Page 14 of My Orc Package Deal

And he didn’t want anything from me. In fact, he kept telling me that he wasn’t keeping score. He liked my cooking and thanked me for driving Jay to his hockey team wrap-up party on the mainland, but I knew without asking that it wasn’t enough.

Korrad had spent the last two months thinking of this marriage as just a convenient arrangement, and I’d look at him caring for my son and melt a little in desperation. I wanted more—no, I wanted to give him more.

But the best I could hope for was to make his life a little easier, since that’s all he wanted from me.

Luckily, it wasn’t too difficult.

I fell back into my easy routine of edits for five-ish hours a day, then doing household tasks or ferrying the boys to wherever they needed. To my surprise, Jay and I had found some unexpected connections, the first of which was hockey.

It was my one holdover from a life before Texas, before single motherhood, when I’d played on the frozen ponds of Massachusetts. Now, I got my fix through the Orc Hockey League highlight reels Jay found online.

“You like this?” he’d asked one afternoon, peering over my shoulder at my laptop screen where a 300-pound orc defenseman was legally murdering a forward against the boards.

“Buddy, I breathe this,” I’d said. “The speed, the strategy, the sheer, beautiful violence of it all.”

He’d looked at me with newfound respect. “It was big back home, but no one here on Eastshore gets it.”

I smiled. “I get it. Want to scrimmage sometime? I’ll find a pair of rollerblades.”

His eyes had lit up, and I felt something in my chest loosen.

So, twice in those first few weeks, I loaded the boys into the car and drove to the mainland to the big, impersonal—but cheap—grocery store, and then to the rink where Jay had played during the season.

The first time, Jay glided onto the ice like he was born to it, all effortless power. Milo, however, clung to the wall with the desperation of a dude who’d just realized the floor was made of physics.

“Come on, T’mak,” Jay said, skating backwards in front of him. “It’s easy. Just push.”

“The only thing I’m pushing is my luck,” Milo grumbled, but he let go of the wall.

Jay and I flanked him, each holding an elbow, and we made slow, wobbly circuits. I tried not to show off, but damn, it felt good to be on skates again. Jay, of course, showed off plenty, executing tight turns and sudden stops that sprayed ice. Milo’s frustration mounted with each stumble.

“I’m never going to get this!” he finally wailed, plopping down on the ice in the middle of the rink like a toddler instead of a ten-year-old. I hid my smile, glad to see my kid finally realizing it was okay to show his true colors.

Jay skidded to a stop beside him. “Took me a whole season to stop falling on my face. You’ve been at it for twenty minutes. Get up.”

The blunt, brotherly advice worked, which was a surprise.

Milo got up. I mean, he fell again…but he got up again. And by the end of the second trip, he was doing a sort of determined, wide-legged shuffle that could almost be called skating.

Progress, huzzah.

The other nice development was watching Jocelyn glow.

I’d been flabbergasted to hear about her history with Brakkor—it explained her shock at seeing him again at the wedding—and when her car broke down and he rescued her from that wicked storm we had the first week, well…I didn’t even pretend that we had space for her at Korrad’s house, and she eventually seemed content at Brakkor’s place.

And, I was happy to realize, in Brakkor’s bed.

And when he stood up in front of the entire town and supported her work on the Eastshore Lighthouse? I cheered louder than anyone. My best friend had found her dream job—she was in charge of arranging the move of the ancient lighthouse from the cliffs we could just see behind the house—and her Mate.

How amazing was that?

She’d be staying here on Eastshore, and that made my slight out-of-balance feel…better. I still didn’t feel like I completely belonged here, but Milo did, and Jocelyn certainly did, and I hadn’t received any threats from the debt collectors back in Texas so…

I was beginning to feel like maybe I could finally exhale.

And that feeling seemed to grow each evening at the dinner table.

I cooked more than Korrad. My culinary repertoire wasn’t huge, but it was varied. Jay, after a particularly successful batch of my chicken tikka masala—from a jar, but I toasted the spices myself, thank you very much—declared, “This is way better than Dad’s meatloaf.”