by E M Lindsey
“That was amazing. Seriously. I mean the goats were a little pungent, but it was totally worth it. My sister booked me a couple of passes to this gym that did inclusive classes, but I was the only one there, and the instructor didn’t seem to know what the hell he was doing. He just handed me a yoga block and told me not to get out of my chair. This was…I don’t even have the words.”
Sam grinned at her, unable to help himself. “Trust me, that’s the whole reason I got into this. I was definitely not a yoga guy when I first moved here, but I started looking around for stuff I could do, and after a while lifting weights on the bench got really fucking boring.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. The next person who tells me it’s policy is getting their asses kicked.”
“Well, you got back up here,” Niko told her, and gave Sam a pointed look.
“Double it,” Sam finally said.
She laughed. “Good to know, boys. Not that I need any knights. Which Nikky here is well aware.”
Sam bristled at the easy nickname she’d given him, at how it must mean they’d spent time together, got to know each other. “Trust me, I’m no knight. Well, I do have my one princess at home, but she gets all my shining armor.”
Kristen’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah. And how does she feel about all that patronizing princess shit?”
Sam realized Kristen thought he was talking about a girlfriend, and he grinned. “Considering she’s three and it’s her current life’s goal to become Princess Moana, I’d say she doesn’t mind. Playing Maui is getting a little exhausting though. I can never hit those notes right.”
Kristen flushed a little, but she was smiling anyhow. “Got a pic?”
Sam didn’t exactly need prompting to pull out his phone and show off his veritable library of Maisy photos. He’d taken two this morning of her tantrum, just for posterity’s sake, and the night before he’d taken a few of her in the tub with a bubble mohawk.
“Oh my god, I’m dying. She’s so cute,” Kristen cooed.
Niko peered over her shoulder, grinning. “Yeah. She’s a whirlwind. I ran into them at the park and that girl was ready to ride one of those bouncy horses into the sunset. Damn near accomplished it before she flung herself off.”
“Was she okay?” Kristen asked with a concerned frown.
Niko opened his mouth, but Sam was quicker. “She had another knight that day. Except he was in running gear, not armor. He picked her up and carried her, and she spent the next hour talking about how Dada’s new friend saved her from the mean horse.”
Niko flushed, taking a startled step backward, and Sam knew it was a shit apology for his attitude, but he hoped it was a start. “Well, it was nothing. She was too cute not to rescue.”
Kristen took a last look at Maisy mugging for the camera, then sighed and rolled back. “That almost makes me want kids. Almost.”
“Is it a never, or a not right now?” Sam asked.
She shrugged. “It’s an I don’t have a fucking clue, and neither does Mark, and we both work so much and travel a lot that kids are a terrible idea. But it won’t be like that forever, so who knows.” Her own phone beeped, and she picked it up. “I have to get back. You coming?” she asked, her gaze turning up to Niko.
“I can give you a lift if you want to hang out a bit?” Sam blurted. He felt himself blushing internally, but he couldn’t seem to stop his stupid fucking mouth.
Niko looked at him carefully, then back to Kristen who had a tiny smirk on her face before he shrugged. “I could hang out. I heard there’s a decent brunch place about a block from here if you’re in the mood?”
“You mean in the mood to undo all my hard work?” Sam challenged.
Niko shrugged. “They probably have like…granola or some healthy shit.”
Sam couldn’t help his laugh. “Maybe some eggs benny? But yeah, I could eat. You sure you don’t want to tag along?” he asked Kristen, willing her to say no.
She seemed to take his hint and shook her head. “Nope. The other half is in town for the weekend and I promised he gets most of my time. You two have fun. Eat at least one pastry for me though. Promise?”
Niko saluted her. “I won’t let you down. I’ll even tag you in the photo.”
She winked, then gathered her things and headed off. Sam turned his chair, heading back to where he’d dropped his stuff. Niko was close behind, his feet shuffling along the soft grass, and he hitched his yoga bag over his shoulder.
