I press the doorbell and laugh at the chime I hear trickle through the house. It’s such a specific song, so extravagant and unnecessary. But my mom loves to tweak little things to make a space hers. It’s one of her cutest quirks.
Just as that thought trickles away, my dad pulls open the front door. He grins at me instantly, pulling back the door and inviting me inside.
“Why, hello, sweetheart. I didn’t know you were coming today.”
I step inside as he wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing what looks like engine oil across his skin. “Surprise!”
“Hey, I’m not complaining. We always miss you over here.” He shuts the door behind us and pulls me in for a hug.
I hold him a bit tighter than usual, taking advantage of the moment. He chuckles when I refuse to let him back away.
“You gonna let me go anytime soon?” he teases, his tone light and airy.
Reluctantly, I pull away and smile sheepishly. “Sorry.”
He ruffles the hair at the top of my head and leads us through the house and to the living room. The fireplace is lit, crackling and filling the air with a smoky scent.
“Is that my baby? What a surprise!” Mom comes rushing in from the kitchen, flour smudged across her cheeks. She throws her arms around me instantly, and I melt into her embrace.
“Why are you both so damn dirty? First Dad with the oil and now you and flour.”
An onslaught of emotions trickles through me as I stand in the arms of the woman who took me in when I thought I would never mean anything to anyone and turned absolutely everything I thought I knew about love and family completely upside down.
I promised myself that I wasn’t going to cry today, but I should have known better. Lily is my mom, and moms have this weird ability to make you cry when you least expect it. It’s like they have a radar that beeps at them when they sense some sort of inner turmoil in those they love, and their hugs get tighter, more comforting.
Blinking back the tears trying to escape, I sniffle, and Mom starts to rub my back.
“Oh, baby. I’m right here,” she murmurs.
“I didn’t want to cry today.” I laugh, my shoulders shaking despite the tear that slips down my cheek.
Mom pulls away long enough to lead me over to the couch placed in front of her reading chair. I sit down beside her and pull my legs up into my chest as I lean into her side.
“What happened, Ava?” Her tone is warm and gentle but also inquisitive.
“You can stop your hunt for whoever blabbed to Rebecca. They were paid to do it with a thick wad of cash. It isn’t important to me anymore, anyway.”
The couch sinks beside me as Dad sits, his shoulder softly knocking mine. “Now, how’d you figure this out, kiddo?”
I haven’t hidden anything from my parents regarding Rebecca, but I wasn’t going to tell them about my meeting with her yesterday until after. Obviously, things went a bit off course.
“I met with her yesterday for coffee with the intention of telling her that I didn’t think spending time together anymore was what I wanted, but it turned into a total mess. Turns out she didn’t come back for me—she came back because her boyfriend wanted Oakley.” The words are bitter, but they don’t hurt.
“She has some nerve. Oh, I’m so sorry, honey. I was afraid she was going to hurt you, but I wanted you to feel this out on your own. That woman never deserved you, Ava. Never,” Mom says firmly. She tightens her arm around me.
“I know she didn’t. I guess I just hoped for a second that she missed me, you know? That maybe she had thought about me like I used to think about her. It was stupid.”
Dad releases an angry-sounding noise before grunting, “Hold on a minute. It was not stupid. Ava, you spent fifteen years in the system. You hoping that the woman who birthed you missed you and seeing everything you’ve become is the furthest thing from stupid.”
Guilt nips at me, even when I try to fight it off. “I shouldn’t have even entertained the idea. I feel like I’ve hurt you guys, after everything you’ve done for me. Rebecca showing up shouldn’t have even fazed me. You’re my family now. You have been for years. I love you guys so much.” My voice cracks, and I swallow a growl.
“Octavia Layton, that is the biggest load of shit I have ever heard,” Mom scolds, her tone sharp. “I hate that you have been thinking this way. You haven’t hurt us, my love. If anything, you’ve shown us how much you’ve grown over the past few years. The fifteen-year-old girl we first met, the one who was so, so angry with the world, never would have taken the risk of putting herself out there for that woman. Sure, it didn’t have the most ideal of outcomes, but at least you don’t have to wonder anymore. It’s done. You can lay it all to rest now, baby girl.”
“Even if things had gone differently and you had chosen to have a relationship with Rebecca, we would have supported you through that,” Dad adds, sliding his arm around both Mom and me, pulling us close.
My brows furrow. “But you guys wanted a closed adoption. That’s why you chose me, isn’t it? Me having a relationship with my birth mother kind of ruins that whole idea.”
“We didn’t choose you because you were a closed adoption, Ava. We wanted you to be a part of our family because we had grown to love you. Even with those horrid biker boots and your rough-around-the-edges attitude,” Mom murmurs, emotion thickening her words.
“Those boots were the worst.” I choke on a laugh while wiping at my wet cheeks. “I love you two so much. I’m really happy you chose me.”
“We love you more,” Dad says, kissing one side of my head while Mom kisses the other. I smile, feeling like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
“Now, tell us about Oakley. I’ve been hearing about the drama from your brother but not from you, and that just won’t do.” Mom clacks her tongue.
Dad stiffens, moves his arm from around us, and sets it in his lap, closing himself off. It hurts me to know that he’s still so on the fence about Oakley and me. Especially after everything that’s happened as of late. Stuff that I will never, ever tell my parents.
“I don’t know if Dad wants to hear this stuff,” I mumble.
