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1st drop of the weekend;   Chapter One Hundred & Nineteen: Part Seven (& the other half) The Delta Center was no longer a building. It was a lung, a throat, a pulse. Twenty thousand people breathing the same anxious breath, roaring the same desperate command, rising and falling with every scrape of steel against ice. Towels spun above the seats in white blurs. The glass trembled. The boards flashed with ads. The Utah Mammoth logo at center ice seemed to stare upward from beneath layers of skate scars, waiting to see if this new team, this new city, could survive the moment it had asked for.   Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds left. One-goal game.   Paul Goldhawk was on his feet behind the corner glass.   Not patient. Not recovering.   Not carefully regulated.   Eighteen. Alive. Completely lost in the game.   He wore the Mammoth’s white road jersey, the diagonal UTAH slashing across his chest in black and powder blue, KELLER and the number 9 across the back. The captain’s C sat bold near his shoulder. The jersey hung loose enough to help him feel normal, long enough that he did not think about what was under it. Beside him, Bryan wore the home black Mammoth jersey, sharp and dark with pale blue trim, the mountain-mammoth logo snarling across his chest. Under Bryan’s seat sat Paul’s diaper bag, zipped shut and tucked carefully out of sight.   It was there. It mattered. It did not own the moment.   That, more than anything, felt like a miracle. Paul had hot honey chicken sauce at the corner of his mouth, a basket of half-finished wings balanced against his seat, and popcorn wedged somewhere in the crease between him and the glass. A drink cup with a straw sat in the holder, the lid spotted with condensation. He had been using the straw all night, not because anyone told him to, not because his hands were unreliable, but because he was too locked into the game to risk looking down long enough for an open cup.   “Get it out!” Paul shouted.   The puck had been pinned along the boards deep in Utah’s zone, bodies grinding shoulder to shoulder, sticks chopping at the ice. One of the Mammoth defensemen had been trapped out there too long. Paul could see it even before the commentators in the arena would have said it: the heavy bend in the knees, the desperate half-turn, the way the player’s stick came up a fraction late.   “He’s cooked,” Paul said, leaning toward Bryan without taking his eyes off the ice. “Dad, he’s cooked.” Bryan, who had been pretending all night that he did not love how much Paul sounded like himself, nodded hard.   “Needs a whistle.”   “Needs a miracle.”   The Jets worked the puck low. Behind the net. A bump in the corner. Utah nearly had the chance to clear. Didn’t. The crowd groaned before the danger fully happened, ten thousand people understanding the same mistake at once. The puck came back around to a bad angle.   A one-timer snapped off.   For a split second, the shot looked harmless. Then it wasn’t. The puck slipped through traffic, through bodies, through the tiny impossible lane no one expected, and beat the goalie.   Red light. Horn. Jets goal.   The roar shattered into disbelief. Paul’s hands flew to his head.   “No!”   Bryan dropped back into his seat like he had taken the shot himself.   “You have got to be kidding me.”   Across the glass, two Jets fans in dark blue jumped up screaming, pounding each other’s shoulders. A Utah fan two seats down pointed at the corner and yelled something about clearing the puck that was mostly vowels and betrayal. Paul stared at the scoreboard.   3–3.   The home lead gone. The game reset by one tired shift and one bad angle. He should have felt his body spike. He knew that now. Mindy’s language had become part of the week whether he liked it or not. High adrenaline. Autonomic pathways. Budget. Payback.   But this was not panic.   This was hockey. This was clean, uncomplicated devastation. The kind every fan in the building shared. It felt good to be wrecked for a normal reason. Bryan leaned toward him.   “You all right?”   Paul shot him a look.   “They tied it with four-thirty-seven left. Obviously I’m not all right.”   Bryan grinned.   “Fair.”   Paul grabbed a piece of popcorn and pointed it toward the ice like a coach diagramming a crime.   “They had the clear. They had it. You cannot let Lowry work behind the net that long.”   The fan beside him, a middle-aged guy in a black Mammoth hoodie with a towel over one shoulder, leaned in.   “Exactly. You saw it too, right? They were gassed.”   “Totally gassed,” Paul said, confidence effortless now. “You could see it five seconds before the pass. Once the puck didn’t get out, everybody was chasing.”   The man nodded, delighted.   “That’s what I’m saying.”   Bryan watched Paul talk to the stranger like he had been born rinkside, one hand still sticky from wings, eyes bright, voice animated, every sentence landing without hesitation. No searching for cover. No checking who could see the bag under the seat. No shrinking from his own body.   