16. Chapter 16

The next morning, I leave Molly at home while I check out the area around the shop to make sure there are no cats around. I take her with me most days, so she's not happy to be left behind, but today is squirrel moving day. She'd create an even bigger disaster than Cassie did by filling the shop with cats.

Cassie's car is gone when I get there, and I'm equal parts relieved and disappointed.

Relieved because she made it clear at the Garden that she wants nothing to do with me. Not with words, but definitely with body language. She wouldn't look at me. When she did, it was with a glare. When she talked to me, she might as well have been talking to a stranger for all the warmth in her voice.

So, even though I'd planned to tell her about the squirrels today, I'm not sure how I would have explained them, and I'm so glad I don't have to.

But also disappointed because… well, because I haven't stopped thinking about her since Monday.

That's a lie.

I haven't stopped thinking about her since she came back to Paradise. Every time she's been here before, I've been super attracted and aware of her, but then she leaves and it's a relief that I don't have to think about her. Then she shows up again and my obsession starts all over.

This time has been the worst. Maybe because she's never stayed this long. More likely because we kissed, and it was freaking incredible. I keep replaying it in my mind, trying to figure out where I went wrong and what I should have done differently.

How will I ever stop obsessing over Cassie if she stays for good?

That thought gives me the same feeling I had the first time I saw her. The feeling that's only intensified since Monday. The Tilt-a-Whirl spinning at the base of my sternum that will either make me laugh or puke.

I walk the perimeter of the shop and surrounding buildings without seeing or hearing any cats. Cassie said she was taking the last one back to Harvey, so I assume that's where she might be.

Once I confirm the area is cat free, I find Lynette at the town square, coaxing her squirrel friends into metal crates. We load them into my Jeep then unload them a few miles later in the alley outside the shop. As I set them on the ground, the little guys clutch the bars on their cages like prisoners waiting for yard time.

"Are they okay?" I ask Lynette. "They look kind of traumatized."

"They've been forced from their home. Of course they're traumatized." She holds up one crate to eye level and looks deeply into the squirrel's eyes.

"But everything's all right, isn't it? This place is even better. No Mayor Voglmeyer here," Lynette speaks in an octave that people usually reserve for babies and puppies—and squirrels too, I guess—before she points the crate toward her house. "You'll be safer here than at my house. Harvey's next door, and I love him, but he's got too many cats. But I'm not far, so I'll visit every day."

Her old clapboard house is painted a bright blue and sits kitty corner to and across the pond and a field. Harvey's older brick house isn't right next to hers, but close enough to be dangerous. He's got enough cats roaming around that the squirrels are safer here.

I don't know how much the squirrels understand, but when Lynette opens the doors to the crates, the squirrels don't waste any time dashing to the tree line separating the alley from the pond. She smiles and waves at them before turning to me with one last crate. Inside are two much smaller squirrels.

"We'll need to leave food out for the adults for a few days, but the babies have to stay in the shop and be hand-fed for a week or two until they're bigger. Their mama didn't make it." She thrusts a plastic bag at me. "The syringes and formula are in here, along with some grapes, peanuts, and kale. But mostly they need the formula. I'll take the morning shift; you can take the night."

I smile, too, at the squirrels scampering away, until Lynette's words register. "Excuse me? Hand feed?"

She walks toward the shop without answering my question. "Let's move them into the shop. It's too dangerous for them outside."

"If they have to be inside, why not keep them at your house?"

Lynette gives me the side-eye. "Harvey comes over every morning," she says, as if I should already have that information.

Which I do, but I don't understand what Harvey has to do with her squirrels.

"He always brings a cat or two with him. I enjoy petting them, but they'll eat the babies." The finality of her words leaves no room for disagreement.

I sigh and follow behind her, carrying the plastic bag. "Lynette, I have no idea how to feed squirrels. And can't the big ones find food on their own?"

"Their nuts are all buried back at the town square. They'll have to build up a fresh supply." She turns in a slow circle, then inspects the corners of the shop where the tool chest and barrels are and, finally, the Mustang. "This will be okay. It's pretty clean. I don't see anything they could get hurt on."

She sets the baby squirrels' crate on a rolling cart and coos at them. "The adults prefer nuts, peanut butter, popcorn—especially Mr. Whiskers. Popcorn is his favorite. But they'll eat regular corn on the cob, too." Lynette taps the cage door and waves goodbye to her babies. "You can let them out. They won't go far."

At that, she heads to the door with me trailing behind, trying to figure out how to get out of squirrel babysitting duty.

