Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jason
I had no idea why I was here.
Okay, I had a scintilla of one. A smidgen. A soupcon. A … fuck, my brain was showing off, trying to impress a woman who didn’t want to know.
“So, how does this work again?” I eyed the iPhone camera setup on the tripod. Connie was adjusting it, then checking the second camera setup, all focused on the sofa and armchair combo in his parents’ basement. Apparently, we were making a podcast.
This held zero interest for me, but Hatch had dragged me here after I refused his offer for drinks at the Empty Net for a fourth time. Or maybe a fifth. Basically, for the last month, I didn’t feel like hanging with my teammates or my family because I was still mad about the doc’s high-handedness.
Now we were on the league’s mandated holiday break, after a great start to the season—20-8—and I needed to make an effort to be sociable with my family.
“It goes like this,” Conor said. “One of us reads an AITD post—”
“A what?”
“Am I the Dick?” Hatch said. “It’s where the internet goes to solicit the judgment of their peers on thorny moral, ethical, and relationship issues.”
“Then we discuss.” Conor finished his tweaking. “I’ve been doing this with my Motors teammates, and the fans love it.”
He took a seat and opened another phone. How many phones did the kid have?
“You okay?” Hatch asked me.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shared a glance with his brother. “Because of that response, right there. You’ve been a bear for the last month. I had kind of assumed that once you got laid, you’d be cuddly Uncle Jason again. Is there a woman problem?”
“Not everything is about women. Just because you’re all loved up and you—” I pointed at Conor. “Have more fan girls than you know what to do with, does not mean that everyone’s got similar problems.”
“Sounds like a woman,” Conor said slyly. “Tell us all about it, Uncle J. We could even record it, get the fans’ opinions.”
“Do not press record. There’s nothing to tell. It’s just a compatibility issue.”
My youngest nephew nodded solemnly. “In the bedroom?”
“No, not in the bedroom!” I caught the eye of a grinning Hatchling. “The bedroom is not a problem. Far from it. We’re just not on the same wavelength outside it.”
We still checked in with daily texts.
How are you feeling?
Fine. Great game!
Anything you need?
Not right now. Sorry for the loss.
The small talk was killing me.
I was still annoyed, but I also recognized that she was her own person.
She had always done it her way, and I’d muscled my way into her life—and uterus—and she was rebelling against that intrusion.
But spending a good chunk of her pregnancy in a different city, away from her family?
Away from the father of her child? Such unilateral thinking did not square with the cooperation I expected during this momentous time.
Conor narrowed his eyes. “Is this someone we know?”
“Nope.” But they would soon enough. Unless …
Franky could keep her pregnancy a secret in Boston, if she wanted to. She wouldn’t have to breathe a word of it to anyone. Sean was so clueless he probably wouldn’t even realize she was pregnant until she went into labor.
That couldn’t be her game, could it?
Even more irked than when I’d come into this stupid basement, I muttered, “Let’s get this shit over with.”
“Hey, it’s Jason.”
Intercom static crackled back, then a cheerfully surprised, “Oh, hi. Come on up.”
I headed up the stairs, wondering if these steps were safe for pregnant women, then dismissing it as yet another example of my patriarchal thinking. Hell, I was running arguments in my head on behalf of the doc!
After Conor’s podcast, I’d come to a decision. I needed to be the bigger person here, and as it was the season of goodwill toward my fellow men—and women—this gave me the perfect opportunity to offer an olive branch.
She stood at the door to her apartment, her hair in that ballyhoo topknot, her glasses slightly crooked, wearing leggings and an oversized green knit sweater open against a white V-neck T-shirt. Her middle had thickened slightly, though maybe I only noticed because I knew.
“Merry Christmas, Francesca.”
“Merry Christmas.” It might have been my imagination that her voice trembled. “I didn’t expect you.”
“I figured I’d take a chance and surprise you. Rosie mentioned that you were heading over to her dads’ place for Christmas lunch later, so I thought I’d catch you before you left.” I held up a shopping bag. “Plus, I brought gifts. Ho fucking ho.”
Smiling tentatively, she stood back to let me in. “Well, if there are gifts involved.”
It had been a month since I’d seen her. Touched her. Smelled her hair. I had hoped that being in her orbit again would arouse general feelings of affection and friendliness. Maybe a tepid warmth at seeing her body developing with the baby we had made.
What I had not hoped for was a thickening of my cock and a kick of lust so savage I was having a hard time keeping my hands to myself.
The cat hissed at me the second I crossed the threshold. Little shit knew my game.
“Happy holidays to you, Bunny Boy.”
She shut the door. “Can I take your coat?”
“Sure, I won’t stay long. I know you’re busy.” I hung my coat on the hook behind the door.