Mom sighs, sounding exhausted. “That’s too bad, then. Because I want to hear about it.”
I risk a look at Dad and find him frowning, deep lines set in his forehead. He’s staring at the floor, but once he feels me watching him, he glances up. “I love him, Dad. Like really, really love him. And he loves me. Even after everything we’ve just gone through together, that hasn’t changed. It’s only made my feelings ten times stronger.”
“What did he do to you that made everything that much stronger? What happened between you?” he asks.
I release a tight breath and sink back into the couch. “His life is complicated. He’s always going to be in the public eye, whether that be on the ice or on the street. Things got messy, and I was faced with the reality of that quicker than I was expecting.”
“Explain,” Mom urges, her fingers tapping on her leg.
I don’t have a chance to before a loud, very male voice shouts from upstairs. “Mom!” Footsteps pound above us before descending the stairs. “Call Ava! She’s not answering my calls, and she needs to see this!”
Mom jerks in surprise, and I look over the back of the couch just in time to see Ben come blundering into the living room. As soon as he spots me, his jaw drops, and his phone hits the floor.
“You’re here! You need to see this. Dad, pull up YouTube,” he orders.
Dad seems to recover from his surprise much faster than Mom and I can because he does just as Ben says, not wasting any time. The sound is low when an image of what looks like a podcast studio comes on the TV, and I grab the remote from Dad, turning it up.
“Is this a podcast?” I ask Ben, confused. He nods, waving at the screen.
“Yes. One of the biggest sports shows in the world right now,” he says.
As soon as I focus on the screen, I gasp. “What the hell is he doing?”
Oakley is sitting across from two guys, all of them fully equipped with a microphone in front of them and glasses of water that look like they haven’t been touched.
He’s the image of perfection, all six feet of him. His hair—the same curls that I spent hours with threaded between my fingers last night and this morning—is shoved inside of a backward hat with stray pieces peeking out from beneath the elastic rim. His smile is sinful, as if he knows something nobody else does.
“You’re not an easy guy to get a hold of, Oakley, that’s for damn sure. We were shocked to get an email from your agent this morning requesting you get a spot on the show today,” a guy with shaggy blond hair and a creepy-looking goatee says.
His partner, a bulky man covered in tattoos, laughs beside him, wrapping a hand around his mic stand. “What he means to say is that we’re honoured you chose to speak on our show.”
Oakley’s voice brings goosebumps to my skin. “The honour is mine. I’ve been watching this podcast for a few years now. You tell it how it is. I like that.”
“We don’t usually do live episodes anymore, not with how Mav likes to run his mouth over there, but this was an opportunity we couldn’t turn down,” Goatee guy says.
The man I assume to be Mav laughs. “Right. It’s my mouth that runs. Anyway, we should get right to it, I suppose. Tim, where do you want to start?”
“I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Tell us if Harvey Anderson is as off his rocker as we all think he is. There’s no way a guy like you would be making slimy moves just months before the draft, but alas, there are some who think so.”
Oakley leans forward in his chair, not showing even a hint of how this entire thing has made him feel. He looks cool, calm, and oh so collected.
“I won’t confirm or deny whether Harvey is off his rocker, but I will say that it has never been my intention to turn down my draft team. This has been my dream for most of my life. There’s no way I would risk that for even a second. I met with Harvey in Minnesota as I’ve met with other teams who are looking like they’ll pick high in the draft, as most of the prospects have, but it never even crossed my mind to make the moves Harvey has hinted at in the press.”
Mav claps his hands loudly. “Good man. Between us, we’ve heard the whisperings about why the guy is being replaced.”
“I’m not sure replacing him with his daughter will help clean up the mess that is the Minnesota management team, but that’s for us to find out, I suppose,” Tim adds. I hum in agreement.
“Speaking of Veronica Anderson, I’m guessing you aren’t dating her either?” Mav asks.
“Never even met her until dinner that night. It was a night of unfortunate coincidences that could have cost me my girl back home,” Oakley says, his eyes finding the camera for the first time since I tuned in. My lungs seize.
Tim makes an ooh sound before saying, “Right. Octavia Layton, right?”
Oakley nods before a photo of us comes up on the small screen behind him. He swivels in his seat and grins. “Yeah, that’s her. That’s my Ava.”
The photo they chose of us isn’t from the party in the backyard like I expected but from outside of the coffee shop yesterday. Oakley is wrapped around me from behind, his hand holding the back of my head, fingers splayed in my hair. My face is tucked in his chest, hidden from the view of the camera.
Despite how perfect we look together, I focus on the way he’s staring down at me, like he’s ready to flay himself open and bleed for me. Butterflies erupt in my stomach.
That’s my Ava.
“Well, damn. Ava, if you’re watching right now, know you got this guy in all kinds of knots over you,” Mav hollers, winking at Oakley.
“And apparently, we’ve now turned into a messed-up version of a romance podcast. Way to go, Mav—I can already hear the subs dropping.”
Oakley chuckles. “I love her, what can I say?”
Feeling eyes on me, I glance over at Dad. His eyes shine, and a ball builds in my throat. A nod is all it takes for me to realize the emotion in his eyes is acceptance.
My laugh is more of a croak than anything else, but nobody seems to care. As I stare at Oakley on that damn podcast, telling anyone who will listen that he loves me, suddenly everything that’s happened doesn’t seem so bad anymore.
