Page 13 of Meant for Mayhem

Lori laid a trembling hand on my arm, her Parkinson’s disease even more noticeable when I could feel it. “How can we help?”

Shannon said nothing, her eyes going back to slits in her face. Except, maybe this time it wasn’t so much anger but curiosity, like she couldn’t quite figure me out.

Join the fucking club.

With each passing second, I could hear my father’s bitter voice drilling into me, honesty inherits the earth.

I needed to spit it out.

“I made a mistake.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth. Shannon’s nostrils flared as her eyes drifted down to Leena contentedly snacking on my lap, and I jumped to clarify. “Not with her. With the team.”

Beckett sat down next to Lori, his elbows on the counter. “Is that why you missed the third period two nights ago?”

I nodded, and Shannon’s face morphed again, curiosity turning to concern. Part of me wondered if she realized how much she said without uttering a single word, but something told me she wouldn’t like hearing that I could read her like a book.

“Frankie says I had a panic attack between periods.”

Lori’s thumb brushed over my arm. “Oh, Mikko. You’ve been through a lot lately.”

“It’s not her.” I couldn’t stop staring at Shannon, not when it looked like steam was about to come out of her ears. “Well, it is, but not because I don’t want her.”

“Then explain.” Shannon still had her arms crossed over her chest, but the heat in her eyes was bleeding out now.

Maybe her intensity was meant to scare people off, to make them go away, but I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It grounded me, something I rarely felt with other people. Maybe because I knew she was honest to her core, and there was nothing a Finn loved more than a hot sauna and the cold hard truth.

“I haven’t left Leena much since I brought her home,” I said, holding Shannon’s eye contact. “She was at home in Denver with my mom, but she was so upset when I left that I couldn’t stop worrying. Knowing I was so far away from them and wouldn’t be able to help if something went wrong sent me into a spiral I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of. And the team clocked it.”

Those grey eyes expanded in surprise, telling me Shannon had already jumped to a conclusion that was far from the truth. Too bad I was about to shock her with the rest of it.

“So they put you on leave?” Beckett asked.

I turned to look at him. “Camille, Coach, and Frankie were waiting for me on the plane and insisted I take time off to sort out my life. I have to see the team psych too. They asked me for four weeks off, but I got it down to two.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Lori said, echoing my mom’s own words. “Parenthood is a lot to take on, even when you don’t have a toddler thrust on you out of the clear blue.”

“Okay, so you take a few weeks off, you get a psych evaluation, and then what? You’re back on the ice?” Beckett prodded.

I looked back at Shannon, dreading the words that needed to come next. “And here is the mistake. Why I’m here, to answer your question.”

“Spit it out,” Shannon said, and dammit, I smiled.

Honest, loyal, and most certainly unhinged, just like I remembered. Here’s hoping she wouldn’t kill me once she heard the rest of this story.

“In order to get them to agree to let Leena travel with the team this season, I told a lie. One that doesn’t just affect me, but you too.”

Shannon’s brow furrowed, and she pointed at her chest. “Me?”

“I told them my wife would travel with us too.”

“Your wife?” Beckett said, his voice an octave higher.

Even though I could see out of my peripheral vision that he’d leaned over the counter toward me, I couldn’t look away from Shannon, not when her dark brows practically hit her hairline. There was no time like the present to deliver the final blow.

“I told them we’re married. That you were mine.”

4

Beckett said something after the bomb Mikko dropped on us, but I couldn’t focus on him. Not when my mind kept replaying Mikko’s words over and over again.