Coyotes Ever After (Colorado Coyotes #7)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TWO YEARS LATER

Elle

“Looks like another board game day,” I say to Mila, sighing.

We’re standing at the wall of windows in the main family room of the Kauai vacation home she and Colby had built. It’s the fourth day of the eight-day celebration she planned to celebrate Colby’s five-year cancer-free anniversary.

“Another day of us dominating in Taboo and trivia, you mean?” She smiles at me.

“That, too.”

Ford and I are the only couple in the group of former players who have stayed close since retiring. Colby and Mila, Dom and Tess, Ben and Stella, Beau and Shelby and Rowan and Cam all have kids, so Ford and I were happy to spend more time at Colby and Mila’s when he was fighting cancer. We’ve gotten much closer to them and their daughters, Anastasia and Irina. Once a week, we go to their house for dinner. We have game nights and movie nights.

It seemed impossible that Mila and I, who used to despise each other, would become best friends. Colby’s illness did that, though. She and I have talked every day since then, and in the event that something happens to her and Colby, Ford and I will become Anastasia and Irina’s guardians.

“Oh, man. Another day of rain.” Dom approaches the window, a mug of coffee in hand. He looks at Mila, his brow furrowed. “Do you and Colby drink this kind of coffee every day?”

“Kopi Luwak?” She sips from her own mug. “No, our Kauai chef is the only one who makes this.”

“How much does this shit run?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I have no idea, but I know it’s pricey for coffee.”

“Like how much?”

She glares at him. “I literally just said I don’t know. You have a phone. Look it up. It’s civet coffee. That’s why it’s so expensive.”

“What does that mean?”

I hold back a smile as Mila asks him, “You really want to know?”

Dom gives her a look of confusion. “Yeah, that’s why I asked. Jesus, you Russians can be dense.”

He loves baiting her, and she usually falls right into his traps. She faces him, annoyed.

“There’s an animal in Indonesia called the Asian palm civet. It’s not like an American cat; it looks more like a giant rat. So the civets like to eat coffee cherries at Indonesian coffee plantations. The civets partially digest the beans and the enzymes in their digestive tracts start breaking them down. Then when they excrete the beans, the farmers collect them, clean them and roast them and—” She raises her mug slightly. “We drink Kopi Luwak.”

Dom gapes at her as she takes a drink of her coffee. “Are you shitting me?”

She gives him a satisfied arch of one brow. “I guess I am literally shitting you, yes. It’s true. Look it up. Ask Analu.”

“Anal-oo would not do that to me.”

Dom enjoys mispronouncing the name of Colby and Mila’s chef, calling him “Anal-oo” instead of “Analu”.

“Go ask him.” Mila makes a shooing motion.

“We’re your friends! Why are you serving us poop coffee?”

Mila rolls her eyes. “It’s a delicacy, you moron. They take the outer skin of the beans off.”

Colby approaches us, grinning as he wraps his arms around Mila from behind. “Does Dom object to Analu’s choice of coffee?”

“Object?” Dom balks and glances at the coffee in his mug. “Who wants to drink coffee that’s been shit out by a rat?”

“It’s a cat,” Mila says.

He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Because that’s so much better? Rich people are nuts, man.”

“And you and Tess are...broke?” Colby says in a teasing tone.

“We do okay, but we don’t have a tropical palace.”

My husband comes into the room, still smiling from our morning quickie earlier. “Looks like no hiking for us today. Board games again?”

“And rewatches of our most epic games!” Beau calls out from the kitchen.

Mila and I exchange an amused look. The men in our friend circle never get tired of rewatching the games they played as Coyotes. They yell, cheer and boo like they’re seeing it for the first time. It’s one of their favorite activities on our quarterly Kauai trips.

Analu announces that breakfast is ready and everyone moves into the breathtaking dining room of the home. Set in an actual jungle, It has a glass domed ceiling and mostly glass walls, the locally sourced dining table stretching through the massive space. It seats up to twenty-six people and the house staff adjusts its size for every meal by adding or inserting leaves.

Today, it has seating for twenty-two. This is an important occasion, so everyone made sure they could be here. All the kids who aren’t adults are here, too. Some of them still asleep after our late night playing Taboo last night.

“Daddy, look!” Tess and Dom’s son Ryland points at a monkey visible in one of the nearby trees.

Dom pulls his son onto his lap. “Aunt Mila will probably comb through his poop looking for something for our dinner tonight.”

Charlie Fox gives Dom a concerned look, then asks his mom if that’s true.

“No, baby, Uncle Dom is just dramatic, remember? We just smile and nod when he says something.”

