“For dinner with Dad,” she corrects. “Which is a completely different category of event.”
Talia slips on her coat, still smiling. “You survived rehab. I think you can survive a restaurant.”
Bear, sensing movement near the door, starts circling in excited loops like we’re about to embark on a cross-country expedition instead of leaving him home for two hours.
I crouch and scratch behind his ears.
“You’re not invited,” I tell him.
His tail thumps harder.
Katia crouches beside me and cups his face dramatically. “Be strong, nephew. Your parents must attend important family functions.”
He licks her nose.
She sighs like this is the greatest honor of her life.
Talia shakes her head fondly and grabs her purse from the counter.
“Okay,” she says, looking between us. “Now are we ready?”
I stand and move to the door, holding it open.
“After you.”
***
Coach Petrov is already at the restaurant when we arrive there.
Of course he is. Viktor Petrov was probably born early to his own birth.
He stands when he sees us, and even now, even after everything, my spine straightens automatically.
Old habits. Locker-room habits. Captain habits.
He greets Katia first, and there’s a softness in his face that I don’ think I’ve ever seen on his face. Then Talia. Then me.
“Morrison,” he says with that same grave formality he uses for everything, from roster decisions to passing the salt.
“Coach,” I answer automatically.
Katia snorts as she sits down. “You two are never going to stop doing that, are you?”
“No,” Petrov and I say at the same time.
Talia laughs softly and squeezes my hand under the table.
The dinner is surprisingly nice.
Katia tells us about her new apartment, which is apparently “small but everything she ever wanted,” and about the elderly neighbor downstairs who keeps trying to set her up with her grandson. She’s also started working at a community center and seems to be enjoyingit.
I study Coach while Katia talks. The way he keeps glancing at his daughters when he thinks they’re not looking. There’s something more reflective in him tonight.
He sets his glass down.
The sound is soft, but it still shuts the whole table up.
Every instinct in my body kicks in immediately.
