Page 89 of Meant for Mayhem

Shannon held her fist up, and they bumped knuckles.

“Does he need to say anything?” Carter asked, always more levelheaded than me in press interviews. “What are they going to ask?”

“Everyone wants to know where he’s been,” Richard said, his voice more than a little exasperated now. “You’re lucky this hasn’t been an internet sensation with the amount of speculation going around.”

“We say nothing.” Hopefully, I conveyed how serious I was. “I’ll talk about hockey. I’ll talk about the importance of mental health if I need to. But we’re not mentioning Shannon or Leena. End of discussion.”

“And you expect everyone else on the plane to keep their mouths shut too?”

Logan stood up and let out a loud whistle. “Dick here thinks we don’t have Mikko’s back. That we can’t keep it quiet about his wife and kid. But I think we can, eh, boys?”

A chorus of yeah and hell yeah went around the plane.

Sensing he’d lost this battle, Richard let out a long sigh, then got up and returned to his seat at the front of the plane.

“If it keeps you from having to mention Leena, say my name instead,” Shannon said, voice low enough for only me to hear. “You did get married, and the legal documents are there to prove it. Maybe they won’t dig much further than that.”

“No.” I shook my head. “This isn’t about you. If they want to talk to me, then we talk about hockey. You didn’t ask for the spotlight, and I’m keeping you out of it.”

“I’m a big girl, Mikko. I can take it.”

I knew it, but hearing her say it made me realize how much this woman sacrificed time and time again. For Lori, for Leena, for me. And yet, I’d never heard her ask for anything in return.

“Thank you,” I said, meaning far more than this one instance, and saying a silent vow to myself to make sure she knew I’d take care of her too. “For all of it.”

Her dark eyes found mine, and she gave me the smallest nod. “Anytime.”

The rest of the flight passed quietly. Leena dozed through most of it, curled against my chest, only waking long enough to steal half my pretzels before Logan convinced her that an excited scream with her hands in the air was the proper way to handle turbulence.

As we began our descent, Shannon glued herself to the window again. The skyline slowly came into view, buildings rising higher and higher until they filled the horizon. The wheels touched down a few minutes later. We taxied toward the private terminal, Shannon still watching out the window, taking in yellow taxis and skyscrapers that somehow looked even taller from the ground.

“I’ve seen the city in movies a hundred times,” she murmured. “It doesn’t even look real.”

I smiled, happy to have given her this first taste of the world.

Once the seatbelt sign switched off, everyone stood at once, reaching into overhead bins. I waited until the aisle cleared before standing, balancing Leena against my hip.

“So tomorrow,” I said. “It’ll be like a normal day. Morning skate at eight, meetings after. I should be back at the hotel around lunch, then I’ll head to the arena around four.”

“Okay,” Shannon answered. “I figured we could hang out at the hotel.”

“You should go explore.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “With Leena?”

“Of course. We brought the stroller.”

“But I’ve never been here.”

“And neither has she.”

She chewed on the corner of her lip. “You trust me to take her around the city?”

For once, there was nothing to overthink. “I trust no one more.”

“Okay.” She looked back out the window one more time. “I think I’d like that.”

The team buses rolled beneath the awning of the hotel an hour later, and within minutes the lobby was filled with suitcases and players stretching stiff legs after the flight. Coach Tremblay stood near the front desk with a stack of key cards in one hand and a rooming list in the other.