Dom scoffs. “Yeah, I’m dramatic. Enjoy your poop coffee, Shelby.”

She laughs. “I enjoy any coffee that’s freshly brewed and waiting when I wake up.”

Ford approaches the seat next to me and sits down. I sneak a glance at him. He’s silver at the temples and his dark hair has turned more salt and pepper. He didn’t retire from hockey until he was thirty-six, and he wouldn’t have retired then unless his body forced him to.

I left my editorial board job a couple of years after we got married and started doing freelance journalism. I never looked back. Now I get to travel all over the world, reporting on things that matter to me or that I just find interesting.

My husband and I are both independent people whose careers are important to us. Ford took a year off after his retirement and I only worked part-time that year so we could travel. We went to China, did an African safari, white-water rafted in Alaska and spent three months traveling through Europe by train.

After our year of travel, he accepted a job coaching hockey at the University of Denver. They recruited him hard, telling him he could bring anyone he wanted as his assistant coach. He brought Angela Dornan, a former pro hockey trainer he saw tremendous coaching potential in.

My husband’s hockey program is pretty much year-round. He expects his players at the rink and in the gym even in the off-season. Angela keeps things in motion when we’re traveling like we are now.

Breakfast is once again an incredible gourmet meal. I eat a freshly made omelet, bacon and pineapple. Ford gives me a look as he finishes polishing off a huge plate of eggs, bacon and biscuits and gravy.

“I have to stop,” he says, a note of sadness in his voice.

I smile and rub my palm over his back. Since retiring, he doesn’t burn anywhere near as many calories as he did as a pro hockey player. Age is also slowing his metabolism. He gained twenty-five pounds after retiring and was only able to lose ten with a strict diet and lots of exercise. I tell him I don’t care how much he weighs and that it makes sense for him to not have the physique of a pro hockey player when he no longer is one. It’s hard for him, though.

In the thirteen years we’ve been together, I’ve changed, too. My waistline is thicker and I’m seeing more and more wrinkles in the mirror. Ford still tells me I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. It’s funny how I don’t think I could love him any more, but as time passes, I realize I do.

Seeing the way he lifts other people up, the way he cares for the players on his team like they’re his own children and the way he’s maintained such closeness with his former teammates shows me every day what kind of man he is. The best kind.

Ben and Stella’s seven-year-old son Joey finishes his breakfast quickly, bouncing in his seat until his parents tell him he can leave the table. He races toward the home’s indoor basketball court.

Within a minute, the other kids are either following him or begging their parents for permission to.

The half-court space is great for keeping the young kids occupied on rainy days here. They roller skate, run races and play dodgeball in there.

Stella glances at her phone screen and then turns it over on the table, murmuring something to Ben. They’re expecting a baby through an adoption agency and their birth mother is thirty-five weeks pregnant. Stella worries she’ll miss the call about their birth mother being in labor. She wants to be there if she can.

“Consider this my formal request for a Taboo rematch,” Dom says. “Men vs. women again. Mila and Elle, play an honest game this time.”

I balk and meet Mila’s gaze. We’d never cheat and Dom knows it. He just likes to rile us up.

“We’re just that much better than you are,” I say with a shrug. “Deal with it.”

Mila and I are able to kind of freakishly read each other’s minds, and Tess and Cam are even better at it. The guys, especially Dom, just get too worked up.

“Okay, everyone.” Mila stands and taps a spoon on her water glass to get everyone’s attention. Colby stands next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Today is the official date of Colby’s doctor telling us he was in remission five years ago.” She swallows, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “Every one of you was there for us when he was fighting cancer. We love you all and can never thank you enough. I know it’s not easy to make it here for eight days, and we’re so very grateful you all did. We were supposed to be hiking the remains of a volcano today, but we’re going to be stuck in here again instead. But we’re together—” Her voice breaks and she stops to clear her throat. “And that’s all that matters. Please get the drink of your choice and we’ll meet up in the main family room for a toast.”

This celebration of Colby’s health is so lavish that Mila has even hired bartenders. There are one or two of them behind the home’s beautiful main-floor teak bar every day from nine a.m. until two a.m. The Harrison family nanny, Madison, supervises the kids in the gym.

Colby’s illness changed Mila. She doesn’t work nearly as much anymore, and she’s more willing to be vulnerable in front of people other than Colby now. Some of her sharp edges remain, but she wouldn’t be Mila anymore if she went completely soft.

I find her on my way to the bar and give her a hug.

“Love you,” she says in my ear.

“Love you, too.”

And I do. These people are my family, and Mila has become the sister I never had.