Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
R en
“Ren! Are you okay?” Trix stands over me, fanning my face with her hat. “Did you faint? Oh my God.”
“Um…”
I didn’t faint. My head started to spin a little when I heard a set of words that sent the blood whooshing to my ears, such that it blocked out the rest of the world. Maybe I wobbled a little bit, and maybe these lounge chairs are old and a little rickety. So…I tipped over.
I did not fucking faint.
Okay, maybe I fainted.
Trix continues fanning me until I push myself up with one arm and flop back onto the lounge chair. Then I raise a hand to indicate I’m fine. She waits for a moment, maybe making sure I’m steady, before going back to her chair.
I have thoughts, lots of thoughts—all overlapping and spinning around in my head. Then the thoughts disappear, and I’m left with only words. Or, well, syllables. Specifically, Wha…um, how…are you…I…
Then, I produce a blank stare.
Trix meets my stare with her own, forehead creased with concern. I can do nothing to alleviate it for her because I only have more nonsensical syllables, if that. “I just…what…?” For the first time, I see a glimmer of the woman I’ve been obsessing over for the past several weeks. Her pale blue eyes flash with amusement, and her lips edge up into a smile. Then she starts laughing, quietly at first, with her hand covering her mouth. The only indication I have that it’s laughter is that her body starts trembling.
She removes her hand and begins laughing more in earnest.
“Are you…is this a joke? You’re kidding?” I clear my throat and try to get on board with her weird humor, but my heart’s still pounding from what she said moments earlier.
“No.” She shakes her head, the laughter receding. “I’m sorry. I’m not joking, and I shouldn’t be laughing. It happens when I get stressed, and this has been…let’s just say it’s been kinda stressful finding out about this, let alone thinking about telling you.”
“But we used a condom.”
“I know, but I told you it was old, if you recall.” I do recall. Mostly, I recall the sweet taste of her skin and how good it felt to slide inside her. To hell with a condom that may not have been up to the challenge. And now I want to kick myself for giving reason a recess.
“How old?”
“What?” She looks bewildered even though she’s the one who said it.
“The condom. How old?”
She grimaces. “Um, I dunno. A few years, maybe?”
“A few years ?! So you’re…this is…” I still can’t form full sentences.
“I am. This is. It’s true, and you’re the dad.” Thank God she can understand my gibberish because I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do better with the English language.
“Do you…have morning sickness? Are you eating enough? Getting some rest? Can I…hug you?”
She nods. “You can hug me. I won’t break.”
Gingerly, I reach for her as I slide onto the lounge beside her. When I envelop her in my arms, she folds into me, and I realize how hard this must have been for her to carry around.
“Okay, so…” I spread my hands wide to indicate just how clueless I am about how to proceed.
“So that’s all the information I have,” she says, nodding from side to side. “For the most part.”
I have no idea what she means by that, and I don’t have the verbal faculties to ask. My only hope is that she’ll continue talking, and some of it will make sense to my brain.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Um, well…I’ve thought about it a lot and…look, I’m thirty with no relationship on the horizon, and that’s fine. I don’t need to be in a relationship. Right now, it’s the last thing I need complicating my life. But I do know that I want to do this. I want to have this baby. I want to be a mom.” She flinches when she says the word mom , and it’s the first moment that I feel the air I’ve been holding in my lungs start to seep away.
This tiny sign of her own unease with the situation softens the impact of everything she’s just told me. Now, it feels like we’re in this—whatever this turns out to be—together.
Her forehead creases as she watches me sit here wordless with confusion and indecision. Seeing the tiny cracks in her forward-charging demeanor charms me, this softer side of her personality that isn’t wholly comfortable with the unknown. “Okay, good that you know that,” I manage. “You’ll be a great mom.” Just watching her light up with my dog shows me how much love she has to give. She gives me a small smile.
“Thank you. And you can be as involved as you want, but there’s no obligation at all. I just want you to know that. No pressure. I don’t want you to feel weird about this.”
Now, it’s my turn to laugh. “Oh, well, good. Because if you wanted me to feel weird, you’d have to lead with something much more shocking than, ‘Hi, Ren. You’re about to become a dad.’” Once I start laughing, it’s a tiny acorn with the will to reach the sky as a full-on oak. I can’t fucking stop.
Trix does the only thing she can—she watches me lose my ever-loving mind and waits for me to finish. But I can’t. I tip my head back as my laughter roars out of me, and I welcome it because it actually feels good. For once, I feel grateful for life’s sense of humor because I couldn’t have dreamed this one up if I’d tried. What the fucking hell? More laughter wracks my body until I’m short of breath.
Finally, I draw in a huge lungful of air and start to calm down. I’m sweating, so I take a long swig of lemonade, feeling the burn of the bubbles on my throat, and turn to Trix. Now I understand why she couldn’t meet my eye earlier.
“Are you okay?”
“Am I? I dunno. It’s insane, really. The year I finally make team captain and stand at the helm of the worst hockey mess of my career, I’m about to become the baby dad for a woman who likes my dog more than she likes me.”
“Yeah, not the best timing over here, either. But…” She shrugs. “Here we are.”
I reach for her hand and interlace our fingers. “So we are.”
