38. Too Pretty To Fight
CHAPTER
TOO PRETTY TO FIGHT
ADAM
I’m an emotional hockey player.
I think it comes with the territory of being a goalie.
Losses are hard, and I’ve always found it hard not to lay blame on my shoulders.
Even worse, when something’s going on in my personal life—like, say, finding my long-term girlfriend riding her side piece in our bed—it distracts me.
My thoughts are elsewhere, and sometimes that leads to careless mistakes.
Not tonight, though. Because tonight I’m not broken.
I’m fucking furious.
Tampa’s left-winger races down the boards, around our exhausted defenseman. Jaxon took a careless penalty a minute ago—the result of someone chirping in his ear—so we’re down one man, and I’ve been throwing myself all over this net to stop the countless shots.
Tampa’s captain soars across the blue line, into our defensive zone, calling for the puck.
The winger sends it across, right through the legs of my defenseman, and the captain winds up, firing the puck at me at lightning speed.
I dive to the right, my glove coming up right on time to catch the puck before it can hit the back of my net.
The whistle blows, I drop the puck in the ref’s hand, and grab a drink of water as our lines change.
“Jesus fuck,” Carter mutters, clapping a hand to my head as he circles my crease.
“You’re not letting a single thing by you tonight.”
“Nope.”
He gives me an assessing once-over. “You okay?”
“Nope.”
I haven’t seen Rosie in forty-eight hours, and aside from a couple texts, we haven’t had the chance to talk. She worked all day yesterday, had twelve hours of clinical today, and she’s been driving herself up the wall studying for the NAVLE, her veterinarian licensing exam in January.
As I look around this arena, all I see are ways I’ve added to her stress.
Where do I send my application for baby mama #3?
I’ll let you shoot ’n’ score how can I ask her to stick with me through a second, this one way messier than the first?
My head whips up as the door opens behind me, my friends strolling in mid-conversation, arms filled with bags.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the bar?”
Carter unloads piles of take-out containers. “You said you weren’t in the mood, so we’re staying in with you.” He hands me a mountain of deep-fried pickles. “You have to stop looking like that.”
“Like what?”
Garrett drops a box of Fruit Roll-Ups on top of my pickles. “Like this entire shitstorm is your fault.”
“It is,” I say simply.
Carter shakes his head. “You know, this feels entirely too reminiscent of that night you came home to Courtney cheating. Back then, you wondered if it was your fault. If you could’ve loved her better, given her more of what she needed.
But it’s the same story now as it was then.
You couldn’t have prevented this. Whether you answered her phone calls or went to that meeting.
She wants something from you, whether it’s a dad for her son or money to support herself. ”
Jaxon cracks the top off a beer and hands it to me. “She wants both, and she thinks you’re nice enough to accept your fate without questioning it.”
Emmett takes my treats and sets them on the small table in the corner. I shake my head, squeezing it between my hands as I sink to the chair there.
“That’s not my baby. No fucking way. I know I was drunk. I know I don’t have the best memory of some pieces of the night, but…there’s no way I would sleep with her. There’s nothing she could ever say that would make me second-guess our relationship status, no matter how many drinks I had.”
Honestly, it makes me sick to my stomach to think that she was in my bed at some point that night, even if it was only to take a picture.
My phone rings, my publicist, Angie, on the other line.
I accept the call and put it on speaker as I tear open the box of Fruit Roll-Ups and peel one apart.
“Any news?” I close my eyes, press my fingers against the headache pounding there as I wad the Fruit Roll-Up into a ball and toss it in my mouth. “Sorry. Hi. How are you?”
She chuckles. “There’s no room for pleasantries right now; I get it. I made a fake Instagram account and followed Courtney. Looks like she’s been seeing the same guy off and on since you two split. But there are no pictures of them together after June.”
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do, hope sparks in my chest.