Just Paul.   Bryan took out his phone.   “Hey.”   Paul turned, still buzzing.   “What?”   “Picture.”   “Dad, not now.”   “Yes now.”   The annoyance on Paul’s face was real and normal and beautiful. Bryan lifted the phone anyway, leaned in, and Paul gave in at the last second, throwing one arm around his father’s shoulder and holding up two fingers with the other hand. Behind them, the ice glowed bright, the crowd blurred into blue and black and white, and both Keller jerseys — father in black, son in white — filled the frame.   Bryan snapped the selfie. Paul immediately grabbed the phone.   “Let me see.”   “You trust me that little?”   “I trust you with my life and setting off explosions. Not angles.”   Bryan laughed. Paul inspected it, then nodded.   “Okay. That’s actually good.”   “High praise.”   “Maybe send it to Lill...I mean, Mom.”   “Already doing it.”   Bryan sent the photo to Lilly with one line.   He’s in his element.   Three dots appeared almost instantly.   Then her reply.   Oh my heart. I’m watching along at the house. Tell him I love him. And tell him he better not spill hot honey on that jersey.   Bryan showed Paul. Paul wiped at his mouth immediately. Bryan laughed so hard the fan beside him looked over. The game restarted. The building found its voice again. Utah pushed. The Mammoth came over the blue line with speed, but the Jets angled them wide. Bodies collided near the boards in front of Paul and Bryan so hard the glass thudded against its stanchions. Paul flinched, then laughed, delighted by the violence because it stayed on the other side.   “That’s a playoff hit,” he said.   “It’s December.”   Bryan shook his head, smiling. The final minutes burned down. Every rush felt like a promise. Every save felt personal. The Jets dumped it in with seconds left, the puck rolling around behind the net. Utah reversed it. A scramble. Sticks. Skates. A last desperate look toward the slot that never became a shot. The horn sounded.   Overtime.   The towels came up again. Everybody stood. The Delta Center turned white with spinning cloth and expectation. Paul’s whole body vibrated with the room. Bryan glanced at the tracker on his wrist.   Green.   Still green. He looked away before Paul could catch him watching. Overtime began with Dylan Gunther on the ice.   “You better believe he’s out there,” Paul said, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet.   Bryan pointed toward the neutral zone.   “Keller too.”   The puck dropped. Utah won possession.   The crowd rose before anything happened because everybody knew what three-on-three could become. Open ice. Speed. One mistake. One pass. One shot. Gunther gathered the puck and crossed the blue line. Paul grabbed Bryan’s sleeve.   “There. There. There.”   Gunther carried wide, drawing the defender with him. The second Jet hesitated, caught between closing the lane and covering the trailer.   Keller cut into space.   Paul saw it. The whole building saw it a half second later.   “Across!” Paul shouted.   Gunther sent the pass.   Flat. Perfect. Keller loaded. The shot.   For one stretched heartbeat, the puck disappeared. Then the net snapped. Goal!!!!!!!!!   The arena detonated.   Paul screamed. Not a small sound. Not careful. A full-bodied, unguarded, eighteen-year-old roar that ripped out of him before shame could check the room.   “KELLER!”   Bryan was on his feet too, arms in the air, laughing as Paul grabbed him with one hand and the stranger beside him with the other. Towels whipped overhead. The goal horn blasted. Music thundered. The boards shook. On the ice, Keller dropped to one knee near the glass, sliding through his celebration as teammates crashed into him. Paul pounded the glass with an open palm.   “That’s it! LETS FUCKIN GO”   The fan beside Paul yelled, “Bring the Cup to Utah!” Bryan watched his son disappear into joy.   Not regression. Not dissociation. Not a medical event.   Joy.   Loud, messy, sticky-fingered, sports-fan joy. The kind of happiness that did not need to be softened for safety. The kind Paul had been robbed of too often lately. For one moment, Bryan’s throat tightened so hard he had to look down. Under his seat, the diaper bag remained tucked away. Necessary. Prepared. Quiet. Above it, Paul jumped and shouted in his white Keller jersey, face bright, eyes clear, body fully here. Bryan took that in and let it hurt exactly as much as it healed.   The celebration went on around them. The players gathered at center. The crowd chanted.   Paul looked back toward the ice, smiling so wide it transformed him.   “You know what?”   “What?”   “This was a great call.”   Bryan’s chest warmed.   “The game?”   “The jerseys. The seats. Utah. All of it.”   Bryan rested one hand briefly on the back of Paul’s neck, a father’s touch hidden in the chaos of celebration.   “Yeah?”   Paul nodded, eyes still on the ice.   “Yeah.”   For once, Bryan did not say more. He did not need to. The building said everything for them.   