We sit like that for a while, each of us letting our thoughts percolate individually. After a while, Trix squeezes my hand and lets it go, swiveling around to sit up and face me. “Look, I know you didn’t want to be with me, so you obviously never pictured me as the mom of your future child. I have no expectations of you. No pressure. I just wanted to give you all the information.”
Her words send a surge of bile into my throat. She has no idea how hard it was for me to leave her. Of course she doesn’t. I never gave her a glimpse. And now she has no expectations of me.
“When did you find out?” It’s not the right question or even the right response to what she’s just told me, but I’m having trouble putting my thoughts in any kind of order.
“About ten days ago. I went to the doctor on Monday.” I calculate the days since our hookup and start counting. She completes my thought. “I’m almost seven weeks along.”
“Seven weeks ?”
She shakes her head. “Well, six and a half. It’s weird pregnancy math. It starts at the date of ovulation, so when the baby is conceived, I’d already be two weeks pregnant, which is how it all adds up to forty weeks, which is really ten months, not nine.” She waves a hand. “It’s a whole thing. Bottom line is I haven’t even seen a heartbeat. It’s too soon. So I’m going back in next week.”
“Can I go with you?” The words leave my mouth so quickly that I react with surprise, like I’m hearing them for the first time. Then I double down. “If it’s not too weird for you, I’d like to be there when you hear the heartbeat.”
Trix looks startled, eyebrows rising as her mouth drops open. Then she nods. “Yes, sure. If you want.”
“I do. I mean, I think I do. Yes. Yes, I do.”
I don’t know much about anything else, but this I know for sure—if she’s going to the doctor to hear the heartbeat of a baby that’s mine, I want to be there. I want to hear it too.
“Okay, then. I’ll try to reschedule it for this week.”
“That would be great. I have training every day, but I’ll work something out to leave early.” I have no idea if that’s a possibility. In the ten years I’ve played professional hockey, I’ve never asked a coach to let me miss practice or leave early.
But now, I can see the urges creeping in. I want to spend more time with Trix. I’ve wanted that from the minute she left my house. I feel all the old fears creeping in, the way my feelings for her in college spurred some impulsive decisions, missing practices to spend time with her, and almost losing my offer because I was distracted by thoughts of her when I was on the ice. My talent pulled me through, but what if it’s not enough now when the team needs my attention?
I close my eyes for a moment to block out the bright, insistent sun that makes me feel like I’m in a spotlight. One thought rises to the surface amid the chaos—I came here hoping to reconnect with Trix.
If I’m going to get her to see me as anything more than an unreliable heartbreaker, I need to clear the air. The timing’s all wrong—I’d hoped to get to know her better and prove to her that I’m a different guy now—but I don’t have the luxury of choosing my timing.
“Trix…I want to explain why I did what I did back then.”
“We don’t need to…” She puts up a hand as if to stop me, but it drops into her lap. “Yeah, okay. I guess I’d like to know, especially if it’s stuff besides you just not wanting to be with me. Maybe it will help me get over this edgy feeling I have when I’m around you.”
As if to prove it, she shifts a few inches farther away from me. I hate that she feels that way, but I need to own the actions that led us here.
Nodding, I stand up and start pacing. Every nervous habit comes out at once—shoving my hand through my hair, tapping my thigh, stroking my non-existent beard.
“It was never about not wanting to be with you. If anything, it was the opposite. I wanted you too much, and that was going to be a problem when I went pro. I was…very distracted by you and willing to let that derail me. I was heading down a road where I thought I’d sabotage my shot at a pro career, and I didn’t even fucking care. I needed a clean break, or I was never going to manage. I’m sorry I didn’t explain it back then, but I didn’t have the right words, and it was easier just to bail. Doesn’t make it right, but that’s what it was. ”
She frowns. “I would’ve understood. I could’ve helped you stay on track. You didn’t even give me a chance.”
“I know you would have. But that was part of the problem, too.” I choose my words carefully because I don’t want to hurt her even more, but she needs to understand what I saw. “You were willing to give up way too much of yourself for me.”
Blinking hard, she shakes her head. “I loved you. That’s what people do.”
I nod. “That’s just it. You were willing to give up everything for me and my future. What about your future?”
Her mouth drops open, and I see the readiness to blurt a response, but then she swallows hard. “I thought you were my future.” Her voice is quiet, vulnerable. Her features soften, and I see the twenty-year-old woman who was far less sure of herself than the one sitting next to me now.
“And look at you now.”
“Trix, I’m so sorry I hurt you, but I couldn’t let you give up your life for mine, especially when I knew it would take one hundred percent of my focus, and I didn’t know what I’d have left for you in return.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that? I always thought it was me, that I wasn’t enough.”
“Because I was bad with emotions and worse with words. So I just looked forward. I convinced myself I was doing right by you in letting you go, so you could find your potential and crush it.” Her jaw slackens again, and I can’t tell if she’s fully understanding me, so I clarify. “And you did. I’m…in awe, frankly.”
I watch her face for signs she accepts my explanation. Trix stares at me, blinking softly. Finally, she nods.
“I never saw it that way, but I guess…maybe I was willing to sacrifice too much.” Her words are halting, and she grimaces.
“Hey.” I put a hand on her knee, grateful that she doesn’t flinch or pull away. “I loved you for all of it. And for what it’s worth, a part of me always hoped to find my way back to you.”