JESSIE
I wait with bated breath, a little bag of overnight stuff already sitting on my floor by the door in my room. He left five hours ago, the flight is around six hours long. It's longer for the usual citizen because you have to stop at Toronto Pearson but they have their own plane and that means they can go pretty much anywhere without the formalities of having to stop.
He's sent me some funny photos of the plane rides, some of the guys sleeping on the floor, games of cards he's been involved in, Bernie, his uncle, snoozing on the shoulder of Rod, another coach. Nico doing a handstand in the middle of the passage.
He's going to tell me when they land, then when I'm alright to drive over. He says there's going to be around a forty five minute window between each.
Which means I have two full hours to wait.
I manage another ten minutes before I'm distracted by a small blanket-clad figure by my door.
"Conn," I sit up, waving him in.
"Hi, Mom," he mumbles, slinking over and crawling up into bed with me, blanket pulled tight around his whole body. He flops his head across my lap, black eye making his face a little puffy on one side. I trace my fingers through his hair, waiting for him to say anything, if he wants.
He doesn't for quite a while, then he shifts, looking up at me, "Jorgen's in Chicago tomorrow."
"He is," I nod. "We're going to see him after lunch. I'm taking you out at the end of school to go see him."
"You are?"
"Mhmm," I brush my finger across his cheekbone.
"I miss him," he says. "A lot. I wish it was still summer."
"I know, me too," I let out a little breath, watching him pull himself tighter in the blanket. "But he's back tomorrow, we'll get to see him tomorrow."
"And then when?"
"I'm not sure," I brush my fingers through his hair again. Jay cut it halfway through the summer like he does with his, just because he's got a firmer wrangle on the curls than I do, and it looks like he's going to need to come back and do it again soon. "His schedule is a bit of a mess."
"He can't take time off to come see us?"
"Well-"
"He doesn't want to?"
"No, of course he wants to."
"It doesn't seem like it," Connor mumbles. "He doesn't want us around."
"No, he does."
"Why would he have left if he did?" He squeezes his eyes shut.
"He had to," I try to damage control. "Jorgen's been through a lot, staying here would've made him really sick. He didn't want you to see him get sick."
Connor focuses on that for a moment, thinking about it, then surprises me with what he says next, the words tumbling out of his mouth without any sort of prompting, just a thought, just some sort of subject breach. "He's my Dad, isn't he?"
"Conn-"
"That's why he looks like me."
I stay quiet, thinking about what I could possibly say to him to maybe save the situation, keep it a secret still without lying to him. I watch his face for a long few seconds, then decide that what he needs right now isn't denial of something he seems very sure of, "yes."
"Why wasn't he here the whole time?"
I pause, then sort through an answer in my head, "he didn't know."
"About me?"
I shake my head, "no, he didn't. Right after I got pregnant with you, he had an accident, and it separated us for a long time. We weren't together for too long beforehand so I thought it was a normal breakup until you came along. We were only ten years older than you are now. We weren't old enough to really handle kids, that's why grandma and grandpa helped so much. I lost track of him over time and then he came back at the beginning of the summer while we were staying with his friends."
Connor puts more pieces into his puzzle, "does that mean that Linda and Joey are my grandparents too?"
"Mhmm."
That gets a halfway smile out of him, the first I've seen in weeks, "so we're seeing him tomorrow."
"Yeah," I nod.
"And he's my Dad."
"Yeah."
"And he does want to see us."
"Yes, always," I bend over and kiss his head. "Are you ready to see him?"
He nods enthusiastically, a full smile on his face for the first time in weeks.
He makes it another ten minutes before passing out on my lap. After a half hour of stroking his hair and reading on my phone, I shift his head off my lap and onto a pillow because my leg is falling asleep. It's right around the time that Jorgen tells me they've landed.
Then its play by play.
They're getting on the bus they're using while they're here.
They're heading out to the hotel.
They're in the middle of the before-bed debrief and snack.
He tells me to put on my shoes and get in the car, then hits me almost five minutes afterward with a text that says nothing but alright, come get me.
The hotel is one of the nicer ones in the city, but I suppose if the NHL is paying for it, they can afford a nice hotel.
