The Hockey Star's Forgotten Baby Mama novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The River

The tunnel went quiet around us.

The rookie stopped halfway to the locker room with his helmet in his hand.

Johnny didn't look away from Lulu.

"I want to," he said. "More than anything in the whole world. More than the Cup."

"Then do it."

"It's not my question to answer, bug." He looked up at me over her head. "It's a grown-up question. I have to ask your mom first. Properly."

Lulu turned around in his arms and frowned at me.

"Mommy. Say yes."

"He hasn't asked me yet," I said.

"He's going to."

"Then I'll answer him when he does."

She sighed the long, put-upon sigh of a five-year-old surrounded by idiots, and went to find Stevie.

We lost game seven in Dallas, in double overtime.

Johnny hit the post with forty seconds left in the first overtime. He said afterward it was the loudest sound he'd ever heard.

The team flew home at four in the morning, and the season was over.

He didn't ask me in May.

He didn't ask me in the first week of June either.

He came up every night for dinner, and gave Lulu her bath, and read the fourth book, and went back downstairs.

He was waiting again.

On the second Friday in June, his lease on the brick warehouse ran out.

He'd kept it all spring, in case. He never said in case of what.

The movers had taken everything but the bed.

"Help me lock up?" he asked, at seven, on my steps.

Stevie had Lulu before he finished the sentence.

"Go," she said. "Go lock up. Lock up all night. I'll make pancakes."

The apartment was empty and echoing.

Taped boxes along one brick wall. The big black windows. The bed in the middle of the floor, made up with gray sheets.

The window to the fire escape was already open.

I climbed out in my socks, because I always would.

The river was gold with the last of the sun. A sailboat was going under the bridge.

Johnny climbed out after me, and sat down on the iron grate with his back to the brick, and patted the spot beside him.

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