16. Jack
Chapter sixteen
Jack
M y mallet swung down toward the white, baseball-sized polo ball on the sixty-yard line of the field. The crack of the bamboo stick hitting the hard plastic echoed through my ears as I watched the ball sail between the upright goal posts on the endline.
Another goal for my team.
My teammates congratulated me as we cantered our horses back to the center of the field.
After each goal was scored, the seven-and-a-half-minute clock didn’t stop.
The teams were required to rush back to the center of the field by the time the umpire blew the whistle and rolled the ball back into play.
If the ball wasn’t in play by the warning horn blasted thirty seconds before the end of the chukker—polo’s term for a period in the game, usually there are four or six periods in each game—the chukker was over.
But since this was the last chukker of the game, we played out the last thirty seconds.
In this case, that warning horn was going to blow any second.
Our team was up by one point, and I intended to get an insurance goal, just in case the other team, Appleton Ridge, got fancy.
When the two teams lined up to face each other at centerfield, the umpire yelled, “Play!” and rolled the ball between us.
As the number four player, I was the last player the ball reached if no one else’s mallet stopped it.
I threw my mallet forward, swiped the ball from Esperanza Hernandez, a renowned female professional, and tapped the ball away from the crowd of players.
As I carried it down the field, a loud cheer came from the trailers—a voice I could only match to my fake wife, Maggie Hennicke.
An unfamiliar form of pride swelled in my chest that she tried her best to attend my games.
Since taking a job as an assistant polo instructor with the club three weeks ago, she was busy.
It meant something that she took time away from work to support me.
I was riding my best horse, Vegas, straight to the goal posts opposite the ones I had just scored between.
In outdoor polo, the teams switched sides each time someone scored to ensure no team had an unfair advantage.
Vegas galloped beneath me with a cadence that pumped up my adrenaline.
I fucking loved this game. My body was more fulfilled when dismounting a horse than at any other time.
My mind was clear. I was focused on one thing.
Winning.
I was a damn good player as a kid. I was an even better player in college. And now? I
was kicking ass in Golden Meadow and showing everyone what I was made of. Without anyone else’s help. Jack Hennicke was more than capable of doing it on his own.
The thunder of hooves from behind me caused the hair on the back of my neck to come up.
If the player guarding me took possession of the ball, he would still have enough time to score his team a goal, and it wasn’t happening on my watch.
I reached my mallet away from him to hit the ball at an angle, and shot it beneath Vegas’ neck and through the goal posts.
More cheers from my team erupted as I turned to shake hands with the members of both teams and the umpires, but they didn’t match the sound of Maggie’s hollering from the other end of the field. She may as well have been screaming, “That’s my husband!” and no one would have known the difference.
The woman I was coming to know better than ever pulled at my heart more than anyone had before, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was getting to know her as a person or because she was carrying our baby.
A baby who had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I needed to rush my trailer home so we could make it into town on time.
Maggie was nervous about meeting her obstetrician—I could tell by the way she clutched her hands against the kitchen counter when she told me about her appointment last week.
She wasn’t struggling with any pregnancy-related symptoms yet, at least she didn’t tell me if she was.
And I made sure to ask how she felt daily without fail.
When she came down to the barn after I unloaded my horses from this morning’s game—a game we won, seven to nine—unease coated her features. Her jaw tight, her eyes looking ahead instead of into mine, her hands grappling at her purse like it was a crystal glass that would shatter if it fell.
“Hey,” I reached a hand over the console to graze her arm. She shifted her gaze from the windshield to me. “I got you.”
Maggie nodded.
Admittedly, I hadn’t been to a doctor in years.
After my annual checkups came back positive year after year, I gave up on the concern that anything was wrong with me.
I was healthy, I ate right, my job was exercise—I figured if something was wrong with my body, it would tell me.
Which was why, when I opened the door to the doctor’s office, I was taken aback by the bright white, sterile environment. And a lot of pregnant women.
Maggie wasn’t showing—she was only ten weeks along—but the foreshadowing of what she would look like in the next few months made our situation feel entirely more real than half an hour ago.
The protruding bellies and pained posture made my legs heavy with empathy.
The photos of bare, pregnant stomachs on the wall made my own roll. This was real.
How the hell was I going to be a father at twenty-three years old?
I didn’t know the first thing about changing a diaper or feeding an infant. Or, well, would it all be up to Maggie? The feeding? How often did we feed the baby? How many times would they wake up in the middle of the night? What was this doctor going to say?
I placed my hand on Maggie’s lower back for comfort and my own.
She inhaled a sharp breath, her cascading waves shifting with the rise of her chest. Her lips tightened into what looked like a failed fake smile.
We sat in the waiting room after checking in with the medical receptionist, and just when I was ready to reassure my baby mama, a nurse called, “Maggie Rynne.”
It was a jolt to hear her maiden name—or, more like her real last name—after introducing herself as Maggie Hennicke to everyone at Golden Meadow. The reminder that it wasn’t her legal name pressed against my chest.
This was a real doctor’s office where she used her real name.
And this marriage was fake.
The nurse led us down a blinding white hallway and into an equally blinding exam room, where she guided Maggie to lie on the gynecology chair with a paper sheet drawn over it.
She questioned Maggie about her medical history, then asked me about mine.
When she asked about Maggie experiencing pregnancy symptoms, Maggie shook her head.
“I don’t think I have experienced any bad symptoms.”
Glancing at her, I asked, “Is insomnia a symptom that she would experience during pregnancy?”
The nurse nodded. “Absolutely. Insomnia is very common during pregnancy.” Her greying hair streaked through the tight bun at the back of her head, and her warm smile made everything a little easier to discuss.
