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“Daddy?”
Engrossed as he is in editing a couple of photos for the bakery’s Instagram, the sound of his daughter’s tiny voice makes Bitty jump about a foot in the air. Sophie’s standing in the doorway to their bedroom when he looks, blanket trailing behind her, rubbing at one sleepy eye.
“Hi, sugar,” he says, a little faintly, resisting the urge to clutch at his metaphorical pearls. Every day that passes lately makes him understand his mama better and better. He gives Sophie a cursory once-over—no blood, no broken bones, no tears—and feels his heartbeat subside in his throat. The worst he can say is that her pajamas are getting to be a little too small. “What’s the matter?”
She scuffs one foot nervously on the carpet. “Are you still taking me to Papa’s game on Saturday?”
The question spills out of her in a rush, like she’s been dying to get it off her chest.
“Of course I am,” he says slowly, trying to figure out where this is going. He sets his laptop aside, swings his legs out of bed so he can sit up and face her. “You want to come, right? You’re still excited?”
He thinks excited is an understatement, given the way she’s been talking for months about going to her first in-person home opener. They’d made a big deal out of Sophie getting to pick out her very own Falcs gear from the website for her birthday, checked the shipping updates every day when the girls got home from school. Jack had even signed her sweater for her, below his name and above his number, just like he had for Ellie on her own fifth birthday. He’d fit her brand-new hat for her until it felt just right; then he’d pretended to shake her hand very seriously, as if she was a fan he’d met on the street. Their laughter, sun-bright and ringing, had filled the whole kitchen.
Sophie nods, jerky. “I am!”
“Why wouldn’t we take you, then?”
Her little face is very serious. “Because I don’t know any of the rules.”
“You don’t—” Bitty ruthlessly squashes the sudden temptation to laugh, shoves it way down deep into the pit of Jack and I Will Be in Stitches About This Later that they only open up once the kids are well and truly asleep. “Oh. Sweetheart, you know that you don’t have to know all the rules yet, right? We’re just goin’ to watch.”
This is clearly not a satisfactory answer. “But you and Papa always say it’s important to follow the rules so that we can have fun,” she says, like duh, Daddy. “When we go to the playground and at school and when we play games and stuff. And this is a game, too, and I don’t know the rules.”
Eight years and two kids later, Bitty thinks, he should have known that don’t worry has never cut it in this family.
“I see your point,” he says solemnly. He eyes his watch, pretending to consider; it’s only five after seven, and the cameras are still circling the rink in the hush before the game begins. First period probably won’t hurt. “Well, baby, that sounds like something we can fix. Would you like me to teach you now, and we can watch Papa play on the TV?”
Sophie nods again, so fast that her hair flies everywhere, and Bitty pats the open spot next to him. “Come on up here, then.”
One thing that he does know is this: where there’s smoke in this house, there’s sure to be fire. Sure enough, the puck’s barely dropped when Ellie’s disgruntled face peeks around the door. “What’s going on?”
There’s something about the set of her jaw and the tilt of her head that abruptly reminds Bitty of Jack, lingering in the doorway of the living room at the Haus, pretending to be grumpy at their shenanigans, secretly enjoying them immensely. He has half a mind to ask her if she’d be interested in acting lessons. She’s only a month shy of eight, but looking at the way she’s got her arms crossed just so, Bitty thinks she’d probably be incredible.
“Your sister wants to learn how hockey works,” says Bitty. If he’s signing up for this, he might as well do it thoroughly, so he flashes her his best wide, dramatic eyes. “You wanna help me explain?”
Ellie’s face lights up, just like that. Actress, indeed. “Sure.”
“Sophie, can Ellie watch with us?”
“Yeah!” says Sophie, looking at Bitty like she just won an all-expenses-paid trip through the candy store. He sighs, indulgent, and decides that getting them to stay in their beds tomorrow night is a problem for another time.
“You heard the lady, El, you better come snuggle.”
She gets a running start and scrambles up into the bed, crawls gracelessly over him and Sophie to land on Jack’s side of the mattress with a thump. Even as he catches a stray kick to the ribs (“Giselle Amandine, be gentle, ma’am”), Bitty finds his thoughts taking a wistful turn; he can’t believe how quickly their babies are turning into big kids, all long limbs and raw energy.
Sometimes it still strikes him as insane that this is his life now. He’s so darn proud of these girls that it’s made him weepy over a batch of buttercream frosting or somebody’s wedding cake more than once. He loves their big personalities, their quirks, the things they say that make him think. He’s so fascinated by all the things they might become. Being near them soothes something in Bitty, silences the tiny, persistent voice in his ear that used to say that someone like him could never have a real family.
