Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
AIDAN
“No fucking way,” Colt says with a laugh when Walsh tells us that his wife, Marissa, is pregnant again. “I bet it’s a girl. God, Walshy, you dealing with four girls under six would be the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It is another girl. But, there’s more,” Walsh says, his voice grim.
McCabe, Colt, and I look at him, all traces of laughter gone.
Around us, The Neon Cactus is hopping, but the mood at our table is suddenly somber.
“She’s almost five months along, but we didn’t know she was pregnant until a few weeks ago because she has an IUD and not having a period is a fairly typical response. ”
“So . . . how’d she get pregnant, then?” McCabe asks.
“That’s the thing. Somehow, the IUD perforated her uterine wall.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I say. “So . . . where is it?”
“Right now it’s just kind of hanging out outside her uterus, but there are so many possible complications.
” Walsh swallows, and I can tell by the way his eyes water and his nose gets red that he’s pushing down a lot of emotions right now.
“There’s a risk it might puncture another organ or cause an infection that could lead to pelvic inflammatory disease.
It also results in a higher risk of miscarriage or premature delivery. ”
Patrick and Marissa Walsh are a Boston institution, beloved by the fans and near royalty in this city that loves its sports teams. He’s never played anywhere else,and has always said he’s retiring with a Rebels jersey on.
They’re the most happily married couple I’ve ever known, and are currently raising three beautiful little girls together.
They don’t deserve this . . . not that anyone does.
“Shit, man,” Colt says. “What can they do to minimize those risks? Can they take the IUD out?”
“Not without risking her losing the baby.”
“What about Marissa?” I ask. “Doesn’t leaving the IUD in risk her health?”
Walsh closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before he opens them again. “Yeah. Exactly. It’s a no-win situation.”
“So what are the doctors recommending?” McCabe asks.
Walsh looks away and then lifts his margarita to his lips and takes a sip.
“We wait and see. She gets monitored frequently, and if anything gets worse, they’ll have to do emergency surgery and remove it.
They’d like to avoid that scenario until she’s far enough along that the baby could survive because they’d have to deliver during the surgery, but we don’t know what will happen.
Especially as the baby grows and pushes things around in there. ”
We all sit there for a moment, trying to absorb the risk to his wife and what this means for his family. They could lose the baby, or he could lose her, or possibly both.
There’s a lump rising in my own throat when I picture myself in his shoes.
Of course, the woman I’m picturing is Morgan, which is delusional, but also the most real fear I’ve ever felt.
I never thought I’d have feelings like this for someone again.
In fact, I did everything in my power to make sure it didn’t happen, yet somehow she slipped right through every wall I put up.
And the worst part is, the feelings I once had for Hayley don’t even compare to the feelings I have for Morgan.
But now I keep picturing this exact scenario playing out with her, and I can’t—literally can’t—imagine how I would survive another loss like that in my life.
“What can we do?” McCabe asks. “Is there any way we can help?”
“I need to talk to AJ and Wilcott about this. I don’t know if I might need to be home with her more.
I certainly will if anything goes wrong, so I just need to”—another gulp—“lay that groundwork.” Walsh sniffs and wipes at his eyes with the back of his knuckles.
“Maybe you can talk to the guys. I want them to know what’s happening, but I .
. . I can’t talk about it, obviously, without breaking down, and I don’t want to constantly be discussing it.
I’ll keep you guys posted if there are any developments, but I don’t want this to be part of our locker room discussion.
It’s hard enough at home right now . . .
playing with my girls and trying to imagine what life would be like without Marissa.
” He sniffs again, then clears his throat.
“I need hockey to be the place I go to not have to think about that possibility.”
Using hockey as an escape from worry and grief is something I understand all too well.
“Yeah, of course,” Colt says. “We’ll let them know what’s going on.”
“And ask them not to talk about it,” I add.
I remember how the only thing harder than losing my dad was everyone constantly asking me if I was okay, and how my mom was doing without him.
I know they meant well, but I was just trying to hold my shit together, and constantly being reminded of my dad’s overdose didn’t help
I imagine the same is true for Walsh. He knows what the risks are, and until they’re able to safely deliver the baby and remove the IUD, he’s always going to be worried. Asking him for updates constantly will only exacerbate that anxiety.
“All right, I’m going to get home,” Walsh says. “I’m probably going to spend as much time as possible there for the foreseeable future. So you likely won’t see me around much outside of the rink and road trips.”
After he leaves, we all sit there a bit shell-shocked.
“I can’t even imagine what he’s going through right now,” Colt says.
“Yeah, me neither,” McCabe says.
They look at me, like they’re waiting for me to chime in. But I just shrug, because how do I tell them that I can imagine it, because I lived it.
My college girlfriend, Hayley, was pregnant when I found out I was being called up to the NHL.
And by the time I left two weeks later, not only had she lost the baby, but I’d lost her.
In the end, she elected to stay at school so she could have a typical “senior experience” the following year, because without the pregnancy, I wasn’t enough of a reason for her to uproot her life.
I’d gone from having a girlfriend I planned to marry and a baby on the way, to living by myself in an apartment in a new city and playing with guys I barely knew.
If a contract renewal with the Rebels doesn’t materialize this year, or if I get into a relationship with Morgan and things don’t work out, I could easily be in a similar situation at the beginning of next season.
