“It’s Bellanti!” someone shouts.
I wave. A few college kids grin at me.
“You were awesome. Welcome to Boston!”
Something eases within me. I used to be one of those college students. There were buses that took us from Concord to Boston each day. Axel and I used to?—
“What did you think about that interview Knight did?” one of them asks, interrupting my reverie. “Totally crazy.”
I stop walking. “What interview?”
The guy doesn’t meet my eyes. His friends have gone quiet. “He just... didn’t think you’d be a good fit. Said you’d hurt the team chemistry or whatever.”
The wind cuts through my jacket. Around me, fans keep streaming past, laughing, and I’m standing frozen on the sidewalk like an idiot.
Axel went on camera before the game even started and told Boston I didn’t belong here.
I sign the kid’s jersey without looking at it and walk faster. The neon signs blur. I don’t wave at anyone else.
Luca is crying when I get back to the hotel.
The room smells like the vanilla diffuser the hotel cleaning lady put in the room and something sour underneath—maybe a diaper, maybe just the staleness of a space where a toddler has been miserable for hours.
The new nanny—Ariana—gives me a half smile.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “He misses you.”
Luca’s face is blotchy, his nose crusted. He reaches for me with both arms, and something in my chest cracks open.
“Hi Luca!” I say, doing my best to sound cheerful. It doesn’t work. Luca looks at me suspiciously.
I lift him up and pat his bottom. It’s wet. “Let’s get you changed, Luca.”
Ariana’s skin reddens. “Sorry. I-I didn’t notice. He didn’t say.” She sighs. “I did ask him. I?—”
She stops. She knows she made a mistake.
I guess nonverbal children are difficult.
I frown. Luca didn’t have this bathroom issue before, and now it’s happened twice in two days.
I give Luca a bath. Ariana hovers awkwardly at the door. I’m paying a thousand dollars a day for premium care, but there’s no way I’m going to just let her handle everything.
I’m supposed to leave Luca with a nanny when we go to New York tomorrow, but I can’t do it. I can’t leave him overnight. Luca needs me too much.
I call the nanny agency and ask them if there is any way I can have a nanny fly with Luca to New York, then meet him there. He doesn’t like cars, but he was fine on the plane to Boston. The nanny agency is skeptical someone will agree at such short notice.
Fortunately, I get a ping that Kayla will come with Luca.
Not ideal, but at least Luca knows Kayla. The agency sent her yesterday after the nanny disaster. Kayla is blonde, bubbly, and excited to nanny for me. She also not-so smoothly dropped into conversation that she’s single and loves hockey.
I sigh. I wonder if any of my teammates are single dads and looking, then I tense.
Technically Axel is a single dad.
Luca is still fussy after his bath, and he’s still fussy when I read him a story. He sobs beside me, and my heart breaks. I don’t know how to fix it.
Ariana comes to my room. “Should I take him?”