I find a rather scary parking spot in a parking garage a block down from it and text him where I am.
The sky is a foggy sort of dark, light pollution mixing with the clouds over the city, wind whipping them along.
I keep my hands in my pockets, fully alert at my surroundings, slipping along the sidewalk, head halfway down, halfway up as the individual concrete slabs pass under my feet, marks and old gum smashed into the grain.
The sidewalk is cracked here only twice, a stark difference from the other places I've been this summer.
My phone buzzes again in my pocket. My heart rate is so high I can't quite focus on anything.
Then, "Jessie!"
My head shoots up, spotting Jorgen just a few feet away from me, big and broad and dressed in all black, people skirting off to his either side to avoid being in his way. I'm stifled with half relief and half... attraction. He's almost entirely enticing standing there, something I've never experienced with him before. Normally he's just Jorgen, who I like a lot, not Jorgen who I like a lot. But he's still Jorgen, back to front, a massive, looming, beautiful beacon of light in the last six weeks without him. Dark hair, dark tan, dark eyes, light light light heart.
"Jay." I blurt, breaking into a jog, anticipating the feeling before I hit him, the warmth and his heavy arms. When it happens, it's better than anything I could've imagined, the way his presence eats away at the tension in my body, more than just any hug would.
"Jessie, Jessie, Jessie," he mumbles into my shoulder, picking me up with the grip around my back, pulling our bodies as close as they can between layers of jacket and shirts and sleeves. I cling to him like he's my whole life force and he lets me, hugging right back with just as much fervor.
He breaks the few seconds of silence, "how's Connor? Is he okay? Have you iced his eye?"
"I have, yeah," I nod into his shoulder.
"And they haven't done anything else to him, right?"
"Not that I know of," I manage.
He pulls back, reaching to cup my face in his big hands, touching all over my cheeks, tilting my head to the left, then to the right, checking me all over. "You look so stressed, Jessie-"
I nod, leaning my cheek into his hand, letting him cradle my head in his big palm.
"Are you doing okay? I've only been hearing about Conn, what about you?"
I swallow, "money is still tight, though you're able to put in more from up north, my job is-" he puts his thumb over my lips, warm with rough skin that somehow feels gentle against mine.
"Tell me the truth." His voice is gentle but the words are a command, pulling honesty straight out of my gut and onto my tongue.
"The truth?" I look up at him. "I'm doing shit."
His lips pop open, slightly shocked at the swear.
"Very, very, shit, and Connor is scaring me and- and- I just- the office cut down on hours and so I've been getting less time and that's not good so we're barely scraping by here at home but it's... I'm so stressed."
"Come inside," he gestures back at the building. "We have- we should talk it all over and I have... I have ideas."
He takes my hand, forefinger and middle finger brushing across my palm before tentatively lacing between the very tips of my fingers. His hand is dazzlingly warm against the cold night, gentle, slipping his other two fingers into the tangle, then closing it, locking our hands together.
I take comfort in having to stand close to him to keep our hands laced, more comfort in the elevator when I'm able to set my head on the swell of his shoulder and close my eyes for just a moment.
He leads me down the hallway, passing by a room that erupts in laughter as we make our way along the carpet.
"Dumb boys," he shakes his head. "We've got a game tomorrow and it's really too late for them to be playing video games."
"Those were-" I glance back at the door.
"Yeah, Steph, Fen, Greenie, Rocket, Håkon, and their new adopted Finn, Fidan," he slides his key into the slot and then pulls it back out again, the door clicking. "We get most of the floor, boys together, coaches and travel staff at the end. That's me."
"...fancy."
He pushes the door open and lets me inside, following afterward and flicking on the lights. I kick off my shoes and let him take a little longer with his.
It feels... daunting. The silence. The alone time. The hotel room. The fact that we haven't seen each other in weeks and he comes back in a black collared shirt under a coat, tucked into dress pants. I'd only seen him dressed up once before and that was Peter's wedding, a much different occasion.
He turns around to me, coat off, sleeves rolled up over his forearms.