The hockey game ended twice. Once in Salt Lake City, inside the roar of the Delta Center, with towels spinning white above the glass and Paul’s joy lighting Bryan’s phone in one perfect photo. And again in the master bedroom of the Deer Crest Estate, where the final seconds of the broadcast glowed across a large flat-screen television mounted above the long modern fireplace.   The replay showed Keller’s overtime winner one last time. The arena exploded silently now because the television volume had been turned low, the cheering reduced to a distant rush beneath the softer music of the house: fire whispering behind glass, winter wind pressing gently against the windows, the old bones of a mountain home settling into night.   Then the screen went black. The room changed immediately.   Without the game, the master suite returned to moonlight. Silver-blue mountain light spilled through the wall of windows, laying pale shapes across the wide bed, the light wood floors, the clean modern lines of the room. Beyond the glass, Deer Valley slept under December snow, the ridgelines dark against the sky, the reservoir far below catching what little light the night offered. The fireplace glowed along the wall in a low horizontal burn, flames moving behind glass beneath the dark, silent TV. The suite was beautiful in a way that made loneliness feel expensive. Stone column. Soft white bedding.   A cream chair near the window. A balcony beyond the glass. A room designed for rest, romance, and morning views so spectacular they could forgive almost anything.   Lilly stood barefoot beside the bed in a pink satin robe, blonde hair let down over her shoulders, the silk catching firelight with every small movement. The robe wrapped neatly at her waist, elegant and soft, one sleeve falling slightly as she reached toward the wall panel beside the window. She was about to lower the mechanical blinds. One touch, and the mountain moonlight would vanish. One touch, and the room would become private in a way privacy never quite felt when the windows were that large. Her finger hovered over the button. Her phone pinged.   Lilly turned.   The iPhone lay on the nightstand beside a half-full bottle of Château Margaux, deep red and expensive enough that Bryan would have made a joke if he saw her unpack it. A wine glass sat nearby with one sip left, ruby-dark at the bottom. Beside it was a small lacquered box of Swiss dark chocolates, the kind wrapped in gold foil and stamped with a chocolatier’s crest. Only a few pieces remained, the paper cups empty like tiny collapsed crowns.   The phone pinged again. Bryan.   Lilly crossed to the nightstand, robe whispering around her thighs, and picked it up.   The first message filled the screen.   Hey Lill, just wanna say I love ya and miss you so much. We’re just heading back into the room now, it was honestly amazing Lilly to see him so relaxed, so confident and just so him despite the fact I had his diaper bag under the seat all night long. He was as amazing as ever. I don’t know how either one of us are gonna get any sleep. Love you   Lilly read it once. Then again.   The room blurred around the edges. Not from sadness. Not exactly. She could see Paul as Bryan had seen him. Eyes bright. Hot honey sauce at the corner of his mouth. Laughing at something his father said. Cheering so hard he forgot to manage his body, his shame, his fear, his medical reality, his recent history, all the soft and jagged pieces everyone else seemed to hold around him like glass.   Just Paul. Confident. Relaxed. So him. Lilly pressed the phone gently against her chest for a second. A smile came. Small. Trembling.   Then the second message arrived. The screen lit again. She lowered the phone and read.   A heads up Lill and with the utmost respect and love for you but I think it maybe time to let Paul know why, we can’t have another baby. His genuine and sensitive curiosity has gotten the better of him and respecting you and I both I have told him his question can only be answered when you feel ready and willing to do so. He accepted it, but Lilly, his eyes- behind his eyes- I’ve seen it: the ever-growing love he has for you.   Ever since ALL of this has happened, you have been nothing but an absolute emotional rock for Paul and he and I will forever be utterly grateful that you became his protector, his mother in this time of uncertainty and terrifying emotional storms. Lill, I think Paul wants to be that for you now, as much as he can. It’s up to you of course, how much you tell him or not, but he’s strong enough to support you Lill, he might just surprise you. Think about it, sweet dreams, and I can’t wait to see you in the morning. Love ya lots, love Bryan   Lilly did not move.   The fire shifted in the glass. Outside, moonlight silvered the snow. The phone remained bright in her hand, Bryan’s words staring up from the screen with all the gentleness of a hand placed on a wound. He thinks Paul wants to be that for you now. As much as he can.   The tear came before she felt it.   