Page 85 of Wyatt

“I don’t know. Your mom, maybe. She was always so at peace with her life. Safe. She had all these kids and your dad so clearly loved her, and I wondered what it might feel like to have a family like that.”

Oppressing with the expectations? The competition? “My family was far from perfect.”

“Yeah, I know. I saw the fights you and your brothers got into. But at the end of the day, you all ate dinner together. You prayed together. You showed up for each other.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Especially since, “My father only attended one of my hockey games my entire life.” Shoot, he wasn’t sure why he’d said that. He didn’t want to destroy her vision of his family, but— “He hated that I played hockey instead of working the ranch.”

She rolled over then. “Wyatt, that’s not true. He was immensely proud of you. Like I said, he never missed one of your games on TV.”

“Probably because my mother watched them.Shecame to my live games.”

Coco frowned, as if sorting through her memories.

He rolled to lean against the back of the couch. Oh. He let out a moan as fire shot up his stiff bones to his hips. He’d wedged himself onto the couch like a pretzel and now his body was fighting back.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just…this couch is tiny.”

“Maybe you’re just too big.” She grinned at him. “But maybe that’s why you’re such a great goalie—you take up most of the net.”

He let out a rumble, half laugh, half irony. “I used to play wing.”

“You did?”

“Until I was thirteen. I think that’s what makes me such a good goalie—I was a great wing. I knew how to handle the puck and make goals.” He closed his eyes, almost feeling the chill of the rink in his nose, down his spine, mingled with the sweat of his efforts. “I loved to hear the roar of the crowd when I’d steal and take it down the ice. And when I scored…”

So different from now when the only cheering he heard was when he failed.

And of course, that was for the opposite team.

“In fact the last game I played wing happened to be the only game my father saw. I had a great game that night. I couldn’t believe he was in the stands, and I wanted to impress him. It was against this team from Missoula—we were in a tournament in Helena, and I was hot. I scored three times. We were up five to four when I stole the puck again. I was chased by one of their defensemen, and he slammed me into the boards—which, by the way, was illegal in peewee hockey. But it happened, and I was mad. I’d lost the puck, lost the goal, and he took me down. I could hear my dad in the stands shouting at me. ‘Get up. Get back in the game!’ I just lay there on the ice, like an idiot, and his shout shamed me. I sort of lost my mind. I got up and just tackled the kid who’d hit me.”

He’d lost the roar of the crowd in the swell of fury in his ears.

“There were penalties on both sides, but it didn’t end there. I was so angry this kid had turned my dad against me that after the game, when I spotted him in the tunnels, I jumped him. He was a big kid—bigger than me—but I didn’t care. I lit into him. His entire team came out before mine did, and pretty soon I was at the bottom of the pile, biting, kicking, being kicked, bleeding, fighting in this sort of crazy red haze. I didn’t even hear the shouts of the parents until my dad was right there, in my face, hauling me up. I’d broken my nose, my lip was torn, and my eye was swollen. But I could see his disgust just fine. He looked at me and shook his head, and said, ‘Who are you? This isn’t how a Marshall behaves.’”

His throat thickened, even with the memory. “I was shocked. I thought he’d…I dunno. Stick up for me, maybe. Or say something about the game. But he wasashamedof me.”

He looked down at her. “The rest of my brothers sort of worship my dad. Like he was some paragon of wisdom and spiritual fortitude. I saw him as judgmental and biased. He loved his cowboy sons. Me…not so much. That night he said, ‘Either change your name or change your ways.’”

She was frowning and put her hand on his face.

“Why did you change your position?”

He made a face. “His words got to me, at first. I started thinking that maybe he’d like it better if I saved goals instead of making them.”

“You changed for him?”

“It seemed like a way I wouldn’t get into so many fights. A goalie has to be steady. Tough. Unflinching. I thought maybe that’s what he wanted me to be. Once I got there, I discovered I was good at it—better, even, than being a wing. But it didn’t matter—my father never went to another game.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. But I took his words to heart and decided to change my name, at least on the inside. I poured myself into hockey, into my team, and I eventually moved in with my coach, in Helena.”

“I remember. I really missed you.”

Her eyelashes made her eyes seem huge in her face. “I missed you too.” He moved, and another spike of heat riveted into his hips. He winced.

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