“Come sit. I’ve been wrapping gifts for everyone and I’m way behind.”
“I can help.”
“That would be great. Eggnog?”
“Sure. With nutmeg?”
“Of course. We’re not heathens.”
I settled on the floor before assorted boxes and wrapping paper, hoping the discomfort would refocus the blood surge to my groin.
While she puttered in the kitchen, I took it all in.
The place was cozy and festive, Christmas tree dressed to the nines, Nat King Cole crooning about chestnuts roasting.
It reminded me of how I grew up, only that was a lie.
Dad had already abandoned one kid and was faking it with us.
He had a girlfriend in the burbs and while Mom took him back that first time, I had already checked out.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this family business. I tried to take my cues from Theo, the best dad I knew, but was that enough? Was I trying to force this, make a family where none existed?
Franky placed a couple of glasses of nutmeg-dusted eggnog on the coffee table and took a seat. “I’m glad you came over.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not happy with how things went the last time.”
“Well, why would you be? I was a jerk. I’m not used to such strong-willed women. Well, I am. My mother. My family. Lauren. The Chase sisters.”
“But not the women you impregnate?”
The sass was strong with this one.
“Or date. Not that we’re dating, but I guess the dynamic isn’t far off. You occupy that space in my head and I’m used to the women I date—or potentially impregnate—listening to what I have to say.”
“Probably because you tend to date women who have barely graduated—”
“Uh huh.”
“College,” she said with a grin.
“I do like ’em educated.”
“Sure, yet you don’t like when they talk back. Or decide they have lives independently of you. Or make their own choices.”
I leaned back against the sofa. “I’m not saying I was wrong—I should have some input here—but I did probably go about it in a less-than-subtle fashion.”
“And I should take some responsibility. I blindsided you. I could have been gentler about it.” She looked like she wanted to say something else but held back at the last moment.
I reached for her hand. “I’m just worried about you both.”
She squeezed back. “I know, but I will be okay, and I’ll see you when you come to Boston to play. Now drink your eggnog and tell me how you’ve been.”
It was as easy as that. I filled her in on my travel, the games, Conor’s stupid podcast, or “dick-cast” as I’d labeled it, which had her chuckling. She told me about the hoops she had to jump through to get her article funded, the office Christmas party from hell, and how different her body felt.
“It’s almost ten weeks,” she said. “I can’t believe how the time has flown.”
It hadn’t for me. The last month had been excruciating.
“So, I have an appointment with the OB on January third. I checked your playing schedule—”
“You want me there?”
She looked shy. “Only if you’d like to be.”
“No place I’d rather be.”
She smiled, sniffed a little, and picked up her eggnog. “I’m kind of hormonal. And I really need to finish wrapping these presents.”
“Speaking of …” I placed the shopping bag I’d brought in front of her.
She pulled out the packages and as expected, read the gift cards for each one. “You got something for my cats.” A gentle awe touched her voice.
“I doubt they got anything for me, but I didn’t want to leave them out.”
She opened that one first, revealing a couple of salmon-colored plushies. “It’s a brain,” she said.
“And a set of lungs. I thought they might like something with a science theme to it. They have strings, so they can play with them. And most importantly, learn.”
Her cheeks turned pink, a watercolor bloom.
“I think they’re going to love them.” She lay the brain in front of Bunsen on the sofa, who regarded it with suspicion.
The lungs, she placed on the floor. A couple of seconds later, an orange paw emerged from under the sofa and snatched at the gift. (Narrator: It was never seen again.)
“Success. Open this one next.” I handed a wrapped box to her.
“The card says ‘Super Kid.’ I worry you’re setting our child up for too-high expectations with a nickname like that.”
Our child. “That’s just what I’m calling the kid while in Hotel Utero. When he or she checks out, I’ll come up with another nickname, after I’ve figured out their personality.”
She opened the wrapping paper carefully, not like me who would always tear into my wrapped gifts. Flipping the lid of the box, her hand flew to her chest. “Jason.”
“I figured you’re almost at the three-month mark, so it’s safe to go a little crazy.”
The box was filled with cute clothes, onesies and little tees and adorable pants. The day after she told me she was pregnant, I bought them in a baby store in Roscoe Village, but I couldn’t gift them to her until now. It would be tempting fate.
She held up a T-shirt, my favorite one. It had a snail and the words “Little Trailblazer.” With her grave expression, I wondered if I had upset her.
“There’s some Rebels gear in there,” I said, filling the silence. “You know, Theo still gets a cut because he promotes them on Insta. He was the first player to do a Rebels baby gear tie-in after Hatch was born.”
She fingered the fabric of a Rebels onesie, the cutest fucking thing you ever saw.
And promptly burst into tears.