One small line down her left cheek. Warm against skin made cold by the room. Lilly lifted her thumb to wipe it away and realized, suddenly, that she was no longer standing in the master bedroom. Her body had moved without asking permission. The phone was still in her hand. The robe still tied around her. The fire still glowing somewhere behind her in the suite she had left.   But now she stood in one of the two nurseries of the rented house. The smaller one. Two steps down from their master suite and right across from Paul’s actual bedroom. The room was dark except for a soft moonlit glow through sheer curtains and a nightlight shaped like a little white lamb sitting low on a dresser. The walls were pale, gentle, almost cloud-colored, with framed nursery art of whales, sailboats, and soft blue animals drifting across the panels. A chandelier hung overhead, crystalline and delicate, catching tiny fragments of moonlight without fully shining.   A pale rug spread across the floor with waves and friendly sea creatures stitched into it. A white crib stood along one wall. Longer than a normal crib. Wider too.   A size chosen after too much late-night searching and too many tabs opened and closed before Lilly admitted what she was looking for. It had been advertised for twin toddlers up to five years old, a phrase that sounded practical on a website and devastating in her hands. The rails were tall and smooth. The mattress inside was dressed in soft, clean bedding with a folded blanket at one end. A plush lamb sat in one corner. A soft blue whale in another. A basket of board books waited nearby, though some of the books were not for toddlers at all — gentle stories, picture-heavy nature books, and a few sturdy copies of superhero books Paul might accept more easily than something too obviously babyish.   More toys had been arranged than she remembered arranging.   Stacking cups. Soft blocks. A wooden bead maze on a low shelf. A few plush animals tucked near the rocker. A small basket of sensory toys. A nightstand with wipes, lotion, and a covered cup set discreetly out of immediate view.   A room pretending to be temporary. A room prepared as if need might arrive at two in the morning and no one wanted panic to be the first response. The large padded reclining rocking chair sat near the crib. That had been the first reason Lilly had chosen this nursery for Paul.   The chair.   Not because it looked pretty, though it did. Cream upholstery. Deep cushion. Wide arms. A high back that would support her if Paul melted against her. Enough room for Bryan’s larger frame too, if Paul needed his father instead. The need for that chair had been obvious, even if the reason still made Lilly’s throat ache. Paul loved to be rocked.   In Bryan’s arms. In recent weeks, in hers.   Sometimes he resisted at first, face burning with teenage shame, body stiff with protest. Then the rhythm would find him. Back and forth. Back and forth. The fight would leave his shoulders. His breathing would slow. His hands would open. Sometimes he would fall asleep still pretending he had not needed it. A soft smile crept across Lilly’s face.   Then she looked at the crib.   The smile trembled. That was the second reason. The other nursery, larger and brighter, had been set aside for William. Toys more openly toddler. A bed situation more expected. A space for a real child who would run, tumble, shriek, and collapse into sleep with sticky fingers and no awareness of what his existence symbolized to the adults around him.   This room was different.   This room had been chosen for Paul because it offered containment without a hospital feeling. Rails without metal. Safety without straps. A place where, if the world got too big on the outside, he might feel enclosed rather than trapped.   Might.   That was the word Lilly kept circling.   Might.   He might feel safe here. Or he might wake, see the crib, and feel betrayed. He might understand the intention.Or he might see only evidence that everyone around him had already accepted a version of him he was still fighting to name.   Maybe this room was care. Maybe it was fear disguised as care. Maybe it was her being selfish.   Lilly’s hand tightened around the phone. Selfish was not the word Rebecca had used in their last session weeks ago. Becca. Not Rebecca in Lilly’s mouth anymore. Not after twelve years. Bryan had supported Lilly from the moment she told him, back when their engagement had become serious and secrets started needing new homes. She had told him about Becca, her therapist, her quiet witness, the woman who had helped rebuild her after Samson and what happened. What happened. The phrase remained the bridge over a chasm she still could not always look into directly. Lilly stepped closer to the crib.  Her left hand drifted instinctively across her stomach.   Then the phantom pain struck.   Not sharp enough to bend her double. Not real enough to require medicine.   