Page 106 of Player Misconduct
"I don't—" I swallow hard. "I don't know how to do this, Aleksi. I don't know how to let you—"
"Then let me show you," he says, stepping closer. His hand finds mine, warm and steady. "Let me show you what it looks like when someone stays."
Tears blur my vision. I press my free hand to my mouth, trying to hold it together, but it's no use.
"I'm scared," I whisper.
"I know." His thumb brushes over my knuckles. "But I'm not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever."
My eyes catch on something on the wall. Something I know so well, it used to be hanging up in my apartment until Aleksi took it a week ago.
The framed stars.
I walk over and run a finger over the frame.
“You took it to put in here.”
“It’s perfect don’t you think? Now he just needs a name.”
He’s right. This baby is going to be here in four months and he still doesn’t have a name.
I think hard about what feels right. Aleksi just bought our son a house and I haven’t even given our son a name.
Then I remember Aleksi’s father, the man who raised him with strength and heart, the man who taught him how to love people the way he does now.
“You’ve given me so much,” I say, turning toward him. “I want to give you something in return.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I want to…” I take a breath. “What if we name him Niko Mäkelin.”
For a heartbeat, he doesn’t move. His eyes widen, glass-bright, his mouth parting on a sound that doesn’t quite make it out. Then he presses a hand to his chest like he’s steadying something inside him.
“My father,” he says softly. “You’d really do that for me?”
I nod.
He crosses the room in two strides and pulls me against him, arms wrapping around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. His breath catches at my ear. “You don’t know what that means to me.”
I do. I can feel it in the way he holds me against me, the way his voice roughens when he says, “Niko.”
I lift my head to look at him. “I think he’d like it here.”
Aleksi smiles then, the kind of smile that undoes me.
The one he only reserves for me.
The one he gives me on the ice when he knows I’m watching.
When he scores or assists on a goal and looks to me like each one is mine. No one has ever looked at me the way Aleksi does.
It’s not worship… it’s something quieter, steadier—like he’s memorizing the parts of me no one else ever bothered to see. And that’s what terrifies me most but it’s also what draws me closer.
He cups my face in both hands, eyes shining. “You’re the only one that can make this empty house a home. Will you move in?”
I realize, standing here under his gaze, that losing Tarron was survivable.
Losing my mother was inevitable.