And there’s no way I can ever go through that again.
Iglance at my phone as I turn the corner from Arlington Street, at the edge of the Public Garden, and walk up Marlborough Street.
The bare branches of the trees that line both sides of the street are lit from below by the streetlamps, and they sway slightly in the breeze like gray tentacles over the sidewalk.
It’s amazing how turning just one corner takes you away from a bustling part of the city and puts you on one of the quietest, most quintessentially Boston streets.
I guess that’s what you get at this price point.
A text from Morgan has come through, nearly three hours after I texted her.
Aidan
Are you alive?
NerdGirl
Thanks to you, yes. Are you home? I’m just about to your place.
I pause halfway up my block. Less than twelve hours after I last saw her, I already miss her like crazy, but I’m still processing everything I learned tonight about Walsh’s situation and working through the painful memories it dredged up.
It’s the kind of night where I need to be alone.
I start to type out a response telling her I won’t be home until later, then delete it because I hate lying to her. I stand there for a moment, thinking about what to say, when I hear her call my name.
My head snaps up, and through the low black wrought iron fencing that borders most people’s tiny front yards, I can see Morgan sitting on the front steps of my brownstone half a block away, one arm raised in a wave.
The temperature is cool and the breeze is light, but she has her jacket wrapped around her tightly like it’s winter. Her body has probably not fully recovered from what it just went through over the last two days.
Shit. I do want to see her, but I know my head’s not in a good place right now.
“Did you walk here?” I call out as I approach.
“No. I was out to dinner, so I had Lauren drop me off here when we were done.”
“Lauren Flynn?” Why would she have someone we work with drop her off at my house? Unless . . . ?
“Yeah, she knows,” Morgan says, clearly able to read my expression even in this low light.
“How?” It doesn’t really matter, but I’m curious if Morgan told her or if she figured it out.
“She already suspected,” Morgan says. “But I told her the truth about what was going on. And Eva Hartmann, and my cousin, Paige.”
My eyebrows lift slightly as I try to process my own jumbled thoughts. Telling her best friend and her cousins feels very much like launching a relationship. And no matter how much I already think of Morgan as mine, I know she can’t ever be.
“You’re not worried about your dad finding out?”
“Why would my closest friends gossip about me with my dad?” Her tone is dry and unamused. “Are you freaking out that I told people?”
“No, not freaking out,” I say cautiously. “Just trying to figure out why.”
“Because I needed advice.” She reaches her hand out like she doesn’t have the energy to stand and needs me to pull her up. Maybe she’s not as recovered as she thinks.
“Advice about what?” I ask, now eye to eye with her where she stands on the step.
“I wasn’t sure what to do about us. The thing is, Aidan, you want this to be casual but it’s not. Nothing about us together is casual aside from the fact that you don’t want a commitment.”
Tell her you’re not in a good position to have this conversation right now, I scream at myself in my head. But I know that she doesn’t deserve to be blocked out like that just because I’m a mess.
“Do you?” I ask, instead. I never envisioned her wanting an actual relationship with her stepbrother who is also one of her dad’s clients, no matter how she might feel about me.
“I think if I’ve learned anything through this whole experience,” she says, her voice quiet and sad, “it’s that I already know how to do casual, and it’s not what I want.”
That doesn’t really tell me how she feels about me.
“And the thing is,” she continues, “I know you don’t want a relationship. But I don’t want to be with someone who’s just with me to pass the time.”
“You know that’s not what this is for me.”
Her full lips flatten into a nearly straight line as she watches me, her eyes scanning my face like she’s looking for something. Whatever it is, she must not see it because her lips turn down at the corners for a moment.
“Do I? Then what is this between us?”
I want to tell her how I really feel. I want to suggest that we give it a try. But I can’t overcome my fear of her eventually deciding I’m not enough, or of something bad happening and me losing her.
And mixed into those fears in the back of my mind, I also can’t quite escape considering how her dad would react to this relationship, or what he might do in response.
After the last year without hockey in my life, I know I can’t do that again—not right now, anyway.
Plus, her dad is the only parent Morgan has a good relationship with, so I wouldn’t want to be the reason that there’s any kind of a wedge between them.
I gulp, and the words don’t come.
“That’s what I thought,” she says, tilting her chin up as she looks up at the streetlamps that line the picturesque street. Then she looks back at me. “I guess we’re at an impasse then.”
My chin falls to my chest, and it feels like the muscles of my heart all contract at once. I want to tell her she’s wrong, that I can be the person she needs me to be.
But I know in the end, one of us will get hurt. I’m not willing to hurt her, and I sure as hell don’t want her to hurt me, so maybe this is how it has to be?
“I want to be with you, Morgan,” I say, looking back up at her. “I just can’t be the person you need me to be.”
“You already are, that’s the sad part. Being with you is like being seen for the first time.
It’s being appreciated for who I am, not who I could be.
It’s unconditional acceptance and unequivocal support.
How do you give that to someone, and then still tell them you can’t be with them?
That you’re not right for them?” Her voice cracks with the question, and it breaks my heart wide open.
“You showed me what we could be, and now you’re letting your fear get in the way of the future.
And I’m not sure I can ever forgive you for that. ”
Before I can respond, she turns and walks away. And, idiot that I am, I stand there and watch her go.