“You parked far?” he asked.
Sam shook his head. “Nah. But we don’t have to take the car. Parking’s going to suck and if it’s just a few blocks up, we can walk. If you’re not too sore,” he added with a tiny smirk.
Niko rolled his eyes. “Do you have any idea how many hours I spend running.”
“Yoga’s a different kind of sore,” Sam cautioned. “Hell, even I can feel it in my calves, and I don’t feel shit down there.” He was smiling, and Niko was smiling right back as they made their way to his truck. He opened the back and threw his stuff in, moving so Niko could do the same, then he locked it back up and motioned toward the main street. “You can definitely tell you work out a lot, though.”
Niko looked down, a sheepish grin on his face. “Yeah. It’s…kind of a habit I never got rid of.”
“From what?” Sam couldn’t help but ask. “I’m going to guess some kind of sport.”
“That obvious?” Niko asked with a little chuckle. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts, then shrugged his shoulders up high near his ears like he was trying to protect himself from something. “I played hockey.”
Sam blinked in surprise. “Hockey? Is that why you made me fall down the fucking rabbit hole of Tyler Seguin’s hockey ass that night?”
Niko tripped a little with how hard he laughed and steadied himself on Sam’s shoulder. “Oh my god, you didn’t.”
“You told me to,” Sam insisted. “After I put Maisy to sleep, I took my laptop into bed with me and ended up staying awake til one in the damn morning watching Dallas Stars videos. I might have a team now and I’ve never even seen a game.”
Niko laughed even harder. “I know I should be sorry, but I’m totally not. Those were hours decently wasted.”
Sam rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t deny the fact that his cheeks hurt from smiling more in the last few minutes than he had in months. He shook his head and tried not to notice how the heat of Niko’s brief shoulder touch lingered, or the way they kept stealing glances at each other.
He was painfully relieved when they finally made it to the restaurant, and he didn’t even argue when the hostess bumped them to the top of the list simply because he was in a wheelchair. They were seated near a window, and he was grateful the place wasn’t all buffet since that tended to be a bigger pain in the ass than anything.
He and Niko both chose the menu, and he immediately ordered coffee with eggs bennies, and Niko surprised him by going with the lox and avocado on a bagel, and juice. Sam raised a brow at him, leaning his elbows on the table. “Granola or some healthy shit, huh?”
“Sue me, and anyway it has a ton of sodium so I’m not being overly healthy.” Niko grinned and reached for his water. “Besides, I don’t want to fuck with my diet too badly.”
Sam’s eyebrow lifted. “Diet.”
At that Niko glanced away, and Sam briefly wondered if it was a body image issue. But it didn’t seem like that. Not entirely. After Niko puffed out air and took a long drink of his water, he finally met Sam’s gaze. “Old habits die hard. Fitness was a huge part of my job. Then uh…then that sort of didn’t work out, but I’d been following the same routine for so long, I wasn’t sure how to stop. It’s…I don’t know.”
“A comfort thing?” Sam offered, and when Niko looked a little startled, he shrugged. “I get it. I was an athlete before my accident. I mean, not like star quarterback or anything,” he clarified before Niko could go down the pity path. “Just high school football. Probably wouldn’t have go
tten a scholarship out of it, but it was a big deal to my parents. My dad had it in his head I was going to be some big college football star and get drafted. He kept me on a really rigid routine— running every morning, weights, core strengthening, strict diet. I never really thought about what a huge part of my life it was until I was hurt. Then, after the accident, he just stopped giving a shit. When I was released from rehab, I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. I spent a while fighting the adaptive shit they wanted me to learn, but it helped. I learned to keep up that same routine—I mean, I couldn’t go out running anymore, but I could still work out, still keep myself fit, and I learned to appreciate it for more than just keeping my dad off my back. It kept me from going crazy until I could get the hell out of there.”