His dark eyes trace over me, analyzing what's in front of him, stuttering to a stop on my fidgeting fingers, on a spot just under my chin, my chewed lips, one of my ears, my hair. He logs all of it somewhere in that head of his and it keeps me on edge, noticing things about him as well, the warmth back in his cheeks, the weight on his shoulders, the way he appears to have toned down again, muscle visible from most angles, the softness in his cheeks and under his jaw is gone almost completely but it looks healthy. He looks healthy.
That, and most importantly, he's giving me the same sort of intense look he did the morning we met again, controlling, thorough, fierce. Like he knows he controls the room. I want to seep into it and get lost in the look forever, grateful that he appears to be back to his terrifying normal and not the half-soft half-scared half-burnt-out person he was when he left.
He breaks the silence, "you need to eat."
I blink at him for a second, startled.
"You're too thin," he breathes out.
"But I-"
"You're too thin." He repeats, this time in a much different tone, full conviction, the bottom of his voice filled out and dictating. "You're tired, you haven't been eating, your nails are chewed through, the corner of your mouth is tucked-" he lifts his hand and tugs his thumb along my cheek, lifting my lips out of their tension. "And your hair is frizzier than usual, though I know that's likely the wind."
My brain stutters for a second, watching his brow crease, hand running across my cheek.
I try to say something but it pauses in the back of my throat before gurgling out as an almost unintelligible mess, "you look healthy and- and back- and you're-"
"Breathe," he tells me. "Then try again."
"You look healthy, and you're scary again so you're..." I cringe at it, shutting my eyes. "You look like you've been doing well."
He makes a soft sort of noise in the back of his throat, "quite the opposite, actually, I've been losing my mind. My habits are back in place so physically I look alright but I don't think I've ever been haunted by something more, and I've got quite a lot of ghosts."
I cringe at the misjudgment and he breathes out, opening his mouth to speak again, "can I take my leg off?"
"Yeah, yeah, please," I break from my small trance and step aside. "The plane has to be awful on it."
"Not when I'm flying with the guys, then I can take it off and there's spots to put crutches so I don't have to deal with it on the plane but it's been a long day," he slips past me. "I'm going to change all the way, if that's alright?"
I nod, I'm not sure why he's asking permission to change clothes.
"Go, sit," he gestures at the bed his stuff is on, the other is empty and tucked hotel tight. I sit down on his bed and tuck my knees up, looking around. His suitcase is set up and open, everything packed tight and neat, a special little spot for the uniform coat he has to wear tomorrow during the game. The only thing missing is a small spot where I assume he put his pajamas.
He comes out of the bathroom a minute or so later, leaning forward on his crutches, shorts showing off muscle on his thigh and the tattoos winding up his calf. His shirt is still a long sleeve, a Wolves emblem on the chest, blazed onto what looks like impossibly soft cotton. His hair is down, falling around his jaw in reckless curls.
"Alright," he tosses his hair back a slight bit and I glance away like it wasn't supposed to be something I should've seen. "I'm going to move this and then we're gonna talk for a minute or so here, then you can stay, if you want, or go home, either works with me."
I nod, not letting him get to his suitcase before I do, lifting it and setting it on the ground in front of the door for the closet. He seems a little taken aback but lets me do it anyway.
I sit back down on the end of the bed, legs crossed, looking up at him as he sits across from me, heart slamming in my chest for a reason I can't quite place.
"Alright," he sets the crutches against the wall. "I have a... an option."
I nod for him to continue.
"I've been working through the logistics for a couple weeks now, I met up with your Dad when I was in Boston-" that's a shock to me, "and he seconded this as a good idea. You're completely okay with saying no, I'm alright if you say no to this because it's a massive and exceptionally messy plan that could go wrong in a lot of ways and throws quite a lot of turmoil into Connor's life, which I know we were trying our best to avoid."
I watch his jaw work for a second, thinking about how he's going to go about the next part of whatever he's about to suggest to me.
"What is it?" I ask after another second, hands shaking in my lap, staring at the man in front of me.
He closes his eyes, long eyelashes brushing his cheeks, and takes a deep breath.
"I want you to move to Canada with me."
***
lotta stuff happened in this one, hopefully thought-provoking and hopefully the cliff hanger wasn't bad enough to make you guys want to strangle me through the screen
-rabid