Chapter 12 If The Bird Shits, I’m Out Cara #3
Lily clings to her, face tucked into her neck as she sobs. “I—I—I d-don’t want Daddy to-to… go away for hockey again!”
“I know, sweetheart.” Rosie sighs, closing her eyes as she rubs Lily’s back, reaches for Connor’s hand just for him to shriek, his body contorting like a demon is being exorcised from it.
There’s a tap on my shoulder, and I turn to Craig, Emmett’s brother, grinning from his seat behind me. “See? Aren’t you glad you don’t have kids?”
Sasha, his girlfriend, rolls her eyes dramatically and nods, glancing to her kids, faces buried in their tablets. “Honestly, Cara, be thankful. Kids are the worst sometimes.”
Craig sinks back in his seat. “You have no idea how lucky you and Em are that you don’t have to deal with this.”
My heart pounds an angry beat, and bile rises in my stomach. I look around the arena, filled with kids. Kids buried in phones and tablets. Kids fighting over toys. Kids spilling their popcorn, refusing to sit, crying their eyes out on the ground.
And I’d kill for it.
I would legitimately trade it all, anything, to be able to feel my child grow from the inside out.
To hold my entire world in my arms. To watch them flourish and explore, discover the things they love and chase them all day long until the stars dot the sky, when we can talk about our day and dream about tomorrow.
To help them through the big, impossible feelings, learn together, and come out the other side, always.
The good stuff comes with the hard stuff; that’s just the way life works.
And I want the hard stuff just as much as I crave the good.
I’m not lucky. I’m desperate.
And yet as I watch a tear drip down Olivia’s cheek, as I watch Rosie struggle to keep it together, and even as I watch Sasha try, over and over, to coax her kids off their tablets, I know that their struggle is just as valid as mine.
“Hey, you.” I crouch, touching Ireland’s hand. “Feel like going for a walk?”
Ireland dries her eyes with teensy fists. “Walk?” She climbs to her feet, those irresistible Beckett dimples popping when she grins. “Walk! I walk! Mama?” She claps Olivia’s belly. “I walk!”
I take her hand in mine, smiling at Connor. “What about you, little trouble?”
Connor slips off his chair, taking my other hand. Lily lifts her face out of Rosie’s neck, sniffling. She slides down to her feet, fiddling with the hem of her dress.
“I could come with you,” she whispers. “In case you need help with Connor and Ireland.”
“Oh, thank God. I was hoping you’d come. Can I tell you a secret?” I beckon her closer, whispering, “I feel so much stronger when you’re around.”
Deep brown eyes light, pink dancing in her full cheeks. “Mommy says I’m super helpful, and being helpful can make other people feel stronger.”
You are an angel, Rosie mouths to me.
Olivia squeezes my arm, a grateful smile on her face. “Thank you.”
I smile at the old man three seats down, Carter and Jennie’s pseudo-grandpa, and the voice of wisdom every single person in this family of ours has needed at one point or another. “You coming too, handsome?”
Hank grins, working his way down the row, gripping Lily’s hand when she slips it into his. “You know I can’t resist time alone with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on—second only to my wife, rest her perfect soul.”
I snort, rolling my eyes. Hank is blind, and has been since he was fifteen. At well over eighty years old, that means this man hasn’t ever actually laid eyes on me. “My beauty transcends vision.”
“As it should. Because beauty comes from in here.” He taps on his heart, then his head.
“And here. And you’ve got a beautiful heart and an equally beautiful brain.
Emmett tells me you’re also, ah, what was it again?
” He scratches his head. “The sexiest thing he’s ever seen.
So sexy he sometimes watches you sleep because he’s afraid to close his eyes in case you disappear? ”
I smile to myself as we make our way down to the players-only area.
We slip past the hallway where the locker rooms are, to the big, open space where the guys like to warm up. It’s empty, since they’re heading out on the ice soon, except right there in the corner, where one of our famous enforcers has our team photographer pinned to the wall.
“Unca Jax!” Connor shouts, racing over to them.
Lennon tears her mouth from Jaxon’s, but he grips a fistful of her spirals, pulling her back for one more kiss right before Connor collides with them, Ireland following.
“What?” Hank looks around. “What am I missing?”
Lily snickers from behind her hand. “Uncle Jaxon is kissing Auntie Len.”
Hank sighs. “Always miss the good stuff.”
I chuckle, shoving his arm as Jaxon and Lennon scoop the kids up, showering them with love. They’re going to be incredible parents one day. I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “The kids just needed to let off some steam for a few minutes. Figured it’d be empty here, but—”
“Lennon couldn’t resist all this.” Jaxon sighs theatrically, running a hand down his proud chest. “Who can blame her? Practically dragged me out here.”
Lennon rolls her eyes, pulling out her phone, reading a text. “Len, honey, where are you? Come kiss me, please. I’m nervous about the game. Please. Please. Please.” Her eyes rise to Jaxon’s as she recites the last of the message. “I’ll do that dance you like for you tonight.”
