Alex (Cold Fury Hockey 1)

“Yes,” I say for the third—maybe fourth—time as I set the lasagna in the middle of the table.

“Holy shit. That is just so cool,” Glenn says, his eyes filled with excitement and yearning.

“Watch your mouth,” my mom says sternly but I see my stepdad Jim turn away from the table because he’s about ready to bust out laughing. I catch his eye and shoot him a wink but try to keep my features bland so my little brother doesn’t know we think he’s freakin’ adorable when he cusses.

Glenn’s eyes cast downward for a second in shame over his curse word but then they pop right back up to me, filled with hope. “Do you think you can get me an autograph, Sutton? It doesn’t have to be much…just on a piece of paper or something. ”

My heart tumbles, seizes and then melts over Glenn’s simple request. He’s an amazing kid, eleven years my junior and he never asks for anything. My mom and stepdad don’t make a lot of money but they have managed to give Glenn and me a damn good life. We may have grown up wearing thrift store clothing and having lean Christmases, but we never lacked for our basic necessities, and we were given so much love and devotion from our parents that we never missed the things we did without.

At eleven, Glenn is old enough to know the bounds of our parents’ abilities, even as he watches his friends sporting expensive clothing and carrying the very best of iPhones, iPads, gaming devices and toys. He doesn’t ask for these things because he knows our parents can’t afford them, and he never pouts, whines or tries to lay a guilt trip on them about it. But as he sits here staring at me with bright, shining eyes, he knows the cost of an autograph is nothing more than a simple request for me to make to Alex, and I’m not going to deny him that.

I’m pretty sure Alex would give me an autograph if I asked. He was quite the ass when he stomped out of my office, verifying for me that he must, indeed, be the team’s bad boy. But I feel there’s something else there too.

I sense there is a reason for the way he is. Call it my counselor intuition, or maybe it’s just plain wishful thinking so I don’t have to deal with an ass**le that is an ass**le for no other reason than he likes being that way.

Either way, it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

“Sure, kiddo,” I say as I tousle his hair. “I’ll get something from him next time I see him. ”

“Yes!” Glenn yells and gives a fist pump in the air. “Everyone at school will die when they see it. ”

“You’ll be the talk of the class,” Mom says, her eyes warm and grateful as she watches the exuberance on Glenn’s face. Then she lifts her gaze to mine and her expression to me says, Thank you, baby, for making Glenn happy. He deserves it.

I can feel tears prickle at my eyes so I blink rapidly, and say, “Okay, who is ready for some lasagna?”

“I’m ready for my birthday cake,” Glenn says with a grin.

Pushing the spatula into the pan, I lift out a slice and place it on Glenn’s plate. “Lasagna first, then cake,” I tell him.

“Then presents?” he asks hopefully.

“We’ll discuss it if you eat all of your dinner,” Mom says.

Glenn picks up his fork and dives in before I even get the second slice out of the pan. I shake my head with a smile on my face, pulling another piece out.

“Here you go, Jim-Dad,” I say affectionately as I place the cheesy pile on his plate.

“Thanks, baby. Looks great,” he says.

My stepdad is a real-life, bona fide angel. He took my mom and me in when I was just nine years old. We had been living at a women’s shelter for about five months, and while we were safe, warm and had food in our stomachs, we were lonely.

My mom, Penny, met Jim Murdock when he came into the drugstore where she worked the front register. The story has been changed and manipulated so many times over the years, I’m not sure really what went down, but they both claim it was love at first sight. Of course, my mom was wary, having come out of a violent relationship with my father, but it didn’t take long for Mom to fall under Jim’s special brand of magic, and it didn’t take long for me to warm up to him either.

Within a year, Mom had married Jim, and within another six months, he had become Jim-Dad to me. Another year after that my baby brother had been born, and my life was absolutely perfect.

Considering we came from a pretty hellish life prior to that, it didn’t take much to give Mom and me security. But Jim’s kind words and soft touch, the roof over our heads and the knowledge that we would never suffer again gave Mom and me the best existence we could have ever hoped for.

“Honey, I love what you’ve done with your kitchen,” Mom says as she looks at the curtains I hung last weekend. They were on sale at Wal-Mart, and while they were an expenditure I really shouldn’t have made, I couldn’t resist the cheerful pattern of yellow lemons that I knew would be perfect over the sink window. I had just painted the kitchen a similar color of yellow and did the dingy oak cabinets in a glossy white with new hardware I found on sale. I bought this house just shy of four months ago for practically a song and a dance. It’s not in the greatest section of town, it was in foreclosure—which is why I got it so cheap—and it needs a hell of a lot of work.

But it’s mine.

“Thanks, Mom. I think the house is coming along great. ” I scoop out some lasagna for her and then put a piece on my plate, sitting down to enjoy our birthday dinner for Glenn.

“Your bathroom sink still working okay?” Jim asks.

“Yup. It’s proof positive that if you ever quit your day job, you have a career in plumbing,” I tell him with a snicker.

I’m hoping one day I’ll be done with all of the “fix-ups” for this place. So far, it’s coming along well, and luckily Jim-Dad has been able to help me with the more complex repairs. But I single-handedly—and with great love—sanded down and refinished the old hardwood floors that run throughout the house. That took me nearly three weeks to do on my own, but it was worth saving the cost and it was a major accomplishment that I’m proud of.

