‘Damn right, she isn’t.’
Stop trash talking Madison, idiot.
“I’m glad you liked him,” he said, once his stupid brain stopped distracting him.
Tobias planted a kiss on her forehead before he shut her door and rounded the car to get in the driver’s seat.
Once they were moving, he let his thoughts drift to Chase.
Now that he’d seen him in his element, Tobias knew he was professional and good with kids, especially when it came to having patience for their endless questions. That wasn’t something a lot of adults could manage.
It gave him an idea, though, and Madison was the perfect sounding board.
“Maddie, do you think you’d want to come to my gym for a kids yoga class we could do together?”
“You mean, I could work outwith you? That would be so cool! When can we do it?”
“Well, first I have to get the classes set up, and then maybe I can bring you.”
The idea of being somewhere in public with Madison, where people could see him, had him tensing, but it was something he wanted to be able to do. He couldn’t hide forever.
“I bet Chase could run them! He’d be so good.”
He was beginning to think the same thing.
————————
Later that night, after Madison was snug in her bed, Tobias sat with his mom at their kitchen table. He’d prepared them cups of tea and took out some fresh-baked Christmas cookies.
Some problems just needed to be hashed out with his mom, no matter how old he got.
He sometimes wondered what it would have been like if his dad was still around, but he’d died in an accident at work when Tobias was still a baby. Tobias didn’t have any memories of him, but his mom had told him tons of stories about their time together.
“Okay, Toby, tell me what’s on your mind,” Gracesaid as she took a sip of her vanilla chai tea. The aroma from his own mug settled his nerves as he tried to figure out where to start. Talking about Chase would be slightly more embarrassing, so he decided to warm up with hockey before mentioning his new employee.
“I’ve been asked to return to the Inferno for this year’s alumni game.”
She gasped and started bouncing in her seat.
“Oh, honey, that’s so exciting. When is it? You said yes, right?”
He took a sip of his own mug of vanilla chai to buy himself a moment before he answered her.
“It’s in March. And I told them I’d have to think about it.”
Her face dropped. “What? Why? What’s there to think about?”
With a sigh, he dunked the peanut butter kiss cookie in his tea, taking bites of it between speaking in hopes the sweetness would give him enough strength to get through this conversation.
“My last year of hockey nearly broke me. I don’t know if I can go back and have that spotlight on me again. What if I get on the ice and completely choke? I’ll be the laughingstock of hockey and I won’t be able to show my face in public again.”
His mother had turned her cookie into a pile of crumbs. Her face was full of tension, but she keptopening and closing her mouth as if she couldn’t figure out what to say.
“Just say it, Mom. Whatever you’re thinking. I want to hear your honest opinion.”
She blinked twice, her face tense, before saying, “That’s a load of crap,” and all he could do was gape at her.
“Uh, what?”
