Page 109 of Body Check

Jackson’s nose nuzzles mine. “I’m gonna make a change, sweetheart. I won’t let what happened to me happen to our son.”

“I know.”

And I do.

Only, I don’t have the chance to expand on that because my heart rips out of my chest when I hear Mikey scream.

Jackson and I are out of the bed in a heartbeat. I’m mostly dressed still, and as I sail down the steps—my husband hot on my tail—I think ofeverythingthat could have gone wrong. Did I leave the stove on? Was there a knife on the table? Did my baby fall and hurt himself?

“Mikey!” I call out. “Mikey, baby, Mommy is right—”

I skid to a halt.

Blink.

My son’s sitting on the couch where I left him, eating his favorite Frosted Flakes, and staring at Stanley peeing on Stanley.

As in, my Great Danepissingon the Stanley Cup.

I hear Jackson’s arrival before I see him. “Well, shit,” he mutters, “that’s got to be blasphemous onsomany different levels.”

“Let’s never speak of this moment again?” I ask.

“Lips are sealed, sweetheart. Lips. Are Sealed.”

Unfortunately, it only takes the arrival of Beaumont, Harrison, Hunt, and their families later that afternoon for Mikey to spill the beans to anyone who’ll listen to him retell the story of furry Stanley lifting his leg and going to town all over the greats of the NHL marked on the Stanley Cup—including Mikey’s own father, Jackson Carter.

I lock eyes with my husband across the room as we watch our son demonstrate the events of the morning. Jackson drags his thumb across his bottom lip in that familiar way of his as he watches me, humor lighting his rugged features.

“Always you,” he mouths for me only.

I don’t shush my heart, the way I may have done years ago. Instead I curl my hand into a fist and kiss my first knuckle, then mouth back, “I love you too.”

The End.