"Training camp starts next week," he says, staring at the soapy water while we clean up.
"Nervous?" I ask.
He's quiet for a moment. "What if I miss something? With Harper. Two weeks of intensive camp, staying with the team overnight most nights." He sets a glass down. "She changes every day. What if I'm not there for something?"
"Then I'll film it and send it to you within thirty seconds. You have my word."
He looks at me sideways. Something in his shoulders comes down. "Okay."
"You've built something solid with her. Two weeks won't undo that."
He nods, slowly, like he's deciding whether to believe it. Then he pulls the plug on the sink and dries his hands before heading upstairs.
I finish wiping down the counter. Hang the cloth over the tap. Turn the kitchen lightoff.
In my room, I press my fingers against my knee where his hand was. The warmth is gone. The awareness of it isn't.
Three weeks. That's all it's been. Three weeks of this man getting formula wrong and then right, narrating hockey positions to a two-month-old, and looking across the dinner table at me like I'm something worth looking at.
I pull out my phone and look at the photo he texted me this afternoon, Harper's first smile, her whole face transformed by it. In the corner of the frame, part of Tyler's hand is blurred from movement.
He’d called us a team today. Easy and certain. You, me, and her.
I put my phone down.
I am not going to let this happen. I have a very specific track record of losing people I let myself rely on, and I am not adding a hockey player and his daughter to that list. I can't.
11
TYLER
Harper's screaming wakes me in the dead of night, and this time it's different.
I stumble into the nursery, eyes barely open, expecting the usual. Hungry baby, wet diaper, gas. Something fixable. But when I pick her up, she screams harder. Her face is bright red, her little body rigid with whatever's wrong.
"Okay, baby girl. Okay." I check her diaper. Clean. Try a bottle. She won't take it. Rock her, walk with her, trying every position I've learned over the past month. Nothing works.
I'm losing my mind. She's been screaming for thirty minutes straight, and I don't know what's wrong. A month ago, I didn't knowanythingabout babies. A month of learning, and I still can't tell if I'm getting this right or just getting lucky each time. I'm not sure that feeling ever goes away. I'm not sure it's supposed to.
I find myself outside Nora's door, Harper still screaming in my arms, hand raised to knock before I can talk myself out of it.
"Red?" My voice is hoarse. "I need help."
The door opens immediately. Nora's in pajama pants and a tank top, hair messy from sleep, eyes alert in a way that tells me she wasn't fully asleep either.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. She won't stop. I've tried everything."
She takes Harper from me without a word, and we head back to the nursery together. The next half hour is a blur. Nora checks for a fever, examines Harper for signs of pain, and we both take turns walking with her. Nothing settles her completely, but gradually the screaming downshifts to crying, then to hiccupping sobs.
Eventually, Harper calms down in Nora's arms, exhausted from her own tantrum.
"Sometimes babies just cry," Nora says, swaying gently. "No reason we can figure out. She's not in pain, has no fever, and nothing physically wrong. Just having a rough night."
"That's a thing?"
"That's a thing. Growth spurt, maybe. Or just processing the world. We'll never know."