When we get to the front of the closed door, I’m almost afraid of what my family did. I open the door, and my mouth hangs open. Mac runs into the room ahead of us and goes straight for the bed, lying down on it. The big queen-sized bed is in the middle of the room with the word PLAY over the bed in lights. The white comforter and blue pillows show it’s a boy’s room. There are four pictures on one wall, one is a soccer ball, one is a basketball net, one is a group of baseballs, and then the last one is a picture of Maddox in hockey gear.
He walks into the room and looks around. “Are we all sleeping in here?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“No, this is all yours,” I say, putting my hands on my hips. “This is where you sleep or just come up and play.”
“It’s so big,” he says, and his eyes are wide when he looks over to see a bookshelf with books on them. He reaches out and then holds himself back, looking over at us to make sure it’s okay.
“Whatever is in this room is yours,” I assure him. “If you want to touch it, you touch it. If you want to play with it, you play with it.”
“You just have to clean it up when you’re done, and if I’m not mistaken …” Alex says, walking over to the closet and opening it. The closet is full of clothes, all separated by color and styles. “These are all yours also.”
She walks over to the chest of drawers and opens them. “You have everything you need right here.”
“How many kids live here?” he asks, looking at us.
“Just you,” I confirm, smiling at him and then looking at Alex, who comes over to me. She wraps her arms around my waist, and I kiss her forehead. I look back at Maddox, who stands there with us. “It’s the three of us.” I look back at the bed. “And Mac.”
Chapter 35
Dylan
As I head to my car after my workout, the phone in my hand buzzes. I look down and see that it’s my dad. “Hey,” I answer, getting into the car and turning it on. The heat outside is almost unbearable, something that my cousins used to complain about but I never actually believed until now.
“Hey yourself,” my father says. I can hear that he is also driving. “What are you doing?”
“Just got done with off-ice training,” I say, pulling out of the gym parking lot. “I’m not going to lie, I’m hurting.” I laugh.
“I told you not to take two weeks off,” he reminds me.
“I wanted to spend time with Maddox.” It’s been a month since we’ve had him, and he’s the best kid I know.
“How is it going?” he asks, and I take a deep breath. “Oh, boy.”
“It’s going good,” I say, finally. “Great even, except last night.”
“What happened?” my father asks, his voice filled with worry.
“He wet the bed,” I say, “and then instead of saying anything, he tucked himself in the corner and slept on the floor.” My chest compresses when I say it.
“Fuck,” my father says out loud.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I say. “I found him this morning curled up with Mac beside him.” I shake my head. “I was so fucking angry that he was on the floor and I didn’t know what to do.”
“Welcome to parenting,” he says, and I roll my eyes.
“I never understood it.” The words start to come out. “That day that …” I start, the memory coming back to me as if it was yesterday, the lump in my throat is so big I don’t know if I can say anything. My father just waits for me to gather my thoughts. “That day when he showed up at church.” I blink away the tears that are now coming full on. “When you”—I clear my throat—“fought with him.”
“I’d do it all over again,” my father says softly. “Every single day for the rest of my life, I would fight for you.”
“I know,” I say, my eyes filling with tears. There has never been one day since we met that I doubted how he felt for me. “It made my stomach burn. It made my whole body shake with this unspeakable anger that I never knew I had in me,” I breathe out.
“It’s love,” he says. “It’s a love that is unbreakable.”
“I want him to trust me,” I say, “and to come to me when he’s hurt or happy or just because.”
“Son,” he says, “do you know how many people he must have tried to trust who just burned him? The number of people who told him one thing and then did something else. Fuck, his mother, the one person supposed to love and protect him dumped him off like he was a fucking library book.” His voice gets higher, and I know that everyone in the family feels the same way about the situation. “So even though you love him with everything that you have and you want him to see it, you have to go in it and remember how you felt.”