Page 58 of The Final Faceoff
Mornings with her feet against my kitchen floor, complaining about coffee because she can’t have it. Her voice filling the quiet when I come home from a game, her laugh when I tell her something isn’t funny, her stealing the blankets because, apparently, I run hot and she’s incapable of staying warm.
I want her here. Not for a week. Not for a few months. I want to come home to her. I want to figure out a way to make her stay.
And I have less than two months before I go back to training camp.
“You’re staring.” Her voice cuts through my thoughts, dragging me back to the present.
I meet her eyes, completely unapologetic. “Yeah.”
She squints at me, chewing slowly. “You get hit in the head too many times today?”
“Not really.” I shrug a shoulder. “I use a helmet—all the time.”
“Yeah, but you went to the rink, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I say casually. “I was doing some drills with Kade—he’s visiting for the day. Papa was here too.”
She tilts her head, studying me like I’m an untrustworthy science experiment. “Okay, seriously, what?”
I lean forward, resting my arms on the table. “I’m wondering how we’re going to set everything up here. The nursery, your . . . I don’t know, what do you need for work? Should we move to Brooklyn and get one of those big brownstones with a lot of rooms?”
She blinks, her fork pausing midair. “I can’t work in here.”
“Why not?”
“I travel. That’s one of the biggest parts of my job.”
“Yes, but for now you need to stick around, right?”
She nods slowly, like she’s bracing for whatever I’m about to say next. “Yeah, but I can’t just stop everything, Leif.”
I hesitate, my fingers curling into my palm. “Do you have plans for your next documentary?”
She sighs. “No, I don’t, but?—”
“Then you can figure something out here. In the city.” I shrug, keeping my tone casual even though I’m anything but. “Lucian’s in upstate New York with Sarah. You could write about a boy and his weird love for his Vizsla.”
That makes her laugh. “Sarah is adorable.”
“Unless she’s escaping or destroying things,” I remind her. “According to Scottie’s last text, Sarah let the horses out again. This time it took hours to get them back in the stable.”
She shakes her head, laughing harder, and I just sit there watching her, because when was the last time I heard her laugh like this?
“I wouldn’t mind visiting Luc and Sarah,” she admits, catching her breath. “Though I’m definitely not filming a documentary about them. I could about your family. The tell-all of the Crawford Playbook.”
“That would pay a lot,” I agree. “But you wouldn’t dare.”
She smirks but shakes her head.
“How about applying for the Ph.D.?” I continue, nudging the conversation forward.
“It’s . . . I don’t know. It’s probably too late for this year. Maybe next year, after the baby is born,” she says, almost like she’s convincing herself. “I could see what I could find for jobs around town. Maybe someone needs a hand with cameras or writing a script, or . . .”
She trails off, and I can see it happening—the doubt creeping in, the way she’s already talking herself out of it. Hailey doesn’t stay. She never has. She moves, she adapts, she makes herself fit into whatever place she’s landed, and then she leaves before it can root too deep.
Convincing her to stay here, with me, with this baby?
It’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