So if he lets himself linger, occasionally, over the old sweetness that he used to find in sleepless nights and tiny hands, and the memory of the way that he and Jack had cried and cried when they found out about them both—well, he tells himself that he’s damn well earned it.
“All right,” he declares, once Sophie is curled into his side and Ellie has built herself a throne out of Jack’s pillows. “Can you see—”
“There’s Papa!” says Ellie, pointing at the TV. Not for the first time, Bitty thanks God for ESPN's penchant for close-ups; there’s Jack, sure enough, leaning on his stick and saying something to Tater.
“That’s him! You see him, Soph?”
“Yeah,” Sophie says. Her eyes are wide and very blue. Bitty remembers the feeling of being new at something, trying to take it all in at once. Remembers looking up into those same big blue eyes, cold morning light coming through high windows, and hearing his captain’s voice. One step at a time, eh?
“Ellie, help me out. Do you remember how many players one team can have on the ice at a time?”
She scrunches up her face, thinking. “Six!”
“You got it,” Bitty says. He reaches over and squeezes her hand, leans down to kiss the crown of Sophie’s head, marvels again at the turn of his life. “Okay, sweetie, it’s pretty easy. So there are six players…”
He’s woken, much later, by Jack kissing his forehead.
“Up past our bedtimes, were we, Bittle?”
Bitty blinks leadenly, stretches one leg and then the other. He can see Jack as he steps away, ditching his jacket and toeing off his shoes. The light from the TV washes him in shades of blue and gray. In the bed next to Bitty, Sophie and Ellie are sound asleep, their heads bent together, breathing softly.
“Just ‘cause you work nights don’t mean you get to chirp me, mister,” he says through a huge, jaw-cracking yawn. “‘Sides, we were watchin’ you, cut us some slack.”
“You were?”
Jack’s voice is low, intimate; Bitty lets it curl through his chest, lets the feeling of missing him rise and dissipate. “Yeah. Was teachin’ Sophie how hockey works.”
He looks up in time to see a strange expression cross Jack’s face. “Really. Just because?”
“She wanted to know the rules,” says Bitty. “All of them. Before Saturday. Got up outta bed and everything, bless her.”
Jack chuckles, his eyes on the girls. “Sounds serious, then.”
“Mhm,” Bitty says, father’s daughter being implied. “‘Course, then Ellie wasn’t gonna be left out.”
“Obviously not. She help you explain?”
“Sweetpea, she explained the whole dang concept of a power play to her five-year-old sister,” he says. Jack laughs harder, silent, his shoulders shaking. “We gotta be careful or next thing we know she’s gonna be giving you pointers on five-on-threes. Not even sure they needed me here.”
Jack’s weight dips the mattress when he sits down beside Bitty. “Don’t count yourself out, Bits. I’m sure you were a great teacher, too.” His shirt’s half-undone, collar and cuffs loose, and the pad of his thumb is warm and rough where it strokes over Bitty’s cheekbone. “So all of you watched together?”
“The whole thing.” Bitty turns his face into the heat of Jack’s hand. “Or most of it, I think, we were all fightin’ hard to stay awake past second period. Lord knows I kept tryin’ to tell ‘em that next week we’re all gonna be there—”
Jack leans over and kisses him, soft and hungry, with an edge of intent that makes Bitty’s mind go blissfully blank. “I can’t wait,” he murmurs. “To see you all there. Hey, you told Soph about the kid rule, right?”
“No,” says Bitty, struggling to think straight. God damn Jack Zimmermann and his stupid eyes and his big arms and his naked sincerity, because watching this man enjoy fatherhood makes Bitty want to have about eighteen more babies with him. “What? Is this some weird Canadian thing?”
“I told Ellie before her first game. If we score, she has to cheer loud enough that I can hear her, eh? Otherwise it doesn’t count.”
Bitty snorts. “Okay, you old sap. Win yourself some brownie points tomorrow and tell her that Daddy missed that one.”
“Deal,” Jack says, with the air of breaking a huddle. “Let’s get these kids in their own beds, I wanna make out with you.”
“I’ll take Ellie,” is Bitty’s immediate answer, and the force of their laughter starts to wake the girls.
The lines around Jack’s eyes are deeper when he smiles now; Bitty smiles back, easy, loves their family like breathing.