“I think she was already pregnant at your party, Adam. My best guess is this guy bailed on her when she told him, so she came to your party hoping you’d sleep with her.”
“So she could pretend it was mine.”
“Bingo.”
Carter shakes his head and drops an entire slice of pizza in his mouth. “I saw this on Maury once.”
“That’s literally
what Maury’s about,” Emmett tells him.
“Yeah,” Garrett whispers. “Keep up, you donkey.”
“Shut up
,” Carter whispers back, and I slap his hand away when he reaches for one of my Fruit Roll-Ups.
“What should I do?”
“Guess you just gotta wait and do a paternity test when the baby is born,” Emmett suggests.
“No way.” Jaxon jabs at the table. “Demand that shit now. There are tests they can do before.”
“I don’t even want to know why
you know that, Jaxon,” Angie says with a sigh. “The boys are right, though, Adam. You have two options. You can see how much money she wants to go away, or—”
“Fuck that.” Sure, I can afford to pay her off, but I have a thousand better ways to spend that money.
The summer camp I’m opening next year, Connor’s education, a garden full of peonies in the backyard, and an engagement ring that Rosie never wants to take off her finger, to name a few. “She’s not getting a cent.”
“ Or
,” Angie continues, “you request a paternity test. This all goes away one or another. I know it feels so much more complicated than this, but really, it’s that simple.”
She’s right about one thing: nothing about this feels simple. It’s a game of waiting, and I’ve done enough waiting in my life.
Life started the moment Rosie and Connor walked into it, and all I want to do is dive headfirst into the rest of it.
I should’ve never been put in a position where I had to forget how to love myself, how to be proud of everything that makes me who I am, but it took finding them, letting them love me, to remember how.
And I won’t let Courtney steal that from me all over again.
“What’s he doing?” Garrett whispers.
“I don’t know,” Jaxon murmurs. “That’s, like, his fifth Fruit Roll-Up.”
“I don’t think he even realizes he’s been eating them this entire time,” Emmett adds.
“I’m worried about him,” Carter says quietly. “He’s not even doing the tongue tattoos. He’s just…eating them whole.”
I stick my hand in the box, frowning when I come up empty. “Did you get me more than one box?”
Without breaking eye contact, Garrett slowly slides another box across the table. “So, hey, big guy, we were thinking—”
“Emmett, get Cara on the phone. I need her advice.”
He leaps from his seat, dashing across the room to grab his phone. “She’s been preparing for this her entire life.”
* * *
It’s nearly one a.m. when I’m walking up my driveway two days later, desperate to crawl into bed after our road trip. It’s been too many days of missed calls, pictures sent from different time zones, and overanalyzing toneless text messages.
I miss Rosie so goddamn much, my alarm is already set for six a.m. so I can drive myself to Starbucks, fill up on everything that makes her warm and smiley, and show up at her door before she takes herself to school.
If it wasn’t the middle of the night, I’d be at her door right now, begging to come in.
I fiddle with my keys at the front door, pausing when the porch light flicks on. The door opens, and Rosie stands there in nothing but my T-shirt and my thickest socks, and Jesus fuck, I’ve never been so happy to see pink.
“You’re here.”
“Where else would I be?”
My stomach dips, the weight on my shoulders easing. “You’re not going anywhere?”
“Why would we do that? Connor and I were a family before we found you, sure, but now…” She shakes her head, eyes shuttering at the thought of a future she doesn’t want, the same one I don’t want: one without each other. “Something would always be missing without you, Adam.”
She takes my hands, pulling me into the warmth of the house, the warmth radiating off her. Gentle fingers brush my curls off my forehead, and a tender smile touches her lips.
“We don’t only choose you when it’s convenient and easy and happy. We choose you through all the hard, challenging moments in between. That’s how families love each other, Adam. And Connor and me? We’ll always be by your side.”
She swipes at the lone tear running down my cheek before pressing her lips to mine.
“There’s no better view than right here beside you.”