Page 3 of The Fall

“Are you trying to talk her out of this nonsense?” Tess asks Rowan when we walk into the kitchen.

She’s still stuck on not wanting me to move out. I know the full reality of it hasn’t set in with me yet because I’ve been so busy with the move. Tess and I have lived together for almost eight years.

“Might be a little late for that.” Rowan opens pizza boxes until he finds the one he’s looking for.

“Cam, sit here.” Dom gets up from his seat at the table.

I wave a hand. “No, I’m good. Don’t get up.”

“Already did.”

Sergei stands up from his chair at the table, carrying his paper plate over to the bag I left on the kitchen counter for garbage. Tate is still tucked beneath his arm, which is surely cramping or something by now. Sergei has his arm around Tate’s waist, Tate’s legs hanging down in back.

“Hey, Mom,” Tate says, taking a bite of the pizza in his hand.

“You’re supposed to be unpacking your room,” I remind him.

“That’s what we’re going to do now.”

Sergei turns, his trademark serious scowl in place, and heads toward the hallway that leads to Tate’s bedroom. Boni comes trotting into the kitchen and walks up to Tate, who slips him the rest of his piece of pizza.

I look around at the faces in my small, bright kitchen. Besides Tess, Dom, Rowan, Sergei and Beck, there’s also Ben and his wife Stella. Tess and I grew up in Southside Chicago, and we had very little extended family to speak of. I love that our kids now have so many surrogate aunts and uncles through the tight-knit team.

And as much as I like Rowan, which isa lot, there’s a voice in my head telling me not to mess that up for my boys by dating one of Dom’s teammates.

The past year has been smooth and happy. Zero heartbreak. Why mess with such a good thing?

CHAPTER TWO

Rowan

“HaveI mentioned how fucking great it is to have working crappers again?”

Our goalie Sal walks out of the bathroom area of our new locker room into the dressing area, where everyone is getting changed for practice. We spent the past three years sharing a community college hockey team’s facilities after our own arena was destroyed by explosions caused by mechanical failure, and our new arena was finally finished and opened a couple of weeks ago.

“It was no skin off your balls,” my teammate Colby tells Sal with a glare. “You just kept shitting in the only toilet we had in the college locker room whether it was working or not.”

Sal shrugs. “Better than shitting my pants, bro.”

The college locker room bathroom had lots of urinals--but only one toilet--and the showers had lousy water pressure and ran out of hot water every time we used them. Our team owner Mila struck a deal with them to pay for our use of their facility, and she also made a big donation to the school when our arenaopened to fund new locker room facilities for the men’s and women’s hockey teams.

Our team captain Ford walks into the dressing area and shakes his head when he sees Sal.

“In what universe does that mustache look good, Sal? It has to be one where everyone is blind.”

Sal grins and strokes his thick, dark mustache, which he’s been growing out for months. It looks like Ben Stiller’s mustache in Happy Gilmore, and I swear at this point he’s just keeping it to fuck with us.

“Don’t be hatin’ on my lip foliage,” Sal says.

“You look more like a ’70s porn star than ’70s porn stars do,” Beau says from the other side of the room.

“Your mom loves sitting on my womb broom. Can’t keep her off the damn thing.”

I pull my T-shirt on and step closer to him to get a better look at it. “How is it so much thicker than the hair on your head, man?”

“It’s all the testosterone I have racing through these veins.”

Dom laughs heartily from nearby. “That’s an overflowing crock of bullshit. He puts hair growth shit on it.”

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