Page 74 of Hot Damn
“Is this the reason you kept yourself and Whitney out of the public eye?”
“Yes. And no. It was hard raising a kid on my own. I had Mama Dot but I wanted to take care of my daughter, so I did the bulk of the work. I went to school, then straight home to Whit. Once I hit the NHL I did the same. Went to work, came straight home to her.”
“Is it possible for someone to find out about her mother?”
“No. My name was suppressed, and the case files sealed. The names on Whit’s birth certificate aren’t real.”
“What do you mean they aren’t real?”
“I changed my name the day Whit was born. And the name in the mother’s section is a fake one the court made up to help keep our identities a secret.”
“Your name isn’t Beckett Higgison?”
“Not my birth name, no. It’s the name I took so we could have a future without the cloud of our past hanging over us.”
“I won’t ask where you got your name from or what your birth name is, but I will ask again. Is it possible someone could find out who you both are? If they dig far enough?”
“I hope not, but I suppose if they knew where to look or someone gave them something to go on.”
“All right. Well, for now I think we can table the telling Nat thing but you should think about it. I can, with your permission, hire someone to bury the info about your real identity where no one will ever find it, but I’ll have to use the same people we use for KAW and Nat isn’t the only one who will hear about it if I do.Oakley and Blake will as well. And I can’t imagine either of them keeping the information from the men they’re married to.”
I can see the gears in her head spinning. It’s remarkable the way I’m getting to know her tells. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t think we should do anything until after Whitney’s birthday and you tell her, if that’s still your plan.”
“At this point it is.”
“Okay, we wait until you’ve told her then we can ask her what she wants to do. If she wants me to see about burying any connection between you and your past that might still be there.”
“I’m scared to tell her. Scared of what she’ll think of me. Of the mother she’s never known, who never wanted her.”
“How did you manage to get custody of her?”
“I found out Catrina was pregnant when I overheard her making an appointment for an abortion. We argued, she told me it had nothing to do with me and I should forget I heard anything.”
“Except you couldn’t.”
“No. I tried to talk her out of it for a few days and when I realized it wasn’t possible, when I realized I was the latest in a long line of teenagers she’d slept with, I told Mama Dot and she took me straight to the police station. Catrina was arrested the next morning and the courts stopped her from aborting Whit.”
“She went through with the pregnancy because she had no choice.”
“Yes. Whit was born in the local hospital under police guard and handed straight to me seven months after I overheard that phone call.”
“God, Beckett.” Her arms tighten around my waist. “I can’t begin to imagine what you went through, how you didn’t just cope but thrived.”
“I don’t remember a lot of it. I knew I needed to set us both up and I was good at hockey. Really good. I was already getting noticed and Mama Dot talked to me about the best way to make sure the two of us would be safe.”
“Money.”
“Yes. Money. It’s why I went straight from high school to the NHL.”
“In Canada.”
“We moved there the day Whit was born. We had everything lined up, ready. Mama Dot’s house packed up and a place in Edmonton where I enrolled in the local high school to finish my schooling, but the goal was, from before Whit was in my arms, to make the NHL.”
“You really are a miracle.”
“No. I’m just a man who did what he had to in order to protect his child.”
