Page 98 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
The last baby is the smallest, and for a second, the room tenses. The nurse moves quick, suctioning and patting, and then there’s a cry, weaker than the first but gaining power by the second. Sage doesn’t even look tired now. She’s looking for the baby, reaching with both arms, and when the nurse hands her the little bundle, she smiles so wide I think it might split her face. Grey is next to her, one hand on her back, and he says, “You did it,” in a voice so soft I barely hear him.
I am still holding Sage’s hand, but now I don’t want to let go. Finn is crying, and I mean really crying, which surprises none of us but makes everything else okay. The doctor says, “Three for three. You’re a legend.”
Sage says, “Yeah, I am.” I look at her, then at the three babies, all wriggling and wailing in unison, and I have never loved anything more.
The nurses swarm in, cleaning and weighing and tagging each baby, and the room fills with the sound of paper tearing, plastic snapping, and the gentle chorus of three newborns discovering their lungs. Finn takes a picture, then another, and then says, “We did it, guys,” which is technically true, though I feel like all we did was survive.
The room is chaos, but the four of us are locked in a bubble of exhausted joy. I am still standing, but just barely. Grey is smiling, which is a miracle, and Finn is taking selfies with the babies and texting them to Cass and probably the entire team. Sage is cradling all three babies, eyes half closed, face serene. I lean in and kiss her on the forehead, and she doesn’t even flinch.
The doctor cleans up, says, “Congratulations,” and leaves us alone for a minute. It is the quietest minute of my life.
I look at the three babies, squirming and perfect, and then at Sage, who looks back with an expression that is equal parts triumph and disbelief.
I say, “You’re amazing.”
She says, “We’re all going to be terrible at this.”
Finn grins. “At least there’s four of us.”
Grey puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “We can take shifts.”
Sage laughs, and the babies all stop crying at the same time, as if they’re already in on the joke.
I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we are here.
EPILOGUE
SAGE
Three years later
Game seven. Overtime. The crowd is standing, fists clenched around foam fingers and plastic cups and whatever else the janitorial union has preemptively mourned. On the ice, both benches are on their feet, twenty-four hunks of meat in matching synthetics holding so impossibly still that the entire world tilts around them. You can almost taste the adrenaline sweating out of them, out of the fans, the coaches, even the camera crew running the broadcast up in the rafters. Every person in this building is ready to explode.
Except, apparently, for my children.
The triplets, now three years old, Storm jerseys tucked into their diapers and faces glistening with what is either snot or pure molten sugar, are clustered on the floor just behind the home team bench. They’re supposed to be in the suite, eating soft pretzels and learning not to staple things to each other, but the minute someone mentioned “Cup on the line,” they staged a mass prison break and have since made it their mission to lick the glitter off every commemorative hat in the building.
“Stop eating the hat,” I hiss, prying one kid’s face away from the brim of a Stanley Cup foam crown. She’s the eldest, at least by six minutes, but you’d never know it by the way she’s currently trying to snort confetti. Her siblings are under the table, gnawing the plastic off a souvenir puck and cackling like gremlins.
I look up at the scoreboard. Three minutes, nineteen seconds left in the first overtime. If anyone on the Storm bench glances my way, they’ll see me in my faded Wellness Staff hoodie and a credential pass that saysAll Access, but I don’t think it’s fooling anyone. My hair is in a pulled-back-for-safety situation, and there’s a faint crust of what I hope is cheese on my left sleeve. I smell like a locker room and a preschool had a baby, which is not inaccurate.
Behind the glass, the bench is a murder of desperate, beautiful men, each one coiled so tight you could use them to store wind energy. I count faces: Finn is still on the top line, his eyes unblinking as he stares at the sheet. Next to him, Beau—hair even shorter now, less pretty but somehow more menacing—leans over the boards, breathing like he’s been underwater for a week. Grey, my gentle mutant, is wearing an “A” now, which means he shaves twice as often and grumbles only half as much. Together, they form the core of what passes for leadership in this league, and for the first time in years, it looks like they might actually pull it off.
The puck drops. The teams jostle for possession, a mess of skates and sticks and the kind of violence that is only legal if you can draw it with blue and red lines on a Jumbotron. The puck circles the offensive zone, a perfect arc to Beau, who does what he always does—waits one unnecessary second to make sure everyone’s heart rate spikes, then snaps a pass so perfect it’s basically a hate crime. Finn collects, drops his shoulder, and wires it top shelf.
The red light detonates. The arena goes nuclear.
For a second, I forget to breathe. I forget everything, even the part where my youngest is actively trying to climb the penalty box plexi. It is all noise, everywhere, shrapnel of sound and light and bodies slamming together, grown men howling like birth was a recent memory. The bench erupts, players vaulting over the boards and dogpiling in the corner. On the glass, fans claw for a piece of the moment. The triplets scream, partly from joy, partly because they know if they’re loud enough, someone will eventually give them a cookie.
And just like that, the Storm are champions.
Three years ago, I was hiding in a windowless exam room, charting hemoglobin values and pretending I didn’t know half the team was debating whether to call me “the baby whisperer” or “Momboss.” Now I’m running Storm Wellness, a league-wide program endorsed by a panel of sports science PhDs and, less formally, every mother in the tri-state area. We’ve gone from five clients to fifty in a year, and next season, I’m slated to run seminars in at least four other NHL cities. They’re putting my face on the website and everything, which is hilarious if you remember the time I couldn’t get through a staff photo without blinking.
But this is the payoff. Not the Cup, not the banners, not even the suddenly respectful press coverage (“groundbreaking female leadership” is the phrase they’re testing this week). It’s here, watching my kids inhale confetti and the men I love collapse into a pile of champagne, blood, and expensive hair product.
The postgame is a blur: the trophy lift (Beau and Grey, together, biceps flexed so hard the Cup looks like it’s made of tinfoil), Finn getting doused by half the Gatorade cooler and still managing to smirk for every camera angle, the parade of media and families pouring onto the ice in a flood. At one point, Grey spots me in the scrum, gestures with acome herethat couldmove tectonic plates. He’s too polite to leave the interviews, but the second the last question is over, he finds us.
I wedge through the crowd, triplets in tow, and get a face full of beard sweat and black eye as Grey scoops me up and spins me. I squeal, an actual squeal, and he laughs—a deep, rolling laugh that makes my bones go weak. The kids pile on, one after another, forming a kind of wriggling, shrieking human bouquet.
