The Hockey Star's Forgotten Baby Mama novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: Four and a Half

I could have lied.

I'd been lying for five years. I was good at it.

But Lulu was on the other side of the boards with her helmet crooked, beaming at him.

"Stevie," I said. "Can you take her for a hot chocolate?"

Stevie looked from me to Johnny and back.

She didn't ask a single question.

"Come on, goalie. Marshmallows."

When they were gone, I walked up into the stands without looking to see if he followed.

He did.

The upper bowl was empty. Rows and rows of blue seats, and below us the bright ice full of tiny people.

I sat down. He stayed standing.

"Four and a half," I said. "She was born March third. Five years ago in June, in Chicago, you won the second round against Detroit."

He didn't move.

"There was a party in the hotel ballroom after. My father had a box with your old team. That's how I got in."

I made myself look at him.

"I'd loved watching you play for two years. I was a grad student. I had a poster in my apartment, like an idiot."

"Leighton."

"Let me say it once."

He shut his mouth.

"You went out on the fire escape to get away from the noise. I was already out there. We talked for an hour. About your dad and the fire station. About how you hated the losers' handshake line because it felt like lying."

His face had gone very still.

"I kissed you first," I said. "Not you. Me. We went to your room. Neither of us was drunk. I remember all of it."

My voice did something. I waited until it stopped.

"In the morning you were gone. You never asked my name. You called me Lee."

The word landed.

I watched him remember.

The fire escape. The red dress. The long red hair.

For one second his eyes went soft, and I thought, there you are.

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