Page 6 of Coyotes Ever After

“Joseph Benjamin,” Stella says softly. “He looks like a Joseph.”

She wants to name him after my dad’s father, and I’m overwhelmed by emotion as I hear her say the name, an ode to both my grandpa and me.

I look over at the woman I never dreamed would be mine until fate intervened. “I love you so much.”

“I love you.” Her eyelids flutter sleepily.

I kiss Joseph’s soft little forehead and he gives me a wide-eyed look.

“Hi,” I say softly. “I’m your dad.”

I pass him back to Stella so she can try nursing him. She looks up at me.

“I want Mila and Cam to hold him and take pictures for us.” She pauses.

“Quentin and some of the front office people are in the waiting room. I’m not letting them in here, but they’ll want to see Joseph when he goes to the nursery.”

She turns serious. “I know we didn’t decide on godparents for sure, but...I want Mila to be his godmother.”

I nod in agreement. I underestimated Mila. She came through for me and Stella today in a way I’ll never be able to repay.

“Let’s have a little bit longer of just the three of us before you get Mila and Cam,” Stella says.

I bend and kiss her on the forehead. “You did it, babe. We have a perfect son.”

She smiles at me and I reach for my phone. I need to capture the most perfect moment of my life in a picture so I can revisit every detail in the decades to come.

I could never forget this feeling, though. Stella and Joseph are my heart. There’s no me without them. I’m the luckiest man in the world.

CHAPTER THREE

EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER

Shelby

“Uncle Beau! Hey, Uncle Beau!”

My nephew Anderson is jumping and waving his arms in the air from a few seats over at the Coyotes’ home arena, trying to get my husband’s attention as the team warms up on the ice.

I can barely hear him over the roar of the crowd. Anderson idolizes Beau and wants to be a pro hockey player when he grows up. He said earlier today that it was the most exciting day of his life.

And honestly, same. The Coyotes are in the championship for the first time in sixteen years. They haven’t won it in franchise history, and with a series lead of three games to two, this could be the biggest night the team has ever had.

We were so lucky to score all the tickets we needed so the family could all be here together. The Fox den has grown a lot since I married into the family.

My two youngest kids, Sierra, three, and Jack, two, are sitting on either side of me, both wearing noise-blocking headphones. Charlie, now five, is next to Anderson, his nine-year-old cousin. Then there’s Beau’s brother Asher and his wife Chloe, Anderson’s parents, and their six-year-old daughter Amara. Beau’s parents, Henry and Claire, are trying to entertain Isaac, Beau’s younger brother, and his wife Jane’s three-year-old daughter Grace, while Isaac is gone changing his one-year-old daughter Ellie’s diaper. Grace is taking a photo of Beau’s sister Fiona and her four-year-old son Ryland. Fiona is a single mom now and she’s much better off without her deadbeat husband.

The only one who couldn’t be here is Genevieve, the youngest Fox sibling. She’s a surgical resident in London and she couldn’t get time off.

“I’m going to get some Skittles.” My best friend Marlowe practically has to yell at me from her seat beside Jack so I can hear her. “You guys want anything?”

“You can order that on the app and they’ll bring it to you,” I remind her.

She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, but then you guys will have to pay for it.”

I laugh because the tickets Beau and I bought for the entire family, which are on a corner of the ice in the eleventh row, cost an absolute fortune. Even his position as a player on the team couldn’t get us the number of tickets we needed at a good price, and we couldn’t have bought a VIP box for any price because almost all of them went to corporate team sponsors.

We’re all here, though. This is the biggest night of my husband’s career. One of the biggest nights of his life, actually. We would have paid any price to have our family here for this.

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