But real enough to steal the breath from her body. A ghost pressure low and deep, sudden as a hand from the past. Lilly caught herself on the crib rail, fingers gripping smooth white wood as she gasped. For one terrible second, she was not in Utah. She was outside Memphis. Recovery room light. Bleached sheets. A nurse speaking gently because there was no gentle way to say some things.   Her left arm bruised where fingers had held too tightly. Her body not feeling like hers. Her future split open in a place no camera ever saw.   Two months.   Nearly two months in that recovery room and the rooms that followed, learning to breathe around the absence of possibilities she had not even fully decided she wanted before they were taken. Lilly closed her eyes.   In. Out. Again.   The phantom pain faded slowly, resentful of being dismissed. She stood straighter. One hand still on the crib rail. The other pressed against the silk at her stomach. Becca’s voice came to her the way it often did in moments like this. Not clinical. Never clinical. Becca had never made Lilly feel like a patient on a chart. She had treated her like a woman sitting across from another woman in the aftermath of a storm, both of them aware that the house could be rebuilt even if certain rooms were gone forever. The voice in Lilly’s memory carried rich Memphis warmth, smooth as aged green apple whiskey, sharp and sweet at the same time.   Baby, secrets don’t get lighter because we hide ’em better. They get lighter when we let the right hands carry just a corner.   Lilly opened her eyes. The nursery waited around her. Soft. Prepared. Accusing, maybe. Or maybe only ready. Becca had told her that letting people into her scars was not the same as making them responsible for healing them. That pain could be shared without being handed over. That love did not weaken because someone saw where the old wounds were.   Lilly thought of Paul.   Her little lamb. Yes. He was that. He would be, for the foreseeable future, her precious little lamb in ways the world would not understand and did not deserve to judge. Sometimes medically. Sometimes emotionally. Sometimes in that strange, frightening, tender space where his nervous system reached backward for safety because the present had become too sharp. She looked down into the crib. Almost too timid to reach in. Almost guilty before she even touched the blanket.   For a moment, imagination filled the empty mattress.   Paul curled there in a footed sleeper, long body folded as comfortably as it could be, one cheek pressed to the pillow, hair soft across his forehead. His pacifier moved in slow, peaceful pulls. The diaper beneath the sleeper was obvious in shape but not spectacle, simply part of the care that let him sleep without fear. One hand clutched Long Knight. The other lay open near his face, bandages gone, fingers relaxed. In the imagined quiet, Lilly sat beside the crib and stroked his hair through the rails.   “There’s my sleepy little lamb,” she whispered in the language of the moment, all soft edges and tender nonsense. “Mommy’s right here. No more big scary thoughts tonight. Just soft dreams, sweetheart. Just snuggles and warm milk and Mommy watching over you. My brave baby boy. My sweet little cub. My precious Paul.”   The vision hurt.   It also comforted. That was what made it dangerous. Lilly blinked, and the crib was empty again. Only the folded blanket. The plush lamb. The moonlight. Her own reflection faint in the dark window beyond the curtains. She exhaled slowly. Paul was not only her little lamb. That was the part she had to hold as tightly as the tenderness.   He had the heart of a lion. He had survived too much, yes, but he had also come back swinging. He had asked questions adults were afraid to answer. He had sat in a clinic and agreed to a medical plan he hated because part of him understood survival was not the same as surrender. He had cheered at a hockey game with hot honey sauce on his face and made Bryan feel like the world had returned a piece of their son.   He was both.   The lion & the lamb. Small and grown. Wounded and strong. She trusted lions. She trusted Bryan. And maybe, when the time came, she could trust Paul too. Lilly reached into the crib and lifted Long Knight from where she had placed him earlier. The giraffe plush looked ridiculous and brave in the moonlight. Bright yellow face. Soft brown ossicones. Blue embroidered eyes. Little smile. A white diaper stitched around its middle with a tiny safety pin on the front. His soft witness.   Lilly held it to her chest and looked down into the crib. “When the time is right,” she said softly.   Her voice barely disturbed the nursery air.   “When it’s just the two of us alone before we leave the mountains…”   She swallowed.   Lilly nodded once, not to the room, not to the pain, but to the truth she was choosing not to run from anymore.   “He’ll know enough of the truth.”   Long Knight’s stitched smile looked up at her. Outside, snow settled softly against the mountain house. As Lilly stood alone in the nursery, pink satin catching moonlight, one hand holding a plush giraffe, the other holding the words that might one day let Paul become her protector too.

