Chapter 22 #2
“He’s here,” I say. “He just…stepped out for a minute.”
She nods, then lets out a little chuckle. “I knew he played in Atlanta, but it’s such a big city. I just didn’t think…” She shakes her head. “Anyway. It’s good to see you again.”
“You, too. I’ll tell Theo I saw you.”
She nods, then turns like she’s going to walk away.
But then she spins back around again. “Actually, you don’t have to tell him.
I came down here because I honestly didn’t believe he could be in the building, but seeing you again, which feels a lot like seeing him again, I’m not actually sure I want him to know.
” She scrunches up her face. “I mean, obviously I know you’re still going to tell him.
But don’t—I don’t want him to come find me.
I work on a different floor. He shouldn’t—not that I think he would.
” She closes her eyes and takes a breath.
“You know what? I’m just going to walk away now. Goodbye, Carter.”
I sink back into my chair, waiting until she’s a good distance down the hallway. Then I stand and slowly move to the back corner of the waiting room.
“She’s gone,” I say to the plant, but Theo makes no move to come out.
I slowly push some of the branches aside, enough to see Theo’s face.
He’s pale, just two bright spots of color on either cheek, and his eyes are hollow.
Like he’s seen a ghost. I’m surprised by his reaction—I wouldn’t have guessed he still cared about Rebecca, but he’s clearly feeling something, and the sight makes my heart ache the slightest bit. “You okay?” I ask.
He runs a hand over his face. “Yeah. But, uh—I’m gonna go.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing better than to try to stop him. When he wants to talk, we’ll talk. But I won’t get far if I try to force him into it now. “Thanks for the food.”
He nods once, then drops a hand on my shoulder before heading down the hall in the opposite direction from Rebecca.
I drop back into my seat and exhale a disbelieving breath.
Rebecca Bradley moved to Texas when Theo and I were freshmen in high school.
She seemed nice enough to me, but Theo fell hard and fast. By the start of our junior year, they’d danced around being together but never fully committed.
But then she asked him to be her date to homecoming, and they never looked back.
They were together nonstop. At least as much as our hockey schedule allowed. They drove everyone crazy with how stupid in love they were.
And then Dad died.
When Theo shut everyone out, he shut Rebecca out too.
I did my best to do damage control, but she didn’t need answers. She knew what Theo was doing and why he was doing it. She just wanted to help.
And he wouldn’t let her.
Half an hour later, Sarah is back in the waiting room, eyes damp, a huge smile on her face. I stand, and she steps into my arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“She’s here?” I ask.
“She’s here,” Sarah says. “And she’s perfect. Anna is so happy, and Miles can’t stop crying, and I’m just really happy for them.”
“Big day,” I say. “For all of you.”
She lets out a little chuckle. “Honestly, it feels like my art show was a hundred years ago.” She looks up at me, arms still around my waist. “Did Theo leave?”
I nod. “Yeah. A while ago.”
“It was really nice of him to come,” she says, then she gives my waist a little squeeze. “Do you want to meet the baby?”
“Can I?” I ask. “Do you think Miles will mind?”
She looks at me, her expression curious. We still haven’t talked about the way her brother has been treating me, but she doesn’t look all that surprised by my question.
“He won’t,” she says. “He’s a big softy right now. It’ll be fine.”
She threads her fingers through mine, then we walk together to Anna’s room.
Anna is propped up in her hospital bed, looking exhausted but happy, baby Fiona tucked into her arms. Miles is sitting in a chair beside her bed, phone in his hand.
He looks up when we enter, and for once, he doesn’t look like he wants to kill me.
Sarah leaves me by the door and walks over to Anna. She says something I can’t hear, then smiles and lifts Fiona into her arms.
The sight of Sarah holding the baby triggers something deep in my gut.
Something visceral—inevitable. She looks beautiful, but it’s more than that.
It’s her looking so…maternal. It feels like some kind of evolutionary part of my biology just clicked on in my brain.
I’ve seen her with her nieces and with Charlie, and she’s great with them. But this feels different somehow.
In the back of my mind, I’ve always assumed I’d be a dad eventually. But I haven’t given it any real thought.
I’m thinking about it now though. Wanting it in a way that feels both surprising and terrifying.
I’m about to walk over to Sarah, but then I make eye contact with Miles and stop, feet rooted to the floor. I’m annoyed that he’s turned me into his enemy, but tonight isn’t about that. It’s about him, and if he doesn’t want me here, I’m not going to fight him over it.
But then Miles gives me a quick nod, tilting his head toward Sarah.
It’s a small concession, but I nod back, letting him know that whatever temporary truce this is, I’m grateful for it. I make my way over to where Sarah is standing. She looks up and meets my gaze. “You want to hold her?”
“I don’t—I don’t know how.”
Sarah chuckles. “You’ll be fine. Here.” She tilts her head toward a wide bench that runs underneath the window. “Sit. That’ll make it easier.”
I do as she says, then she very gently lowers the bundled baby into my waiting arms.
Fiona is asleep, swaddled so tightly, the only part of her I can see is her tiny little face.
She isn’t much bigger than a football, but holding her is nothing like holding a football.
She’s warm and malleable, a living, breathing thing, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the thought of having to keep something this tiny alive.
Maybe I’m not ready to be a dad after all.
“She’s so small,” I say, and Sarah drops down beside me, tucking one leg under her as her arm rests on my shoulder. She leans close so she can look at Fiona, and I breathe in her familiar scent.
“Look!” Sarah whispers softly. “She’s opening her eyes.”