Jim takes a huge bite of lasagna and chews with a grin on his face. With a brief glance, I take in his kind eyes, tanned face and scruffy beard. He’s a bear of a man, standing over six feet tall and built almost as wide. Jim is an auto mechanic by trade, working at one of the Ford dealerships for the past eighteen years. While cars are his specialty, he’s one of those dads who can just fix anything.

We settle into the Murdock family tradition of cracking jokes while we eat dinner, snorting and laughing in between bites of lasagna and garlic bread. While my last name is Price, because my birth father still owns that part of me, I consider myself Jim’s daughter and thus a Murdock.

When we’re done, I bring out Glenn’s birthday cake. It’s tradition in our family that the birthday honoree gets their favorite dinner cooked, and their favorite dessert. It doesn’t have to be a cake, but in Glenn’s case it was.

Homemade red velvet cake with buttercream frosting.

His eyes go wide when he sees the monstrosity that I’ve made. It’s so tall that it actually tilts to the left a little, slightly resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I light the eleven candles and then we all sing a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” while Glenn looks around at each of us with a toothy smile on his face. By the time the last notes of the song die out, we’re all wearing matching grins.

Glenn closes his eyes to make his wish, then gives a gusty blow to the candles, moving his head back and forth to give them all equal airtime. He blows them out like a champ, all except the one trick candle I had placed in the middle. We all laugh as he repeatedly puffs at it, watching it spark back to life time and time again.

Finally, he gets the candle permanently extinguished, then I serve the cake. Glenn wolfs his down in about three huge bites, which is not surprising. He hit some sort of weird growth spurt a few months ago and seems to be adding inches and pounds to his frame

every week. He’s going to be tall like Jim, and built like a Mack truck. He’s already a superstar on his rec football league, barreling over players that are two and three years older than him.

When the last crumb of cake has been swallowed, my mom gives a big yawn, stretching her arms out wide. “That was just fabulous, Sutton. I’ll help you do the dishes and we’ll get out of your hair tonight. ”

I glance over at Glenn and his jaw is hanging open, his eyes disbelieving what he’s heard.

“Good thought, Penny,” Jim-Dad says as he looks at her and pushes back from the table. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow and I’m beat. This was a great dinner, Sutton. ”

Another glance at Glenn and he’s staring slack-jawed at his dad. His eyes race over to mine and he’s giving me a look like, Are they serious?

I can’t leave the kid hanging and my lips quirk upward. “Wait. We forgot about Glenn’s present. ”

“Oh, that’s right,” my mom says, slapping her palm to her forehead. “How could we have done that?”

Glenn’s face relaxes and he purses his lips in amusement, slinging his arms back across the kitchen chair in a posture that says, I really wasn’t worried. I knew you guys were kidding the whole time.

Standing from the table, I walk over to my small kitchen pantry and pull out Glenn’s present, which Mom brought over earlier in the day to hide. I had wrapped it for her in football-themed paper with a huge gold bow on the top.

My heart seizes—in a good way—when I see the look of surprise on his face from the size of the box. I set it in front of him and say, “This is from me, Mom, and Jim-Dad. We all went in on it together. ”

His eyes look up into mine and he swallows hard. Then they flick over to Mom, and finally to his dad. Placing his hands on the gold bow, he says quietly, “This is the best birthday ever. ”

Leaning over, I give him a light noogie on his tousled blond head. “You don’t even know what’s in the box, brat. ”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says seriously, looking to me, then to Mom, then to Jim-Dad. “It’s still the best birthday ever. ”

Mom’s eyes immediately fill with tears. Jim-Dad’s face suffuses with pride in his son and I stare at the wonder that is my brother and marvel that my parents raised such a good and kind boy.

Then Glenn dives at the box, ripping and shredding the paper I painstakingly wrapped so that not even a seam would be noticed. When he pulls back a large chunk of paper and sees what’s inside, he squeals—yes, squeals. He sounds like a pig being murdered with a butter knife and I grimace. Pulling back the last shred of wrapping, he stares with love in his eyes at the Xbox in front of him.

Glenn has never had an electronic gaming device before. Oh, he’s played on plenty when he stays over with his friends, so he knows all about them. But here’s the thing that makes this kid so fabulous. He’s never once asked for one. Glenn is considerate of our family’s boundaries when it comes to what we can afford, and he’s always been grateful for anything he’s ever been given.

Now, watching him with the look of adoration and disbelief on his face, I wish desperately that my parents and I had it within our means to give this kid everything his heart ever desired. He deserves it, mainly because he doesn’t expect it.

Reaching under the kitchen cabinet, I pull out two smaller items that I had wrapped. Glenn’s eyes widen even farther as his hand reaches out to take the gifts from me.

“Can’t have an Xbox without games to play, right?” I tell him.

Glenn doesn’t even bother unwrapping the gifts to see what I’ve gotten him; rather, he flies out of his chair and throws his arms around my waist, pressing his head onto my shoulder…because yeah, he’s gotten that tall.