Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

Canyon

I'm in a good mood when I get off the team jet.

The team won in Phoenix, and I have a date with Saylor tonight.

After our sex marathon just before the trip, I'm anxious to see her again, spend more time with her. It's a sex thing, but it's more than that. I just haven't wanted to articulate what's going on in my head with regard to her.

"Canyon." I'm almost to the exit when our head of media relations, Bristol Carpenter, approaches me at a fast clip.

Why is she here at the airport? We'd only been gone twenty-four hours.

"Hey, Bristol." I stop walking as she reaches me.

"Child Protective Services has contacted the team."

I would laugh except she's dead serious.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I truly have no idea because I'm many things, but a dead-beat isn't one of them. If I'd somehow fathered a child, I would at the very least be paying financial support to the mother.

"I don't know. They reached out from the state of Illinois and the social worker said they've been trying to reach you."

"No one has been trying to reach me," I protest, but even as I say it, I have a sinking feeling.

I'm from Illinois.

My sister did reach out to me a few times, and she has a kid.

If something happened to her, there's a good chance my niece has nowhere to go because my father wants nothing to do with either of them.

"There's a number for you to call," Bristol says. "You need to talk to a woman named Megan Schneider."

"This is about my sister," I mutter, just so she doesn't think I'm some kind of asshole with a kid I don't take care of.

"Your sister?" She looks startled. "Well, they wouldn't give me any details, but please let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

Fuck .

I have no doubt this is going to be bad news.

"Thanks." I grab my bag and stalk toward the exit.

It's the middle of the afternoon and I have a date tonight, but I yank out my phone and call the number because I know this isn't going away unless I take care of it. Carly is always in some kind of trouble, but I never dreamed she'd abandon my niece, Allison.

Part of me wants to throw away the little piece of paper Bristol had just given me, but I can't do that to Allison. She's just a kid. If my sister has left her or put her in foster care, the least I can do is give some kind of financial aid. Maybe help them find her a good family to live with. I don't really know her, but I don't want her to be abused or something. Not again. She's a preteen now, and she can't help that her mother is useless.

"This is Megan Schneider." The woman on the other end sounds tired.

"Uh, hi. My name is Canyon Marks. I understand you've been trying to get a hold of me?"

"Mr. Marks." She sighs. "Yes, I've been trying to reach you."

"What's going on? Is Carly okay?"

"I'm so sorry to have to tell you this. Your sister passed away a week ago."

Fuck.

I'd been expecting bad, but not this bad.

Son of a bitch.

It's a little hard to breathe and I close my eyes.

My big sister.

We hadn't had a relationship in years, but she was still my sister.

The big sister who helped me take off my training wheels.

The big sister who kicked another kid on the playground because he called me a bad name.

Dammit dammit dammit.

"Where's Allison?" I ask when the first bout of pain passes.

"She's in a temporary group home."

Christ.

That's terrifying. I've heard stories about some of those places.

"What do you need from me?" I ask.

"Are you willing to take custody of her? We spoke to your father, and he said it wasn't an option for him, so you are the only other possibility."

The asshole hadn't even called me to let me know about Carly.

"You expect me to take custody of a ten-year-old?" I demand.

"She's eleven," Megan says.

Eleven?

Well, I haven't seen either of them in nine years, so I guess she's grown up.

"Look, I'm a professional hockey player. I'm on the road nine months of the year, and I'm single. How am I going to take custody of a pre-teen?"

"I don't know, Mr. Marks. We're just doing the best we can to find placement for her. She's a sad, scared kid and there's no one else."

"How did Carly die?" I ask quietly.

"She overdosed."

Jesus fucking Christ.

Despite the things she's done and how badly she's treated me, she was my sister.

And Allison is my niece.

My dad had washed his hands of them, and while I understand him giving up on Carly, how can he abandon Allison?

"She doesn't even know me," I say finally. "Carly wrote me out of her life nine years ago. I send money for Allison every once in a while, but she never replies or thanks me. I only know because the checks get cashed."

"Carly's been in rehab," Megan says. "Mandated by the courts. Ally was with a friend's parents for a while, but once Carly passed, they said they couldn't afford to take her permanently."

I sigh. "What do I have to do?"

"Can you come to Peoria to get her?"

I blow out a frustrated breath.

I haven't been home in a long time, but it doesn't appear I have a choice.

"Yeah. I'll try to find a flight out tonight."

I disconnect and shake my head.

I need to talk to my dad and then to Coach Vanek.

I'm also fighting the very unfamiliar urge to cry.

The last time I cried was at my mom's funeral.

That was also the last time I saw Carly.

This really sucks.

* * *

The first thing I notice when Allison walks into the room is her black eye.

The second thing I notice is how old and tattered her clothes are.

And the last thing I notice is the scowl—one that's exactly like her mother's.