"Lynette, I've got hockey practice and work and…" I stop before I say Mom to take care of. I'm still not used to not having that responsibility take up most of my time. "I don't have time to feed squirrels."

"We don't have another choice with the babies." She shrugs, ending the discussion. "The rest only have to be fed for a few days. A week at the most. You just hold out the food and let them come get it. Or you can leave it on the ground, but you have to make sure they eat before you leave."

Lynette stops by her car, standing there for a few seconds before she looks back at me.

"I just… I don't know if I can feed the babies, Lynette."

She blinks a few times, then waves her head toward the car door. I jump to open it for her.

Before she climbs in, she turns back to me and squeezes my hands. "Thank you for saving my babies, Bear. What I would have done without you?"

And then she climbs into her car and is gone before I can say anything.

Which means I'm babysitting some squirrels.

Even though I've checked outside the shop for cats, now I go back and inspect the inside closely. Evidently, Lynette believes the squirrels will be safe, but I'm worried about keeping the stuff in the shop safe, too. I toss anything I think the squirrels can chew up or damage into the storage closet and cover the Mustang tight.

When I finish, the place looks better than it's looked in years, although I have to give Cassie credit. She did more than clean out the cats. She cleaned out a lot of the trash that was here, too.

Looking at it all clean and orderly, I wonder if tearing it down is the best thing to do. I've always thought of the shop as trashed and irredeemable. But it actually looks pretty good right now. As much as I hate to admit it, I can almost see it as a bookstore with Cassie behind the counter.

Which means it's time for me to find something else to think about.

It's also time for practice. Voices outside tell me my team has arrived, and as much as the squirrels may want to be free, the girls don't need any more distractions than they already have. And squirrels would definitely be a distraction. Little girls aren't any better than puppies when it comes to losing focus.

So I cover the cage with an old blanket and wheel the table into a corner. The squirrels immediately break into a high-pitched chirping noise that resembles baby birds being tortured. Which isn't a sound easily ignored.

If I'd thought about it early enough, I would have turned on some music to drown out the sound. But the thought doesn't occur to me until the girls trickle in. I greet them all with a loud hello and ask questions about the weather, but my voice only makes the squirrels chirp louder.

"What is that sound?" Janie is the first to ask, swiveling her head around the entire shop.

"I don't hear anything. Let's get our gear on!" I clap my hands together, but no one is as interested in getting dressed as they are in finding where the noise is coming from.

"It sounds like it's coming from inside," Hazel says and points to the squirrel corner. "From over there."

Look, I have a sister thirteen months older than I am. If there's one life lesson I've learned from her—and should have remembered ten minutes ago—it's that there's no keeping secrets from little girls. Or big girls.

Thirty seconds after we got home from the restaurant last night, Britta got out of me that Cassie and I had kissed.

So I cave. Especially since the squirrels are doing a terrible job of keeping themselves secret, anyway. I'm positive they're girl squirrels. Zero percent chance they're not.

With a sigh, I glance in the direction Hazel points her finger. "I've got some baby squirrels."

Predictably, the girls explode into squeals of delight and pleas to see them.

It's powerless to resist, but they'll have to earn it.

"If you can get your gear on in the next two minutes, I'll let you see them!" I yell over their begging, confident they'll never be able to do it.

Sixty seconds later, I'm proven wrong.

I make the girls sit in a circle, then I wheel the cart to them. Once they're quiet, I take the blanket off the cage and lower it to the girls' eye level.

Girl squeals join the squirrel squeals. Cries of "they're soooooo cute!" and "can we hold them, pleeeeeeease?" and "they can be our mascots!" engulf me as the girls circle around so close, I have to lift the crate so no one—girl or squirrel—gets crushed.

"You can't hold them. They're wild. They might bite." The last thing I need right now is to take a kid to the ER because of a squirrel attack.

Or a squirrel to the vet because of a girl.

"Coach, you have to let them out of the cage!" Hazel demands. "They don't like it in there! They need to be free. They're wild."

"It's not a cage, it's a crate, and it's keeping them safe from all of you." I angle the cage—crate—to look inside.

And Hazel may be right. The babies don't look happy. In fact, they appear, and sound, as if they're crying.

I look from the squirrels' big, wide, and pleading eyes to the girls who meet me with the same wide-eyed, pleading look. I'm about to give in again when I think of one last argument. "If I let them out, they could run out the door when we come back from practice."

Not one second passes before Janie points to the door leading to the studio—Cassie's apartment. "We come in through the studio, then through that door. Then they can't run outside."

One squirrel lets out the saddest sound I've ever heard, and I clutch the crate tighter. "There's someone living there now. She won't want all of you tramping through her apartment."

