Page 107 of Three Pucking Words
“The very same,” he replies. “He’s hoping to poach Clarkson too.”
I shake my head at that pipe dream. Jesse Clarkson is the captain of Pittsburgh’s team. There’s no way he would give that up. “He won’t get him.”
“I don’t know, son. Yokav is persuasive.”
Yokav is a familiar name, and I wrack my brain to figure out why. “This wouldn’t happen to be the same Yokav family who’s been in the news for their new skating facility in Russia that trains Olympic athletes, is it?”
His lips twitch. “The very same.”
Coach isn’t kidding when he says the owner has money. Their family consists of old money and gold medal athletes who marry themselves to professional hockey players. While they’ve resided in the United States for a few decades now, they have extended family in Russia that handles a lot of athletic training. And if Yokav wants Moskins, it means he knows who can create a winning team.
I have a lot to think about. “Did he tell you when he’d need a decision by?”
Coach dips his head, grabbing a piece of paper from his desk drawer and sliding it to me. It’s a phone number.
“By the end of the season.”
The end of the season is going to be here before we know it based on how fast the year has flown by. That isn’t a lot of time to make life-changing decisions.
“Weigh your options,” he says, picking up his pen and turning back to his computer. “Take your time with it.”
I can hear the dismissal in his voice, so I slip the paper into my pocket and stand. Right before I leave, he says, “Hoffman. Honor has always liked the city. But she’s always wanted to live somewhere quieter. She had a grandmother who lived in Connecticut—a quaint little town not far from here. She used to beg us to move there when her mother and I were still together. There was a small diner called Red’s Place that she always asked us to eat at when we were visiting. Last I heard, it’s still open.”
I swallow at the information that he offers me with good intentions. “Good to know.”
His parting words are, “Food for thought.”
*
I scoop Gemmaup under my arm and run with her like I’m running a football to the end zone, with her cackling and squealing the entire way as she holds onto me for dear life.
“Penalty! Holding!” Sebastian yells after us, laughing as I flip him off.
“Fuck off, Henderson,” I call out, stopping at the end of the lawn and setting Gemma down.
She looks up at me. “Daddy. You’re not supposed to say that word. You have to say puck. Like Honor’s dog, remember?”
I wince and ruffle her already wild hair that was made worse by the knit cap she pulled off a few minutes into playing. “You’re right, kiddo. Uncle Bash can go puck himself.”
She giggles and dodges past me to run toward her favorite uncle. “Yeah! Uncle Bash can puck himself.”
I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose as my best friend snorts. “Way to raise a lady, Hoffman.”
When I asked Sebastain to come over, it wasn’t to play with Gemma outside. But my daughter is obsessed with him almost as much as she’s obsessed with Honor’s dog, so it took less than five minutes to convince him to play with her outside. Even with a thin layer of snow on the ground and a nip in the air, my six-year-old loves being outdoors.
She lunges at Sebastian, barely giving him enough time to catch her. “Are you gonna come to my birthday party, Uncle Bash? Daddy says we can have it before Christmas this year so I can have alllll my birthday presents early.”
Sebastian chuckles, carrying her over to where I’m standing on the deck. “All the presents, huh?”
Gemma nods enthusiastically. “If you need ideas for me, I has a list and I circled the ones I really, really want.”
“Gem,” I chide, giving her a look. “We’ve been over this. You are not getting a pony. We don’t have room for one.”
She frowns. “We have a whole back yard.”
Sebastian snickers.
I shoot him a look before focusing on the broken-hearted looking child in his arms. “There are regulations here. Rules in place to make sure animals, especially farm animals, are living comfortably. We don’t have the space that a horse would need to be happy.”