Camille upon hearing the word mom gave Madison a hard pat on her bottom which made the girl squeak, "no no sweetie it's Mommy not Mom, Mommy, also if you break any of these rules you'll go over my lap for a spanking and yes it will be bare bottomed and depending on how naughty were you may have to go to the corner with your mouth washed out with soap, do we have an understanding sweetie?"  Camila said and when Madison looked into the bigger adults eyes she saw that Camilla was dead serious that Madison would get a spanking and maybe worse, she tried to remember the last time she had her mouth washed out with soap she was probably 13 years old and she was mouthing off to her aunt who quickly dragged the little teen over her lap gave her a sound spanking with her hair brush, before washing her mouth out.

When Maddison heard about losing privileges, her spine tingled and she mentally said, "I can't have an accident," and continued her attempt to study her new location, then said... "Mom, what are we going to do now?"

Exactly what Rusty Pins said.... What city and when?    Edit: Never mind... Seen that original poster last visited the same day they joined. Chances are they will not be back. 

Chapter 6: Stef’s Self-Confidence and Unusual Wishes Stef and Anette remained close and continued to enjoy their “sibling time.” Anette had long since stopped helping Stef get into his pajamas, but they talked almost every night before he went to bed. After being forced to wear a back-zip sleeper for a while when he was six, Stef discovered how comfortable they were. He liked how they fit snugly without leaving gaps or slipping down. That’s why he insisted on continuing to wear sleepers as pajamas. However, he now stuck to front-zip models that he could put on and take off by himself. The other kind was too impractical in the long run. He generally had a fondness for one-piece suits. When he was six, his usual winter outerwear was a snowsuit—a warm, windproof, and waterproof one-piece suit, which was typical for children his age. But as he grew older, he still wanted snowsuits whenever he needed new warm outerwear, even though it was unusual for older children to wear them. He developed self-confidence, though, and followed his own preferences, without letting himself be influenced by what people “usually” did, as long as it didn’t harm others. When he was nine, he saw a girl in a one-piece rain suit for the first time—something he hadn’t known existed before—and immediately wanted one for himself. So he was considered a bit special, but he had good friends who accepted him just as he was. — About a month before his thirteenth birthday, Stef made a wish list for his family. Mikkel read it first: a Bluetooth speaker, a fitness watch, "The Big Book About Stones and Rocks", a hoodie, diapers, a national soccer team jersey, a skateboa— “Hey, wait! What do you want diapers for? Have you had any accidents? Then we should go see the doctor.” “No, I don’t pee in my pants. But when Anette put diapers on me when I first got here, I always felt so happy and safe. I’ve been thinking about it more and more lately. Every time I see a child wearing a diaper, or an ad for them, it makes me think about it. If I could wear a diaper on bad days, when I’m sad, maybe it would cheer me up.” “Hmm, really? That’s certainly unusual. What would your friends say?” “They wouldn’t have to see it. Besides, if they made fun of me, they wouldn’t be real friends.” — He received a pack of 30 diapers for his birthday. They came with rules, which Helene explained to him. “You have to put them on yourself and wear clothes over the diaper. You don’t walk around in your underwear, and that goes for diapers, too. If you use the diaper, make sure to change in plenty of time and wash yourself thoroughly so that it doesn’t smell and you don’t get a rash. If that happens, you can’t use diapers for the next week. But otherwise, have fun!” After that, he started wearing diapers. Not all the time, but whenever he felt like it. Sometimes he wore a diaper during the day, and other times he slept in a diaper at night. It was usually one or two times a week. Stef made sure that diapers were something special that he could enjoy and look forward to, and not just a routine.