I'm drowned out with shouts of "We'll be super careful!" "We won't make a mess!" "We'll only be in her house for a second!" and "She has to let us! Is she a squirrel hater?"

"Absolutely not!" My voice bounces off the cinderblock walls and the girls fall silent.

Even though I've yelled, they don't look scared. So, I guess they're not afraid of me anymore, which is a good thing. Although, players are supposed to be afraid of their coach, and not the other way around.

"Grab your gear and head for the pond. Maybe we'll let them out after practice."

The girls let out a collective groan, and maybe I imagine it, but I swear I hear a sad cry coming from the squirrel cage—crate.

That cry follows me outside, where I tell the girls I forgot something and will catch up with them. "No one goes on the ice without me!" I add before they get too far.

Then I go back inside and open the little cage door. "Enjoy yourselves," I say to my squirrels, and turn to go, but quickly follow up with, "But not too much. Stay out of trouble."

They don't move from the back corner of their cage, and I hope they'll stay there. But, just in case, I'll come in before the girls, make sure the squirrels are safe, then let the girls in. They'll be thrilled that the squirrels got to run free.

By the time I make it to the pond, the girls are almost done lacing up. Besides skate tying, the girls are mastering staying upright on their skates. They're getting better at everything, but a lot of practice still involves teaching skating skills such as quick starts, forward and backward crossover glides, and Mohawk pivots.

"Do we get to hit the puck today, Coach?" Janie asks while skating backwards circles around the slower girls.

"Soon." I barely have the word out of my mouth when Cora falls hard enough I hear the thump of her helmet on the ice.

When she doesn't pop back up right away, I skate over to her to make sure she's okay. She sits up when I crouch to check her.

"I'm okay, Coach," Cora says through a staggered breath, then gets to her feet.

"You sure?" A month ago when she fell, she spent the rest of practice sitting on the bench in tears.

She nods, then skates away, practicing her skills.

We're not ready to play anyone yet, but the girls have improved a lot in the six weeks we've been practicing. They're not only more confident on the ice, they're more confident off of it. Two moms have told me their daughters have been speaking up more at school and their grades have improved.

I'm not sure there's a correlation between hockey and not being afraid to speak in front of people—that hasn't been the case for me—but I see how it makes people more self-assured. If you can face an opponent on ice without backing down, you can face problems head-on off the ice too. Learning to think quickly and pivot when necessary are two skills these girls will definitely develop on the ice and use off of it.

Those are important skills for anyone, but especially for girls. I've seen that with my sister. Britta couldn't play hockey with a team, but that didn't keep her off the ice. She played with my brothers and me as often as she could, including when we started our pickup games. There's no denying she is a grinder, and I couldn't be prouder to call her my big sister.

And I'm really proud of my girls and the way they've toughened up since we started practicing.

We're in the middle of running drills when I notice Cassie park in the alley. After a quick glance at my girls to make sure they're not watching me, I watch Cassie climb out of her car. She pulls grocery bags from her trunk, hitching one higher on her shoulder before grabbing the next one.

I'm so tempted to go help her, I'm about to hand my whistle to Hazel. But then I notice rustling in the trees. A squirrel appears, scurrying headfirst down the tree trunk. Then another squirrel in a nearby tree does the same. And another. And another.

All headed in Cassie's direction.

They're moving fast, but my thoughts are stuck in slow motion. Did Lynette say I needed to feed the squirrels today? Am I on day shift or night shift?

The squirrels stay far enough back that, at first, Cassie doesn't notice them. Then one of them—it has to be Mr. Whiskers—makes his move. He darts to the studio door and rises on his hind legs. Cassie stops. She shifts, blocking my view of their interaction, but her spine stiffens.

I don't have a view of her face, but I do have a perfect view of the four other squirrels slowly making their way to join Mr. Whiskers. Whatever Cassie's got in those grocery bags, they want it. Their bushy tails move up and down and back and forth in excited waves as they run a few steps, stop, sniff, then move closer.

And Cassie has no idea they're coming for her.

I turn back to my team and whistle. When I have their attention, I yell, "Everyone off the ice!"

By the time they're all standing near or sitting on the bench, I've got my skates off, I'm slipping on my boots, and there are shrieks coming from Cassie's direction.

"Stay here! Don't move! No one on the ice until I get back!"

The girls all nod, but their entire focus is on what's happening on the other side of the alley. Cassie is surrounded. She clutches her bags tight as the squirrel gang inches closer and closer. Her nervous cries of "Shoo! Shoo!" echo in the silence.

And I run.