Hard Fall by Brenda Rothert

Chapter Nineteen

Wes

The final game of the season was at home against Detroit. We’d wiped the floor with them earlier in the season, but tonight we were like a Little League baseball team playing their very first hockey game. That might have been a slight exaggeration, but damn, we looked awful out there.

Last night’s bonding dinner had been a fucking disaster. It started out okay but halfway through dinner Svetlana showed up. She’d been drunk, crying, and out of control. Konstantin tried to calm her down and get her to take a cab home, but she’d resisted, making a huge scene. Then Keegan got involved. And things devolved faster than any of us could have predicted. Even Coach had tried to defuse the situation to no avail. Keegan threw a punch, Kon hit back, and Svetlana jumped in the middle. If we’d been anywhere but Giovanna’s, the cops probably would have been called.

Thankfully, Vicenzo let us handle it, and between a handful of us, we’d separated Kon and Keegan, put Svetlana in a cab, and calmed everyone down. Keegan stormed off after Svetlana, though. We kept Kon at the restaurant, worried about what might happen if he and Keegan ran into each other again so soon.

The only good thing about the incident was that Coach finally understood how serious the situation was between Kon and Keegan, and had pulled me aside to tell me he would be talking to management about trading Keegan this summer. There was no way we could keep them both after what had happened, and at this point, Coach was over it. If we were honest, the whole team was, but everyone had tried to intervene without taking sides.

The end result was a horrible end to a tragic season, trades on the horizon for the off-season, and my own status on the team up in the air as well. Coach hadn’t been happy with how I’d done as acting captain, and I couldn’t blame him. It scared me, though. I didn’t know what I’d do if I got traded. We were already talking about putting the house up for sale and buying something new, where we could all get a fresh start, but I wasn’t planning on doing it in another city. Or god forbid, another country.

I brought it up that night in bed with Hadley. We’d made love a couple of times and she was soft and warm and sated, cuddled against me as we talked.

“You think you could get traded?” she asked in surprise.

“Coach is pissed about everything. The season, the vibe in the locker room, my captain skills, and of course, Kon and Keegan.”

“Keegan’s an asshole,” she said. “Even if he’s totally in love with Svetlana, they should have handled it better. He could have asked for a trade, or they could have kept it under wraps until the season was over. And why doesn’t Kon just kick her out?”

I shrugged in the darkness. “I honestly don’t know. I think he promised her father he’d take care of her or something like that, before he brought her to the U.S. with him.”

“I think that promise should have been nullified once she cheated on him.”

“Agreed.”

“So…what would it mean if you got traded?” she asked after a moment.

I tightened my arms around her. “I don’t know, babe. I mean, we’re already talking about selling the house, so it would be a clean break for all of us, but if that happened, I don’t know where we’d wind up.” I paused. “Which includes Canada.”

“Canada?” She stiffened a little. “I can’t move to Canada, Wes. I mean…my boss is already freaking out about me being in St. Louis. She’ll lose her mind if I move to another country.”

“We have to talk about it, though. We can’t just bury our heads in the sand because it’ll happen this summer if it happens.”

“Summer’s a long way away.”

“Six weeks, babe.”

“Ugh.” She nestled deeper into my chest. “I don’t want to talk about that. We’ve had a stressful enough year and we’re just settling into a routine.”

“Yeah, but the season’s over for us, which means we have to start talking about all the stressful stuff.”

“Tonight?” she asked, tipping up her head and giving me a mischievous smile as she reached between my legs and wrapped her hand around my cock. It instantly sprang to attention and I kissed her, taking her mouth with deep, sensual pulls on her tongue until she climbed on top of me.

“We definitely don’t have to talk anymore tonight,” I whispered against her mouth, palming her ass.

“What should we do instead?” she teased, running her hands over her breasts as she watched my face.

“You should let me fuck you until you can’t walk and your pussy screams for mercy.”

She licked her lips. “Now that sounds like something I’d want to talk about.” She dipped her head to kiss me again. “If I wanted to talk.”

“Mmhm.” I lifted her by the hips and lowered her down on my cock, pushing deep inside of her. “What were you saying?”

“Fuuuuck.”

The next coupleof days were nice. Cleaning out my locker and saying goodbye to the guys kind of sucked, but I knew I’d see most of them during the off-season, so it was kind of a relief not to have to worry about the Mavericks for a while. The kids kept us busy, Hadley and I were all over each other at night and a well-oiled machine during the day, and it felt like this was the first time I’d been able to breathe since that horrible night in January when we’d lost Ben and Lauren.

