"God, Juniper, I'm sorry," I tell her, kissing her neck and rubbing her shoulders. “You know, I know how it is to lose a parent. That s**t will f**k with your head for years. What you described? Being in all those houses? That could have been me and my brothers if Tim hadn't stepped up and gotten my grandmother to move in with us." She doesn't say anything then and I just hold her close, telling her stories about my family. How Tim basically raised us while my dad drank away his grief and our income.
“And all I did was give Tim s**t, too," I say. “He will tell you he fought to get me into schools that had good hockey programs, but the truth is I would have gotten kicked out of all the other schools. Hockey was the only way I could beat the s**t out of people and not wind up in juvie." I