Despite the hours of research I dug into about pregnancy the previous night, I still felt clueless sitting in this exam room.
“She isn’t sleeping the whole night,” I replied to the nurse.
Maggie’s eyes shot to mine. Like it was strange I knew she wasn’t sleeping all night.
But how could I not know? Her room was right across the hall from mine, and my door stayed cracked open during the night in case she needed anything.
Lying awake in the middle of my bed meant I heard her pacing at least twice a night.
“Are you feeling nauseous or pain in your legs?” The nurse asked Maggie.
“No. I think I am just really nervous about everything. We just moved here from Pennsylvania, and with the baby coming…it’s just a lot to get used to.”
Fuck . Hearing her stressed like this meant I wasn’t doing my job. At least, not enough. Her creased forehead and dark under eyes were proof of that.
“Pregnancy can be overwhelming, especially since this is your first time going through it.” The nurse leaned forward, comforting Maggie in a way I wasn’t sure I could achieve myself.
“The most important thing you can do when feeling stressed or afraid is to talk to your partner. Communicate what you are feeling and have a conversation about how you can allay your concerns.”
Maggie could have smirked at me. Could have shot the nurse’s words right at me in spite of the conversation we had in the kitchen a few weeks ago. When I told her she could come to me with her worries, but I wouldn’t do the same.
But she didn’t use them against me. She looked at me with more trust than I deserved. It made my chest ache and my throat dry. I didn’t like it, and I wanted her to look at me that way forever at the same time.
After too many seconds, she turned back to the nurse and nodded. “I can do that.”
Another thirty minutes passed. I left the room so she could change into a blue hospital gown.
The obstetrician performed a physical exam, and the nurse took her vitals.
She left the room once to do a urine test. I looked away as the nurse drew blood from her right arm.
The obstetrician talked to us about what Maggie would experience during the pregnancy, and I took notes in the small journal I had stuck in my pocket.
It was already full of information I researched last night, and after today’s appointment, I realized I might need one for each trimester.
“Okay,” Doctor Gaines clapped her gloved hands together and looked between us. “Are you ready to see your little fig?”
She was referring to the size of the baby as a fruit, which nearly me chuckle. At eleven weeks, the baby was supposedly the size of a fig. This baby meant so much more to me than a damn piece of fruit. I hadn’t even seen them yet, and their existence felt monumental.
Maggie bit her lip and looked at me, eyes skating back and forth between mine. “Are you ready?”
I wanted to shake my head. My erratic heartbeat thumped with doubt.
Thump. You can’t do this.
Thump. You’re too young .
Thump. You’re not ready .
But the fear in Maggie’s eyes was a gut-punch of a reality check: it didn’t matter if I was ready. I had a child. I promised I would be there. I was doing this.
“I am ready.”
Doctor Gaines spent a few minutes adjusting the screen next to Maggie and inserting a wand beneath her hospital gown after asking for her consent.
Maggie inhaled sharply, and I reached for her.
One small, cold hand in a large, rough hand.
She looked to me for reassurance and, despite the rocket bouncing from my stomach to my chest, I offered the most certainty I could muster.
My lips tipped up, and the television on the wall in front of us began moving.
I watched the screen with intent, my breath still unable to catch.
It was happening. We were about to see our baby for the first time.
Grainy black and gray blobs shifted on the screen, further confirming that I had no fucking idea how to do this. I couldn’t even tell what I was looking at.
“Okay, here we go,” Doctor Gaines piped.
What looked like a bean popped up between the blurred movements.
Then the screen zoomed onto the object. The bean turned into a circle next to an oval shape.
If I squinted, I could try to make out body parts, but I wasn’t so sure.
“So, this right here,” she zoomed the frame toward the left side of the screen, “...is baby’s head. ”
I gripped Maggie’s hand tighter.
“We can see the brain developing here. That looks good. And if you look closely, do you see the movement there in the chest? That’s the baby’s heartbeat.”
My throat dried again. Holy shit . The heartbeat.
Right there before me was my little baby’s heart beating on the television screen.
I wondered if it was pounding as quickly as mine.
Of course, they didn’t know their parents were looking at them for the first time.
They were just lying there in their mother’s belly and having no idea the effects they had on Maggie and me.
Having no idea that my life was changing before my eyes.
Right there before me, my entire world shifted. Polo dropped off the face of the earth. Other women were gone. Alcohol and my mother and overthinking everything…they phased into the distance for that one moment. Everything from here on out was about Maggie and this baby.
I fucking wanted to be a dad. I wanted a little girl who looked just like her mother. I wanted to be the man my girls looked to for everything. I wanted to be their everything.
“The heartbeat,” I repeated hoarsely. I wanted to look at Maggie, but…our baby was right there on the screen. How could I look away? “Can we hear it?”
I felt Maggie turn to me, rubbing her thumb over my hand. “Yes, can we hear the heartbeat?”
“Of course.”
A few seconds and clicks later, a track of sound waves appeared on the screen, and audio came into earshot. Muffled noises emerged, sounding a bit like wind through a telephone speaker. Rumpled and distant, but right here .
My heart thumped in my chest as I listened to the baby I helped create—the baby Maggie and I made in the back of that gift shop all those months ago.
It threatened everything I thought I loved, everything I thought I knew about life, and shoved it beneath a steel-toed boot.
Whatever felt important before was monumentally inferior to this .
Our baby’s heartbeat.
For the first time, I heard it.
I looked at Maggie, and she looked at me.
I didn’t think there was another sound I ever wanted to hear again.