Niko was staring down at the fork he was holding and didn’t say anything until the server dropped off their food. When Sam thought maybe the conversation was over— maybe it was too much—Niko cleared his throat and looked up. “I was drafted. By the NHL,” he added, and Sam almost choked on his first bite of egg. He stared at him a minute, blinking. “I played on the farm team for two seasons before I was called up. Then I was injured a couple minutes into my first NHL game, and my career ended. They were cool about it. The uh…the league has a thing where they lift your jersey to the rafters when you retire. It’s not usually for rookies who got two minutes of ice time before a shoddy shin guard ruins your life, but I think they felt bad.”
Sam absorbed all that, fighting the urge to come around the table and pull Niko into a hug. But he didn’t think he’d appreciate it. He damn well knew how much he hated that kind of reaction when he talked about his own accident.
“Hockey had been my thing since I was a kid,” Niko went on, “so I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself when it was over.” He looked at Sam and gave him a brittle smile before picking up half of his bagel and taking a bite.
Sam couldn’t help himself from asking, “How the hell did you end up in Fairfield as an accountant?”
Niko laughed through his bite, taking a swig of his juice before he answered. “A friend talked me into it. He knew I was a huge math nerd, so he convinced me with shiny promises of complicated abstract formulas at the University. In the end, I went into accounting because it meant I could actually work, and I wouldn’t spend most of my conscious life stuck in research I’d never get out of. I wanted to be more than my job, you know? I didn’t want to make the same mistake with hockey again. Because if I lost it, I didn’t want to feel like I had nothing left.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”
Niko shrugged. “It is what it is. I mean…I guess you understand.”
“Not like that,” Sam told him. “I was fifteen when I became paralyzed. I barely knew what I wanted for breakfast the next morning let alone a career. I just followed the path my parents had set out for me, and it wasn’t until I couldn’t perform the way they wanted me to that I had room to think about myself.”
“And you realized you had a passion for tattoos?” Niko asked.
Sam would have taken offense if there had been any mockery in Niko’s tone, but there wasn’t. Just genuine curiosity, showing through his wide, dark eyes which were lit up behind the lenses of his glasses. He couldn’t help a tiny smile. “I found standard art first. I was born and raised in tiny little town on the coast of Alaska, so I applied to Universities as far away from my parents as I could get, and ended up here. Ran into Tony in my Sophomore year. We’d grown up together, and I think it was fate, finding him again. I mean, who the hell runs into their elementary school best buddy three thousand miles away from home? So, I took it as a sign. I was majoring in art, and he was just getting ready to start applying for loans to open his own shop. He’d been apprenticing at a shop near campus for like eighteen months, and he’d just finished his stint as journeyman…”
Niko frowned. “A what?”
“A journeyman. It’s where you travel and work,” Sam said with a shrug. “You pack your shit, and you drive around the country and work out of whatever studios that will have you so you can learn tattoo culture from coast to coast. A couple of the guys did theirs overseas. Mine ah…was more complicated. Traveling and sleeping in a camper and not knowing where I’m going to end up doesn’t really work for me. I’m pretty independent, but I still have a home-care nurse come in a few times a week to help with a few things, and I’ll need that for the rest of my life. And it’s not like I could just ask the company to send someone with me to go bashing around the country in an RV while I peddle my services at random shops.”
“So, what did you do?” Niko asked, gripping his glass of juice but not drinking it. His eyes were fixed on Sam, and it took all of Sam’s concentration not to get lost in his soft, golden gaze.
“Tony had my back. Called a bunch of places he’d worked out of and had some guys come in to work alongside me, show me what they knew. I didn’t think I’d find such passion in it—and it’s not everything. Shit, it’s probably the third or fourth priority in my life right now, but it’s a constant and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Maisy’s my first love, but tattooing is definitely my second.”
Niko sat back, pushing his half-gone plate away and scratched at his stubble. “I wish I could find that. I mean, maybe I have, I’m not sure yet.”