I shift my gaze back to Fiona’s face and sure enough, she’s looking up at me with wide, brown eyes that remind me of Sarah.
“She’s got your eyes,” I say.
“She’s got Miles’s eyes.”
“They’re your eyes, too,” I say. “Besides, she’s already prettier than Miles is ever going to be.”
Fiona starts to fuss a few minutes later, and Sarah takes her back to Anna. I notice Miles watching me, the temporary compassion I saw in his eyes when I first came in already replaced with the stony glare I’ve come to expect.
“Hey, congrats, man,” I say, stepping close enough to offer him a handshake. For a long moment, he doesn’t take it, and I almost pull my hand back. But I don’t do it. He doesn’t have to shake my hand, but I won’t make it easy on him.
Finally, he grunts and takes my hand. “Thanks,” he says, gripping my hand so tightly it takes a concerted effort not to react.
I don’t know what he’s trying to prove, but it triggers my ire, and when I step back to Sarah’s side, I look pointedly at Miles, then I lift my hands to his sister’s face and kiss her right on the mouth.
“You ready?” I ask.
Her eyes are wide, slightly stunned. “Yeah,” she says slowly.
I reach down and take her hand, eyes on Miles the entire time Sarah is making plans to relieve the babysitter and be with Poppy and Olive tomorrow. Then we say our goodbyes and head out to my truck.
“I just realized we left your car at the gallery,” I say once we’re pulling out of the hospital parking garage.
“We can pick it up tomorrow,” she says through a yawn. Then she looks over at me. “Do you want to tell me what that was about? Right before we left?”
I glance over at her, suddenly feeling a little sheepish. “The kiss?”
She nods. “And all the glaring.”
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t,” she says. “You never do. I just wasn’t sure what triggered it. Was it Miles?”
I nod. “I’m getting really tired of him looking at me like I’m doing something wrong.”
She grimaces. “I was wondering if you’d noticed anything different. Was it bad in the hospital room? I didn’t notice.”
“Not at first,” I say. “But then…” I’m not sure I want to tell her the details of everything that went down.
I’m not sure she noticed, since she was talking to Anna, but I’m not entirely proud of how I acted.
Miles was in the wrong first, but I probably didn’t have to intentionally provoke him. “It wasn’t great,” I say.
“Is it messing with the team dynamic?” Sarah asks.
“Not yet. But the other guys are starting to notice something is up. Any idea why he’s upset? Or…annoyed? I don’t even know what he is. I just know he only glares at me now.”
She’s quiet for a long moment before she says, “I do know why Miles is mad. But I don’t want to say it out loud because it’s going to make you hate him.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to keep my tone level. “But I shouldn’t hate him?”
“No, you probably should a little bit,” she says.
“It makes me hate him a little bit. But it’s also complicated because I know he’s coming from a place of love and also a place of fear, and sometimes we do crazy things when we’re trying to deal with our past.” She takes a steadying breath.
“Especially when that past involves quite a bit of trauma.”
I spare her a quick glance before forcing my eyes back to the road.
She isn’t admitting much, but she’s telling me more than she’s told me before.
“I get that,” I say, thinking of Theo and how badly he hurt Rebecca even though that was never his intent.
Or maybe it was his intent, but not because he didn’t love her.
He just couldn’t let her love him, so he had to push her away the only way he knew how.
“I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if you want me to. ”
She nods, biting her lip. “He thinks you’re only encouraging me to get an O-1 visa because it’s less likely to work, and as long as I can’t get my own visa, I’ll have to stay married to you.”
I grip the steering wheel a little tighter. “Why would I do that?”
“He thinks…you’re in love with me, I guess? And now you’re doing whatever it takes to keep me here.”
I choke out a disbelieving laugh because the idea of doing something like that is so completely ridiculous. Who would want to be married to a woman who didn’t choose it?
“Marriage by coercion isn’t really my style, Sarah.” I force myself to keep breathing, but it’s hard not to rail against the misjudgments Miles is making right now.
“I know. I absolutely know that. He’s just angry that I’m refusing his help,” Sarah says. “He doesn’t think I’m making a practical choice, and I guess it feels easier to blame you for that than me.”
I’m angry that he thinks I would ever manipulate his sister like that.
I’m more angry that he has so little faith in her skill that, despite her continually showing him evidence of her success, he keeps harping on the teaching thing.
I’m angry that he doesn’t respect me enough to just talk to me, man to man, so he can ask me what I think of Sarah’s art.
That instead, he’s choosing to intimidate.
To throw his weight around as Sarah’s “big brother” and my team captain.
But none of that is as important as making sure Sarah knows I would never do such a thing.
I would never lie to her or push her to do anything that wasn’t in her best interests.
Honestly, I would love for her to have her own visa.
At least then, if we were together, I would know it was only because she wanted to be.
Not because I was her ticket to staying with her family.
I can’t tell her that part, but I can reassure her that I would never do what Miles is suggesting.
“Sarah—”
“I know,” she says, cutting me off.
My eyebrows lift.
“I know you would never do that,” she continues. “When Anna told me, I was immediately certain it wasn’t a possibility. That’s not who you are, and I know that.”
Her words immediately diffuse some of the tension coursing through my body. “I’m glad,” I say. “Because I would never—”
“I know,” she says, more gently this time. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I’m not worried that any part of what he said is true.”
This trips me up the slightest bit. Because one part of what Miles said might be true.
I might be in love with his sister. Or at least on my way there.
And it’s getting harder and harder to deny it.