Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jason
When I was pissed off, I ran. The lake path, the park, a track.
If it gave me a good stretch of road, I ate it up.
But it was kind of toasty out there and I didn’t want to run into any fans or paps, so here I was on the treadmill in the Rebels gym, hopeful for some alone time to marshal my spiraling thoughts.
Franky and I had reverted to our small talk method of communication. Just enough to ensure our contractual obligations were fulfilled, but not enough to have a real conversation about why we had fought.
I didn’t think I was wrong. I had told her that she was not what I originally had in mind for my baby’s mother. That I wanted a family and saw a chance to get it. That my feelings had changed and I wanted to make a go of it with her. Make it real.
Those were all facts. As a woman of logic, she was supposed to love the facts!
I had also told her I was pissed about her trying to take my kid to live in another city.
Hell, I just left Boston! And she was considering leaving everyone who loved her in Chicago and starting over solo?
Put her career before my chance to be a great dad all because there weren’t enough snails around the shores of Lake Michigan? That made no sense.
And that business with Everly—absolute bullshit.
I wasn’t going to lie and say that Everly getting married and pregnant so soon after we broke up didn’t hurt.
Maybe it had influenced my offer to father a child with Franky.
But that was where Everly’s influence ended.
As if she could hold a candle to the doc.
No other woman turned me on like Francesca did.
That brain, that mouth, that body—the pregnant and the not pregnant versions.
I loved her glasses and her messy hair and those full lips and the freckle on the nape of her neck.
I loved talking to her about her work and hockey and how brilliant our kid was going to be.
Was that the same thing as “being in love”?
I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care, because what we had worked.
The doc was acting like we weren’t compatible, and while I might have agreed in anger because she was being so damned difficult and opinionated about it all, I didn’t truly think that.
We were different, that was for sure. But incompatible? Not a chance.
Setting aside the career advancement opportunity at Harvard, which she had mentioned was a possibility, what was our basic problem? She had said I wanted a picture-perfect family, a woman to push out the kids and keep the home fires burning, and she didn’t fit that mold.
Sure, I wanted to fill my house with laughter and joy and cats and dogs. When I had originally imagined those things, I had conjured up some blonde cheerleader type, like Everly or that Farrah chick who bored me to tears in Dallas.
I didn’t see an egghead with books on every surface and glasses off kilter while she breastfed our baby.
I didn’t see a smarty pants professor with chalk-stained fingers holding an entire room rapt with her lectures on earthworms.
I certainly didn’t see a femme fatale strutting across a hotel lobby in the Baby Conception Caper.
But that’s what I saw now.
Only she couldn’t see it. She could only see the reasons we didn’t work.
“Hey, J.”
I switched off my headphones. Theo stood before me in warm-up gear.
“Hey there.” We fist bumped while I switched off the treadmill. “You here to work out?”
“Just a light skate with the vets.”
“Franky calls them the Three Wise Men.” Damn. Just saying her name was a stab to my heart.
Theo looked like he wanted to say more than what he eventually came up with. I hadn’t told him anything but he knew me well and had a sixth sense about these things. “Want to join us?”
“I sure do. Let’s skate.”
The workout was good. As much as I enjoyed sweating while running, nothing got my juices flowing like a vigorous skate with my fellow pros.
Thirty minutes in, I grabbed my water from the bench just as Bren skated over and stopped before me.
We hadn’t spoken much in the last few months, and I wondered what his daughter had told him about us.
Or if she had mentioned me at all. Maybe I was surplus to requirements once my donation was delivered.
Some masochistic part of me couldn’t resist bringing her up.
“Have you talked to Franky?”
“Have I talked to my daughter?” With his Scottish burr, it came out as “dotter.”
I swallowed, realizing too late I had not thought this through.
“We had an argument in Boston a few days ago. I just wanted to know if she’s okay. I mean, I’m guessing she’s fine or I would have heard about it, but …”
Theo, Remy, and Vadim had skated over as that sentence petered out.
“Everything okay here?” Theo asked, carefully, like he was expecting trouble. Maybe he knew St. James better and could tell when the guy was about to kick someone’s ass.
“Is it?” Bren asked me, his eyes as cold as the ice beneath our feet. “Or have you been upsetting my daughter while she’s in a precarious position health wise?”
So Franky hadn’t told her dad about our falling out. Apparently, that was my spectacular achievement.
“I thought we were on the same page about raising the kid, how that would look, where it would happen. But it seems not.”
Bren chugged down some water. Made me wait.
“Sounds like this is between the two of you.”
If she hadn’t told them we fought, then maybe they didn’t know the details. Telling tales out of school wasn’t really my bag, but he needed to know.
“She’s applying for a job at Harvard. Leaving Chicago and everyone she knows.”
Leaving me.
Bren remained stoic. For Christ’s sake, didn’t he care that Franky might be a thousand miles away on a permanent basis?