Hadley and I had agreed to table any serious conversations about the future until I’d had a chance to chat with my agent and find out what kind of interest there was for me in the hockey world. I was sure lots of teams would love to have me, but it had to be the right fit, both for my skills and personality, and my personal life. With Hadley and the kids in the mix, I couldn’t just go anywhere. Sometimes it happened that way, but I had enough pull in the industry to have at least a little say in where I went unless the team planned to unload me to the first taker. I didn’t think that would be the case, though. If anything, they were looking to dump Keegan as quickly and quietly as possible. My biggest hope was that when it all shook out, the core of the team would remain intact. Including me.

“Uncle Wes, Aunt Hadley’s on the phone with the boss bitch and Benny’s crying.” Annalise marched into the kitchen with her hands on her hips.

“You know better than to use that word,” I told her, mentally grimacing as I dried my hands. Hadley’s boss had been on a tear lately, and we’d probably used the B-word a few too many times, but I had to nip it in the bud no matter how funny it was to hear that word coming out of Annalise’s mouth.

“Sorry.” She dipped her head and I reached down to tweak her nose.

“It’s okay, Anna Peas. But don’t let Aunt Hadley hear you use that word—she’ll probably put you in the corner.”

Her lips turned down. “I don’t like the corner.”

“I know you don’t, so don’t use that word.”

“Okay.”

I took the stairs two at a time to grab Benny, who’d been napping. I’d just finished putting the lunch dishes in the dishwasher while Hadley got on a conference call with the editorial team of the magazine, and I didn’t want Benny’s crying to reach her down in Ben’s study.

“Hey, big guy.” I lifted him and held him against my chest until he settled down. “Did you have a good nap?”

He nestled into the hollow of my shoulder and I put him on the changing table, grabbing a diaper so I could put a fresh one on him. I’d done this a lot the last few months, so it was second nature now, and it occurred to me that I’d fallen into the role of father to these kids a lot more easily than I’d thought I would. I didn’t think about what I had to do anymore; I just did it. It was a hell of a lot simpler now that I didn’t have to rush off to work every day, though, and I hoped Hadley didn’t have to work until midnight again, like she had last night.

Her boss had been giving her shit about everything lately, and though she tried to hide it from me, I could tell it upset her. That was why I’d told her to do her thing this afternoon and I’d take over with the kids. Tori was off today so it was just me, Annalise, and Benny.

“When is Thor coming over?” Annalise asked me as we headed downstairs.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we can call him later.”

“He said we could go to the park.”

I smiled to myself, wondering if Lars really enjoyed her company or if he was just going along with it because he didn’t know how to say no. At some point, I’d have to ask him because I didn’t want him to resent me for getting him into this situation where a four-year-old demanded a lot of his time. He was young and single, so being at Annalise’s beck and call probably cramped his style big-time. Although, it was hard to tell with Lars, since he kept his private life pretty private.

“Can I watch Doc McStuffins?” Annalise asked.

“Sure.” I reached for the remote and turned on her favorite show just as my phone started to ring. I had Benny bouncing on my hip and I pulled it out of my pocket to see who it was.

Crap.

The lawyer.

I answered and then walked into the kitchen so Annalise wouldn’t hear my conversation since she was nosy as hell and didn’t miss a trick. “Hello?”

“Hey, Wes, it’s Timothy Sutton.”

“Hey, Tim. What’s going on?”

“Ben’s parents have filed an emergency motion to get temporary custody and the judge has agreed to hear it. The hearing is on Monday.”

“Jesus Christ. What do you think? Are we in trouble?”

“I think you need to sit down.”

“I thought you said the will as ironclad?” My heart sank.

“It is, but the problem is that you and Hadley have had three months to decide which of you is raising the kids, and so far you haven’t, leaving the kids’ future in limbo. The grandparents have made a case for them to move into the house to give the kids some stability while the two of you work it out. I don’t know this judge, but I hear she’s a huge kids’ advocate, so it could go either way.” He paused. “Have you decided which of you is going to raise the kids?”

I swallowed. “No. We…well, we’ve got a really great routine going and decided not to mess with it for now. I didn’t think Patrick and Susan would do something like this. They’re really starting to piss me off.”

“Agreed, and with that in mind, I think we should meet. Are you and Hadley available tomorrow?”

“I am, and I’ll see what Hadley can do with her schedule. Our nanny comes tomorrow so it should be okay.”

“We could do it on the phone if need be, just let me know.”

“I will. Thanks.”

I disconnected and leaned against the island, nuzzling Benny’s neck until he giggled.

There was no way in hell I was letting these kids go after the last three months, but my gut told me it wouldn’t be easy to raise them without Hadley. The problem was that I didn’t want to let her go either, and I had no idea how she would feel about that. Hell, I didn’t even know how I felt about it.

We definitely had to find some time to talk.