Sam frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
At that, Niko looked a little nervous, fidgeting and drawing his thumb into his mouth to chew on his nail. “When uh…when I was trying to figure shit out, I took some cooking classes and I ended up loving it. A lot. It was like therapy in a way—going into a kitchen and just creating. I ignored it for a while, but a friend of mine pointed out that Fairfield could use some new cuisine, and my mom has so many of our old family recipes stored away. So, I’ve put an offer down for a lease on that old diner. And it looks like I’m opening up my own place.”
Sam set his glass down and couldn’t help a huge smile spreading over his face. “Seriously? Niko, that’s amazing. That’s…wow. Congrats.”
Niko flushed and rubbed the back of his neck, shrugging. “It’s not anything special. I mean, people do that kind of thing all the time.”
“Yes, it is,” Sam told him firmly, “and no, they don’t. Not everyone is brave enough to try, and you are. I hope you let me know when it’s going to open because Maisy and I are going to be first in the line opening day.”
“You and that munchkin will have a permanent table,” Niko told him softly.
Sam smiled down at his food and felt his fingers itch to reach over and take Niko’s hand in his and…and… And, he didn’t know what, exactly, but he hadn’t felt this way in a long damn time. Maybe ever. He’d had a few flings that lasted longer than a month or two, but they were few and far between, and had started with a visible expiration date.
With Niko, it felt different.
“Hey,” he started, but his phone began to buzz, and he held up his finger as he dug it out. His heart sank to the pit of his stomach when he saw Beth’s name on the screen, and he closed his eyes as he answered. “Beth, hi.”
“Sam, listen, I just wanted to let you know that we were able to track down Maisy’s paternal grandparents and my supervisor is making contact with them right now.”
Sam’s lungs felt like they were closing up, and he took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. “What,” his voiced cracked and he cleared his throat, “what does that mean?”
“We’d like to extend the opportunity to her biological family to petition for custody. It’s protocol and…”
“I’m her biological family. Her mother was my first cousin, and god damn it, I’m the only parent she’s ever known,” he spat, his voice rising before he could stop it. His chest felt tight and he forced himself to breathe. “Where were these people when she was rotting away in some crib in an attic without a single moment of affection or attention? Where were they when she was abandoned at the hospital by her mother? Why now? Why t
ry to take her from me now?”
“This isn’t about taking her from you, Sam,” Beth said in a quiet voice. “Please understand that. But it’s only fair that her father has a chance to…”
“I’m her father,” he said. He choked on his words and had to force them out. “I’m the one who took her in, who raised her. I’m the only parent she knows. What the fuck do you think it’s going to do to her? After all these years I spent keeping her safe and healthy, why am I not good enough now?”
“You know that’s not what anyone thinks,” Beth began.
“Which is why your boss made a man who has been paralyzed for twenty fucking years take a class on how to live with paralysis? You’re telling me that’s protocol?” he demanded.
She was very quiet, and he knew. He knew she was aware he wasn’t stupid, and she had no excuses left to give him. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Go fuck yourself. And I realize saying that isn’t helping my case, but you’re telling me that you’re about to take my daughter and throw her to some strangers who didn’t give a shit what happened to her for the first three years of her life. You’re going to traumatize her and say it’s in her best interest because I’m a cripple, and you can’t pull your heads out of your asses long enough to see what kind of person that makes you. So yeah. Go fuck yourself.” He ended the call and slammed the phone down on the table.
When he dared to look up, feeling a cloying, suffocating weight in his chest at falling apart in front of Niko, he found the other half of the table empty. “Shit,” he muttered to himself. Not only was he losing this battle, but he’d scared off the only guy he could really stand to be around.
Before he could really panic, though, Niko returned with a neutral expression. “I paid the bill,” he confessed. “I didn’t think that phone call was something you wanted me to hear. Because if it were me, I wouldn’t want uh…yeah. Anyway. So, I just went off to pay the bill. And I can drive, if you need me to.”
Sam let out a tight laugh, shaking his head. “Nah. I could use the distraction. I promise I’m good.”