“Do you … like my daughter?”
“Of course I like her.”
Vadim snorted. Remy grinned. Even Theo looked amused.
Bren? Not so much.
“What I think Bren’s asking is if you like-like her,” Theo said.
I turned to Bren. “Is that what you’re asking?”
Silence, made only more eerie by the craggy-faced veteran standing before me.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I don’t think she likes me the same way.”
Another snort from Vadim. How did he make it sound so Russian?
“Knew it,” Theo said.
“What? That she doesn’t like me the same way?”
My brother laughed. “No, that you like her. God, you kids are a mess.”
We were. I didn’t mind admitting it.
“I’m not what she expected and she’s not what I expected. And rather than thinking that’s a good thing because surprises are the fucking best, she’s sticking to her guns. The rules were set in the beginning, and the ending can’t be any different than what she planned.”
Never mind that the middle had changed everything.
“Perhaps you should come up with a pros and cons list,” Vadim said. “Franky is a woman who likes to think things through. She would like a man who comes at it logically.”
Remy scoffed. “Logic? This is the heart we’re talking about. Francoise needs a big gesture, maybe something on the Jumbotron during the Finals.”
Franky would hate that. Me, on the other hand? I kind of liked the idea.
I turned to Bren, expecting a contribution. He raised an eyebrow, and then … nothing. In other words, you’ve done enough to upset her, asshole.
A taut moment later, Bren skated off, followed by his cohort, while Theo raised an eyebrow and patted my arm.
We were here to skate. I needed to forget my head and my heart and think only of my hands, feet, and the blood pumping through my veins. I had a cup to win.
After practice, Theo and I went to the Sunny Side Up Diner for breakfast. He had been relatively quiet during the on-ice Francesca debrief, but I expected he’d have more to say now. We put in orders—the Theo omelet for him, the French toast and pancake stack for me—and then I sat back and waited.
He stirred his coffee. “So tell me what’s going on.”
I inhaled a breath. “Somehow, she’s gotten the impression that I might have offered my sperm donation services purely to prove Everly wrong. Like, ‘look at me, I can have a baby, too.’”
Theo looked horrified. “Dude, tell me that’s not what happened.”
“Not … really? Sure, seeing Everly happy and knocked up by Coughlan got me thinking about what I was missing. Kids, the wife, the life.” Everything you have, brother. “The chance to have a kid was right there. I didn’t really care about the wife part until—”
“You did.”
I sipped my coffee. “She thinks she’s the pinch hitter. The stand-in because I didn’t get what I wanted with Everly. But hell, Theo, neither of us went in expecting more than a bundle of joy at the end of the nine months.”
“And now you’re in love with your baby mama and she’s not buying it.”
“I’m not—that’s not …” I’d been trying my best not to put a label on it. That seemed the safest way to approach the situation. Now I felt like shit, so I guessed I’d screwed up somewhere.
I was madly in love with Francesca St. James.
“I’m not even sure what that looks like.”
He waved over my face. “It looks like this.”
Misery? That was about right.
“She wants to take my kid away.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”
“She’s interviewing for a professorship at Harvard.
Harvard, Theo! She did say at the start of all this that her career was important and it might involve a move out of Chicago, but that seemed like something that would happen years down the road.
I just saw red. I think I could have persuaded her that we had a future, but as soon as I objected to her leaving Chicago for good, she got on her high horse and told me my opinion didn’t matter.
She already knew how annoyed I was about the guest lectureship for most of her pregnancy, but this?
She’s talking about leaving and the kid’s not even here yet. ”
My brother looked at me with pity, then out of nowhere said, “Dad’s a jerk.”
“What the hell does that have to do with it?”
“He screwed you and Sean over, not to mention Jenny. Luckily, you had me to pick up the slack and be the perfect father figure, so I’m not sure why you’re so fucked up.”
“I am not fucked up!”
“Yeah, you’re all little orphan Jason, and as soon as you think Franky might skip town, you’re acting like she’s leaving you behind. Pulling a Nick.”
Well, she was, wasn’t she? “Are you saying I have abandonment issues?”
“Nah. How could you?” He patted his chest. “Perfect older brother here who stepped in and acted in loco parentis. You didn’t need Nick. None of us did. We had each other.”
True. But it still hurt not to have him around. To find out that he had wanted to start over, to make a life without us. The second I heard Franky might be leaving, I was that thirteen-year-old kid, wondering why Dad was packing a suitcase.
“I was pretty messed-up when he left.”
“I know, dude. I was there. To be honest, you’ve grown up to be remarkably well-adjusted, considering.
Awesome brother, great uncle, cool teammate, or so I’ve heard.
” He grinned. “You’re one of the best men I know, J, and you’re going to make a great dad.
And whether Franky’s in Chicago with Baby Isner or halfway around the world, you will still be a family. Nothing’s going to change that.”
His lips twitched. “Unless you do something about it.”