“What?” I ask him.
“See the way he skates there?” He points at Dylan who skates as if he’s gliding. “You can’t teach that, and if you do, you get it when you’re fourteen.” He turns and looks back. “Max, check out the kid.”
“Where?” Evan asks. “I have to go one-on-one with him.”
“He’s eight,” I say, and Viktor just laughs. I look at them with their New York shirts.
“You couldn’t just wear Stone Camp shirts?” I ask, and they all shake their heads.
“Assholes,” I say and skate on the ice to my father.
“Hey, Dad,” I say and then look in the corner where Dylan is fighting MC for the puck. He fakes right but then puts his stick between his own legs and knocks it away from MC, who just smirks at him as he shoots it in the net. I’m lucky that we had an empty ice this morning while all the other campers are on the other three rinks.
“That kid is …” my father starts, and Matthew joins us.
“He’s better than you guys were.” He laughs and skates to Dylan, and he starts to tell him and point at him and then to the center of the ice.
“Come on, Dylan,” Evan says, skating on the ice. “Let’s see who’s number one now.”
Dylan smiles and spits out his mouth guard. “Justin is number one.” He skates to me, and I put my hand on his head.
“Let’s show them what we’re made of, kid.” I smile to him and skate to the middle of the ice. “Dylan and me against Evan and Michael.”
“Let’s go, Michael!” Evan yells.
“Uncle Evan, I don’t want to,” he moans, getting off the bench and coming over to us. “It’s summer. Mom said I don’t have to play hockey in the summer.”
“You know Uncle Evan,” MC starts to say. “Uncle Justin did score more points than you last year.” He smirks and stands next to Matthew who just shakes his head. “Stats don’t lie, right?”
“Could be but my numbers are still higher than M&M over there,” he says and looks at me. “We doing this?”
“Yeah,” Dylan says and gets into position. My father comes over and holds the puck in the middle of center ice, and Michael and Dylan both look at him.
He drops the puck, and Dylan is the first on it. He almost runs past Michael, who is skating behind him, and I look as Evan just smiles at him. “Let’s see what you got, kid,” Evan says, skating backward, and he looks at me and then I just nod at him. He tries to take the puck away from Dylan, but he turns his body and then goes around him, and all he can do is watch him skate to the goal and tip it in. The whole bench breaks out in laughter.
“I did it,” Dylan says, skating to me. “I did it.”
“You did, buddy,” I say, holding up my gloved hand. “Okay now, let’s go teach some kids,” I say, and we get off ice one and walk over to ice two and three. We separate, and when it’s lunchtime, we all gather upstairs for lunch. I look for Dylan, who is sitting with Michael, and they are laughing at something. “How great is this?” I say to the guys who look around.
“You are doing a good thing here,” my father says. “All these kids not having the chance to get on the ice, and you are paying for them to do all of this.” I shrug.
“There are a couple that if they are given a free ride would just be out of this world,” Matthew says.
“I have an idea for the Horton Foundation.” Max says of the foundation that he started long ago. He works with the child’s oncology department because his sister is a doctor there. Her stepson is a survivor, and she helped treat him.
“Yeah,” Evan says. “I’d pitch in money to help kids.”
“You guys are all copycats,” I tell them, taking a bite of my chicken.
“But with all that said, it’s a good thing.”
“Your kid,” Viktor says now, and I look over at him. He was quiet at first, and he took some time to come around. But after he went through his recovery and got with Zoe, he really blossomed and opened up. It was good to see. “He’s got hands; he’s got speed. If he had just a touch more height, he could even be three levels ahead. But it will come.”
“His hands are insane,” Evan says. “I was with him and the other kids his age. The kid didn’t even look up when he is doing the drill, but he just stared straight and let the puck feel the stick.”
I smile. “I taught him that,” I say, and I look over at my father, who just smiles as he remembers teaching me the same thing. “He really is great,” I say, my chest filling with this enormous pride that I didn’t even know was there. I look over at him, and it just clicks into place. Everything was there. I knew that I liked what we had, and I knew that it was special. What I didn’t know was that I would do whatever I needed to protect it. Now I just have to convince his mother.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Caroline
For the whole day, I am on pins and needles. I keep coming up with excuses on how to bail for tonight, but Dylan is with him. I pick up the phone no less than one hundred times an hour, phrasing a text, but in the end, I never send anything.
“You look like you are ready to crawl out of your skin,” Cheryl says when she pokes her head into my office at two o’clock.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “I’m meeting Justin’s family tonight,” I say, and she comes in smiling.
“How exciting.” She sits down in one of the empty chairs. I look toward the window, seeing the sun outside shining.
“It’s just …” I start to say and she crosses her arms over her chest. She is wearing one of her long white flowy skirts with a bright pink top.
“It’s just that you don’t think that you fit in.” She finishes the sentence for me. “You aren’t worthy.” She doesn’t stop either. “That he deserves to have better.”
“Pretty much.” I lean back in the chair. My legs shake, and my fingers strum. “We are from two totally different worlds.”
“See, that is where I think you’re wrong,” she says, and I look at her. “You are not that different. Do you smoke?” I shake my head. “Does he?” Again, I shake my head. “Do you do drugs?” I roll my eyes. “You see where I’m going with this.”
“Okay, I’m not a drug addict,” I start.
“You are in this place because you fell in love with a man,” she says.
“I don’t know if I ever really loved him,” I tell her. “I was seventeen when I got pregnant, eighteen when I had Dylan. My parents kicked me out, and he took me in. How do you know what love is at that age?”
“Exactly.” She raises her eyebrows. “You are a survivor. That is what you are. You are doing what you are doing for your child, which makes you just like everyone else in the world.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll remember that tonight when I look around and feel like I want the earth to swallow me up.”
“You do that,” she says, getting up. “See you Sunday.”