“Traitor,” he mutters, tossing Lily up on his shoulders, Ireland clinging to his neck, Connor’s hand tucked into his as they start down the hall. “C’mon. Let’s go give your dads a good-luck kiss before the game.”
I cross my arms over my chest, looking around the space as they leave, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth.
Hank gives me about thirty seconds of quiet before he dives in, which is his way.
He’s been in Carter and Jennie’s lives for nearly ten years, since the day their dad passed.
The day I met him, he became a permanent fixture in mine as well.
He has a way of seeing past all the bullshit, digging to the bottom of something you’ve been keeping buried.
“I’m not going to ask if you want to talk about it, because your answer will be no. You’ll keep it inside, because you’re supposed to be the strong one.”
A chuckle leaves my mouth, lacking all humor as I scuff at the floor with the toe of my green Louboutins. “I’ve never been on the receiving end of your sage wisdom.”
He shrugs. “You’ve never needed it.”
I smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. Instead, they burn, and I aim them at the ceiling, willing away the feeling that wants to drown me, the weakness I can barely fight anymore, pulling me deeper toward a person I don’t know.
A person I don’t want to become. “They said we should be thankful we don’t have kids. ”
He nods. “They did.”
“That we’re lucky we don’t have to deal with them.”
“Excuse my language, Cara—you know I don’t like to curse in front of pretty women—but I do believe they’re absolute fucking morons.”
A choked laugh escapes. Before I can stop myself, the words I’ve been dying to scream at the sky, day after day, leave my lips, a tortured whisper that burns my throat. “Why? Why me? Why us?”
Something inside me pulls taut, and I clutch at my chest, right where it hurts, desperate to hold it together.
“Why doesn’t my body work?” A single tear escapes with that one, peeling its way down my cheek. I swat it away, furious at myself. “What am I doing wrong?”
Hank’s hands find mine, clasping them tightly. He can’t see more than a shadow of me, I know, and yet the way his eyes move over my face, the pain that shines so genuinely there, it convinces me he sees it all.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Hank tells me with gentle certainty.
“Not a thing, Cara. You hear me? It’s not the answer you’re looking for, I know, but sometimes these things just happen.
There’s no rhyme or reason, and that’s harder than if there was, because you spend your days chasing an answer you’ll never get.
It’ll tear you up. Break you. Did for my sweet Ireland, anyway,” he adds, the words soft and sad as his thoughts turn to his late wife, the one the teensiest Beckett is named after.
“I thought you were child-free by choice.”
Hank smiles. “I’m afraid not. Chased it for years, parenthood. Almost got there once.” His chin trembles, just slightly. “Lost the pregnancy at twenty-one weeks. A sweet, beautiful boy.”
“Oh, Hank.” I wind my arms around him, but it’s him who holds me.
And there in his arms, the arms of someone else who’s been through it, who knows the heartache…
that’s where I start to breathe again. I don’t want him to hurt, and I hate that he did, but in this moment, I feel a little bit less alone. “I’m so sorry.”
“I wonder, still, how our life would have been different. I would have done anything to fix my wife’s broken heart, and it feels like a crime that this world never saw a mini version of her.
But I have my family. And you? Those boys back there, you ladies that keep me young, those kids…
well, I wouldn’t trade you in for anything.
You’re the family Ireland and I dreamed of, and I believe she gave me all of you when she passed. ”
“Hank, what the fuck?” I sob, swatting at my cheeks, rubbing at the mascara beneath my eyes. “My makeup was on point tonight.”
“You don’t need makeup, but I know you like it, so I’m sorry anyway.
” He squeezes my hand. “You can’t forget who you are in the midst of this.
And you’re not alone. You and Emmett are in this together.
Lean on him. He wants to help. He wants to understand, best he can, because the truth is, we’ll never understand exactly what a woman who desperately wants to be a mother is going through, no matter how much we want that too. ”
I nod, stepping back to quickly clean my eyes as laughter and shouts fill the hallway, the boys spilling into the room with the kids in their arms. Emmett comes racing in last, a handsome, fuckable giant in his equipment, breathless and wide-eyed as he looks around the room.
He spots me, and just like the night we met, his answering smile detonates across his face.
Starts in one corner, pulling up before stretching across, splitting his cheeks, a vision of pure happiness.
This smile could change the world, I’m sure of it.
He closes the space between us in four huge strides before scooping me against his chest, my feet leaving the ground as he spins us.
I rest my forehead against his, closing my eyes and soaking in the feeling of being in his arms as I cup his face in my hands.
The unending love, the support, the strength that seems to flow from him right to me.
“Firefly,” he murmurs against my lips, and I capture his mouth with mine, searing him with a promise, a heart that will always belong to him.
“I love you,” I whisper, and my heart takes flight, a happy, fierce thrum in my chest, because it knows: There’s no one else for us but Emmett.