Page 61 of Omega’s Forward

Mr. Rourke — too formal. We made a baby. That ship has sailed.

I type “I want to be involved” and stare at it until involved starts looking weird, like words do when you look at them too long.

I delete the whole thing. I can see exactly how the email version of this is going to go.

I give him a polite answer. He gives me a polite one back. Inside of a month, we’ll have a signed arrangement: updates on a schedule, photos at Christmas.

He’s better than me at paper. If I do this in writing, my kid becomes a clause.

I know how that story ends, because I grew up inside one. My old man never even bothered with a birthday call. I have no idea if he is even alive or not.

And Gordie — there’s the other lesson. Gordie kept a son quiet for decades, and I’ve seen up close what that did to the son.

Look at the two of us. Both of us have daddy issues up the wazoo.

Not my kid.

Whatever gets worked out between Everett Rourke and me — lawyers, schedules, oceans — my kid is going to know my face. My kid is going to be sick of my face.

I still have his number from the cohabitation. I pull it up and my thumb hangs over the call button for a long time.

I don’t think he’s going to answer. And if he does, he’ll answer cool and composed with a plan already drafted, and I’ll be agreeing to a visitation schedule before I get one full sentence out.

There’s exactly one place I’ve ever held my own with Everett Rourke, and that’s standing in front of him.

So that’s the answer. I turn the idea over a few times just to make sure it’s solid. It is. There’s no other option.

I’m going to London.

He can be my match, or he can be nothing to me but the other half of a custody arrangement.

His call. The kid isn’t canceled by the Bureau, though.

I want to be honest with myself so I say the rest of it out loud to my empty kitchen, like an idiot.

“This isn’t about him.”

It isn’t. It can’t be. He left this house the first minute the Bureau cleared him, stripped the bed, and skipped the goodbye. He skipped my hearing too. If any part of him wanted any part of me, I’d have heard something by now. What I got instead is an email offering me an exit.

So this isn’t a romance. I’m flying because there’s peanut-sized somebody over there who’s half mine.

I’m not doing what my father did.

Then there’s the other problem.

We’re playing home on Tuesday against the Marauders. It’ll be Dorn’s first skate in our barn since he put Linus on a stretcher.

The whole city has the date circled. The boys have had it circled for months. Every man in that room expects that when Dorn’s blades touch our ice, his captain will be standing across from him.

And his captain is going to be an ocean away.

The room will be fine without me. Ozzy can discipline Dorn if it’s needed. Linus will score, because he is the up-and-comer. I’m the old guard. My time is coming, sooner rather than later.

The thought stings.

I shower, dress, and drive to the arena. Practice can run without me today. I need the fifth floor.

They redid the executive floor over the summer when Belanger came in, and it still smells of fresh paint and new carpet. Priya kept the corner office, the one full of boxes. She flies home at the end of the month. That’s the single personal fact anybody in this building has on her.