Chapter Forty-Four
Sophia
The pregnancy test sat between us on the counter while the timer on my phone ticked down from five minutes.
I felt a crushing sadness at the realization that my mother had been in the same position when she was my age.
Only, she’d been alone, absolutely alone, when she’d taken test after test to confirm she was pregnant with me.
A sob escaped before I even realized I was crying, and Leo wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. “I don’t want to do this alone,” I said between sobs.
“Oh, baby,” Leo said, squeezing me tighter. “I’ll never let you be alone.”
“Even if I stay here, you’ll be traveling all the time and I won’t have my family,” I said.
“My family is here, Hawaii,” he said, pulling back to wipe my tears with his thumbs. “They’d be here with you every second if that’s what you wanted. But if you want to be with your family, I’ll go to Oahu with you, Soph. Hockey isn’t my only option. I got a degree for a reason.”
“But hockey is your life,” I said, staring into his blue-gray eyes.
“I still don’t think you understand how much I love you,” he said, shaking his head sadly and placing a hand on my stomach. “If you’re growing my baby in here, then the two of you are my life. You’ll always come first.”
“You can’t give up hockey for me,” I said again, bringing us back to the same impasse we’d started with. “I’d be happy here.”
“I’m not going to be the thing that takes you from your family. Not when you need them most,” he said.
“You’ve been working toward this dream since you were a little boy, Leo. I won’t let me or our baby be the reason you don’t get that. You deserve to live your dream. You deserve everything.”
He hung his head and his voice cracked. “I’m not getting everything if I don’t have you.”
The chime of the timer startled me out of the moment, and I turned to look at the test on the counter. Disappointment and sorrow washed over me and I collapsed against Leo’s chest, dissolving into a puddle of tears again as he held me tight to his chest, crying nearly as hard as I was.
I’d never expected to be so disappointed at the words not pregnant.