn’t lose my leg, though, and the doctors thought I might. Tess, Zee, and Hannah took turns staying with me when I was an inpatient at the hospital and rehab center, and my former teammates came often, too.

Tess has never made me feel bad about what I can’t do anymore. She’s usually on top during sex now, and we have to get creative about our positioning when I give her oral sex.

It’s kind of awesome, really. I told her I would have thrown myself down the stairs to break that leg a lot sooner if I’d known it meant she’d sit on my face all the time. She didn’t think it was all that funny.

I manage to lose my boner in time for our meeting, which is in Josh’s office, the Locke CFO. After I rehabbed from my leg injury, Mila cut me in on a real estate deal one of her companies was making to buy and renovate a downtown Denver building.

Within a year, Tess and I had bought three more commercial buildings and started Locke Enterprises. We have seventeen buildings in our portfolio now. Some we own and rent out, others we renovate and sell.

I never went to college; I went straight from high school to pro hockey. It’s been gratifying to find out I have a good head for business. My wife does, too. We make more in a year with our real estate company than I made in a year of playing hockey.

Josh puts our video meeting with a realtor up on a big screen in his office and they talk numbers. We stuck to the Denver area with our business at first, but now we own properties in other big cities, too.

My phone buzzes in my pocket with a text and I take it out, glancing at the screen. It’s a new message from Hannah in the group chat between me, Tess, Hannah and Zee, calledDa Famon my phone.

Hannah: I FUCKING GOT IN!! OMG I’M GOING TO GRAD SCHOOL AT WHARTON!!!!!

I smile and meet Tess’s gaze, shaking my phone back and forth a little to tell her she needs to look at hers. Our daughter will be graduating from the University of Michigan with honors this year, and the University of Pennsylvania’s business school, Wharton, was her top choice for graduate school.

I’m the first to respond.

Dom: Never doubted you, Han! Congratulations, you worked hard for this. Proud of you.

Tess lets out an audible gasp from a nearby chair. She meets my eyes, grinning broadly.

“Excuse me,” she murmurs, getting up and racing out of the room.

She thinks it’s unprofessional to text during meetings. But apparently, yelling out, “You fucking did it,” from the hallway outside the room is okay because we all hear her doing that a few seconds later.

She must have wanted to call Hannah and talk to her about the news.

I smile apologetically at the others in the room. “Sorry. Our daughter just got accepted to Wharton. Big moment for us.”

Josh lights up. “Congratulations to Hannah, that’s amazing.”

Not only do we require that people be qualified to come work at Locke Enterprises, but we also don’t hire assholes, so everyone expresses their happiness for Hannah. Even the realtor, Tom. The guy’s made a shitload of money off us, so yeah. He better be excited.

Tess and I went back and forth about having more kids after we got married. She got pregnant once but lost the pregnancy early. A couple of years later, she decided she really wanted more, so we started trying. It never happened, though.

It was just meant to be that way. We love our life. Zee’s twenty-five and he lives in Los Angeles, where he owns a successful mechanic’s shop. His girlfriend Emilia lives there. He fell hard for her when they met while both attending UCLA. They both ended up dropping out, which Tess and I weren’t thrilled about, but they’re happy, which is all we ever really wanted for our kids. Emilia works at a floral shop and has a goal of opening her own someday.

When Tess comes back into the room, her hair is hanging loosely from the clip she had it pulled back with, and her cheeks are flushed. She was definitely jumping up and down to celebrate the good news.

I fucking love that woman’s vibe. She has so much joy and enthusiasm for life. All I could think of when my car got hit by a driver who ran a red light and I was bleeding all over the place waiting for the ambulance to arrive was that I didn’t want to leave Tess.

I’m gray at the temples and I have a bum leg, but there’s still so much I want to do with my family. We’re taking Zee, Emilia and Hannah on a two-week trip to Greece this summer to celebrate Hannah’s graduation. Colby and Mila just had a dream home built in Kauai, and they’re planning to host quarterly getaways there for everyone in our circle.

Tess and I will be able to take our grandchildren there someday. We don’t want to rush Zee or Hannah into having kids, but when they decide to, we’ll be all over that shit.

When our meeting is over, Tess and I go back to our office, where she does a happy dance over Hannah getting intoWharton. She kisses me and then glances at the clock on the wall.

“Shit, I have to get going for my hair appointment. Will you rework the Friday thing in Chicago? And ask Colby what we can bring Friday night?”

“Yep. What’s the plan for dinner? That hot dog I had for lunch was shitty and I’m starving.”

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