She's Carly's mini-me, and it's a little eerie to look at her.

"Why does she have a black eye?" I demand, turning to Megan.

"I don't know." Megan looks concerned. "Ally, what happened to your eye?"

"Nothing," she mutters.

"Did one of the kids at the house hit you?" she presses, putting her hands on Ally's shoulders.

"I got hit in the face in PE at school," she says, shrugging her off.

Megan looks doubtful but doesn't push it.

"Hey, Ally." I take a step toward her. "I'm your uncle. Canyon."

She looks up with a bored expression. "Good for you."

"Ally, be polite," Megan admonishes her.

"Why?" She glares at the older woman. "I don't know him. I don't want to live with him. He's a stranger to me."

"Yes, but your mom left his name in her papers," she says with more patience than I could muster up if it had been me. "He's your family."

She snorts. "No such thing. Mom is my only family. Her family abandoned us."

That's not the way things went down, but it doesn't seem like this is a good time to bring that up.

"I was only seventeen when your mom took off," I point out. "I had nothing to do with it."

"Liar." She shakes her head. "I know what you did to my dad, how you made him leave us, and then you went to go play hockey like nothing happened. You're the biggest asshole of all."

"Ally. Language." Megan gives her a stern look that makes Ally shrink into herself a little, but then she seems to reconsider, folding her arms across her chest defiantly.

There is so much to sort out with this, I don't know where to start.

How do I tell an eleven-year-old what an abusive prick her father was? Or how her mother had been so blinded by love she didn't protect her toddler from the monster she was involved with at the time.

This whole situation is a mess, and I'm torn between wanting to leave her where she is and bringing her home so I can make her life better. The black eye isn't going to work for me, though. I know that didn't happen in school. She's either getting bullied or fighting, or both.

She needs a family.

As much as I hate to admit it, she needs me .

I had a strained conversation with my dad last night, but he said he and my stepmother have no interest in taking care of a pre-teen. He pointed out that I wasn't exactly father material at this stage of my life either.

Thanks, Dad.

"Look," I say quietly. "I don't know you and you don't know me. But you're my niece and I'm the only choice you have. If you want to go back to the bullying and fighting going on at the group home, it's fine with me. Or you can come back to L.A. with me, and we try to make this work."

She doesn't reply.

"Ally." Megan catches her eye. "Do you want to try living with your uncle?"

She shrugs. "I guess. At least for a little while."

I open my mouth to say something, but Megan gives a slight shake of her head, so I refrain.

"All right. We have paperwork, and there are going to be some hoops to jump through going forward. Are you okay with that, Canyon?"

"I guess." This time, I'm the one who sounds like a surly pre-teen.

I don't want this.

Not even a little.

But she's just a kid and literally has no one else.

I still have memories of her as a baby, big hazel eyes sparkling with amusement every time she saw me. I'd only been fifteen when she was born, so she'd been like a pretty little doll. We'd bonded immediately, which pissed off my sister, but my mom had been alive then and she'd kept everyone on an even keel.

Then things had all gone to hell.

Now it's catching up to us.

The issue is that the rest of us are adults, and Ally is a sad, angry little girl.

"If you don't want me to live with you, you should say so," Ally snaps, wrinkling her pert little nose at me.

"I didn't say that," I sigh. "But I travel eight months of the year, so it's going to be hard on both of us. I have to find a nanny and?—"

"A nanny?" She gapes at me. "I'm eleven, not five! I don't need a babysitter."

"I'm gone for a week at a time," I say as patiently as I can. "Sometimes more. You can't be alone for seven to fourteen days. And anyway, it's illegal." I'm not positive about that last part, but neither Megan nor Ally correct me.

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever."

"This isn't going to work if you're angry all the time," I say.

"Then I guess it's not going to work. Because Mom told me what you did to my dad. So don't try to pretend you're some good guy."

I open my mouth but close it again.

I can't tell her I lost my mind when I walked in and caught that sonofabitch touching her inappropriately. She was two, and he'd had his fingers—I shudder, wiping away the thought, and slowly meet her gaze.

"Sometimes, adults make decisions that are difficult but important," I say in a steely voice. "You were a baby, and your mother wasn't mature enough to see how badly your father treated her." And you .

"You're a liar, and I'm not going with you." Ally turns on her heel and storms out of the small office where we've been meeting.

I sink into a chair and look at Megan. "Now what?"

"She's eleven. She has no choice but to go with you. The question is whether or not you still want her."

"I don't want her getting beat up every day," I say. "But the reality of what happened when she was a baby isn't the kind of story I can tell her. It's ugly."

She grimaces. "I can only imagine."

"I need to find a nanny, a therapist, a house… I'm overwhelmed."

She nods with understanding. "You'll have a case worker in L.A. to help you navigate things."

I have a feeling I'm going to need more than a case worker.