I probably deserved Coach Toon’s ire, because my head wasn’t in it today. It was back at the house, with a woman who barely came up to my chest and a baby that made me both happy and sad at the same time. He was where he should be, but also, he was a blinding reminder that Alana was gone.

And that I had an aching attraction to his new guardian.

I huffed, checking Ludo as we did our two-on-one drills. Bouncing off me, Ludo laughed as he got out in front and drove me into the boards.

“Asshole,” I grunted with the impact.

“Not my fault you're skating like my grandma out here.” Ludo was young, twenty-two, and had been playing with us for twelve months. I liked the smug little fuck.

“Not unless your grandma is Soukal.”

“She mightn’t be my grandma, but I’d still let her spank me and call me a bad boy,” he whispered, his eyes darting to the woman in question in case she heard. See? Smug.

“Only if you don’t mind her using her skates to slice off those brass ones you call balls, kid.”

Ludo laughed, and we ran the drill again.

Vanmussen, our captain and a veteran in the team, skated up to me. The guy made it look easy, but I knew that had more to do with rigorous conditioning than it actually being effortless. “How’d the thing go, Cooper? Julieta’s been asking me to ask you for days.” Julieta was Vanmussen’s wife. Tiny and fiery, she had her six-foot-two husband wrapped around her little finger.

He’d given me a personal recommendation that had made my eyes sting, writing things that no one had ever said about me, at least to my face. That I was a good man. That I was honorable and would give my last breath to the team, to his family. He wrote about the time I went around and did all his yardwork when he’d injured his knee, because Julieta was having her little sister’s quinceañera at their house the next day. How me and Rigby were the two men he could rely on in the team, that he knew would share the burden of leadership with him.

His words affected me far more than I’d ever say. I didn’t think anyone had ever praised me for anything but my hockey skills. Hockey was what I had. But Muss thought I was a worthy man, and that meant something to me. He hadn’t even asked what the reference was for; he just wrote it from the heart. I’d eventually told him, because I needed advice and he was the only good dad I knew.

“Good. They arrived yesterday.”