Page 81 of Pucking the Single Dad
"Why do you stay?"
"Because you're the one who taught Finn that brave doesn't mean unafraid. Who trusts me with his son's life. Who looks at me like I'm not a consolation prize."
"You're not—"
"I know." She kissed my palm, right where the callus from my stick had turned to permanence. "But sometimes I need to hear it."
"You're not second place. You're not a replacement. You're Serena. That's its own first place."
Game six. Home ice. Elimination or survival.
I pre-gamed with injections that would've killed a horse. Whatever Dr. Patricia shot into my knee made everything go numb from hip to ankle—I couldn't feel the ice, could barely feel my skate. But I could move without screaming, and that was enough.
The game became mythology while we played it. Down 3-1 in the third, season dying, crowd going silent. Then Theo—beautiful, loyal Theo—scored off my faceoff win. 3-2. The building resurrected. Five minutes left, I intercepted a clearing attempt with my chest, the puck dropping to my stick like destiny. I couldn't feel my right leg, but muscle memory doesn't require sensation. Wrist shot, low blocker. 3-3.
Overtime. The building shook with eighteen thousand hearts trying not to explode.
Seven minutes in, I found myself behind their net with the puck, three defenders converging. My knee wouldn't let me cut left. Right was blocked. So I did the only thing left—I went through them. Wrapped the puck around the boards to myself, used my momentum and their surprise to create space, emerged in front of Bob with a half-second of daylight.
The shot wasn't pretty. It bounced off Bob’s pad, hit the defender's skate, and trickled across the line like an apology.
But ugly goals count the same as beautiful ones.
The arena erupted. My teammates piled on, keeping me vertical when my knee finally admitted defeat. On the jumbotron, Finn was cheering while Serena held him with one arm and filmed with the other—documenting the moment his father became legend and wreckage simultaneously.
That photo—me surrounded by teammates, Finn and Serena rushing onto the ice, Sarah's parents in the background crying—became the playoffs' defining image. "A Family's Victory" the headlines read, missing the irony that victory looked exactly like collapse.
That night, after ice baths and interviews and Finn finally crashing from his adrenaline high, I told Serena everything.
"Two more weeks," I said, leg elevated above my heart per her demands. "Seven games maximum. Then surgery. Then retirement. Then coaching."
She processed this, her teacher face calculating variables. "You're really done after this?"
"I'm done now. My body just hasn't figured it out yet."
"And then what?"
"Then I learn to be something besides a hockey player." I pulled her against me, careful of all our accumulated damage. "Finn's dad. Your—whatever I am to you."
"Partner," she said without hesitation. "You're my partner. In chaos. In breathing treatments. In whatever comes next."
The Finals started in three days. Seven potential games between me and the rest of my life.
But lying there with Serena drawing patterns on my chest, Finn safe down the hall, Sarah's journal closed on the nightstand, I realized something:
I was already living the rest of my life.
The hockey was just punctuation.
Chapter 28: Serena
The pregnancy test looked like a tiny plastic prophet of doom, its two pink lines screaming revelations at 7:23 AM while Brad's championship game loomed twelve hours away. I sat on the bathroom floor, spine against the tub, counting on my fingers like a teenager who'd failed health class.
Six weeks. Six weeks of my body keeping secrets while I'd been playing house with someone else's family. The evidence had been there—throwing up behind the elementary school during Finn's hockey practice (blamed on food poisoning), crying at a commercial featuring a dad teaching his daughter to skate (blamed on PMS), my bra suddenly feeling like medieval torture device (blamed on stress eating).
"Jesus Christ," I whispered to the stick, like it might recant its testimony. "Jesus fucking Christ on a zamboni."
A baby. Brad's baby. A tiny human who might inherit asthma, or Brad's stubborn streak, or my tendency to panic-clean when overwhelmed. My brain started spinning worst-case scenarios: NICU visits, breathing monitors.
