Hang Em' Up: A Bad Boy Sports Pregnancy Romance Read online

  Chapter 6

  My weeks were filled with training and partying – a bad combination when you are a professional athlete, but I was home again and I had friends I wanted to see. I just wanted to blow off steam. Besides, the more I went out, the better my chances of seeing Jess somewhere.

  I didn’t really live at home anymore, so even though she and Liv spent a lot of time together, it didn’t include me the way it might have in the good old days.

  I saw her the few times I visited my family and stayed over, but we didn’t spend more time together than we had before, and she tried to avoid me when she could, anyway. We didn’t get a chance to talk.

  That was fine. I could make a different plan. At least, that was what I kept telling myself. I couldn’t get her off my mind, though. I went home trying to see more of her, not more of my family, and when she wasn’t there, I was disappointed. I was also annoyed that she’d been so sure she didn’t want anything more between us.

  Maybe that would change, maybe she would want to see me at some point, but my time was running out. I was leaving again for pre-season work in less than two months. If anything was going to happen, it needed to happen soon. Every so often, I toyed with the idea that I could extend my stay, but that was ludicrous. Who gave up their career as a professional sportsman for a woman that wasn’t interested?

  There were people who did, but that happened when they were sure that they would be together forever. I didn’t even know the next time she would speak two words to me.

  I stayed in an apartment further into town; it was more modern and modest than my parents’ place and closer to the bars and clubs where I liked to spend my time. It was also close to the Astroturf where we trained, which was a win all around. I didn’t often bring people over, though. I preferred my space to stay my own. When I had parties, they were at other people’s homes or back at my parents’ when they were out of town. I preferred being alone when I wanted to.

  A knock on the door made me frown. I got up and walked to the door. The only people that dropped by were Liv and my parents, and I wasn’t expecting any of them. I opened the door.

  Jess stood there, looking unsure and a little out of place.

  “What are you doing here?”

  It came out a lot more hostile than I meant it – she was the last person I expected, and I was surprised to see her in front of my door. I’d been looking for her for the last two months, and she was the one person I’d never run into.

  She winced slightly at my reaction.

  “I’m sorry. I just didn’t except you.” I looked over my shoulder. The place wasn’t exactly neat, but it wasn’t a mess either. It looked like what it was: the kind of place a young bachelor lived. Do you want to come in?”

  She swallowed and nodded. She looked nervous. She stepped into the apartment and looked around. I noticed the takeaway packets on the coffee table and the clothes in the corner, the things I hadn’t when I’d looked around just before letting her in. She didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were vacant.

  “Can I get you something? Coffee? Water?”

  “Water would be nice, thank you.”

  I walked to the sink in the open plan kitchen and filled a glass with water. She was sitting on the couch when I brought it to her. She took a sip and put it down next to a Chinese takeaway carton on the coffee table.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  She sounded so damn serious. Her eyes weren’t smiling when she looked at me. This wasn’t the Jess I knew, not even from when we were younger.

  “Is everything okay?”

  She looked down at her hands. “I don’t really know where to start.”

  “From the beginning?” I scratched my head. “Just tell me, sweetheart.”

  She glanced at me when I used the pet name. I wasn’t sure how she felt about it. It hadn’t been loaded.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I blinked at her. What the hell was she saying? She had to be joking. I smiled, thinking she would smile with me. She didn’t. The corners of her mouth didn’t turn up, her eyes didn’t sparkle. She didn’t tell me she was just messing around.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  She swallowed again and nodded. She was nervous. This was for real.

  “Shit.”

  I got up and walked around the couch, pushing my hands into my hair. “How could this happen?”

  “I’m pretty sure you understand how it works.” Her tone wasn’t sarcastic, but she pissed me off anyway.

  “Thanks for that. I was just about to ask for a lesson in the birds and the bees.”

  I sneered at her. I was being rude, I knew. It was a little hard to deal with.

  “I’m not here to fight, Logan.”

  I’d wanted her to say my name again for a long time. This wasn’t the scenario I’d imagined.

  “I was thinking of an abortion.”

  I looked at her and frowned. “You want to get rid of it?”

  She nodded and looked down.

  “What was the point of telling me then? If you’re just going to kill it?”

  She winced. “I believe you have a right to know. You should be a part of the decision, too.”

  “You sound like you’ve already decided, though.” I sat down again, feeling like I’d been hit by a bus.

  “Do you have any idea what my life will be like? How much I’ll have to give up? You’ll be able to send a check in the mail every now and then, see us when you’re back in town, but I’ll have to live the rest of my life without living the way I wanted to. I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

  Her voice broke at the end of her sentence, and I realized just how close she was to crying. I got up from my seat and moved around the coffee table to sit down next to her. She eyed me but didn’t move away.

  “I can’t stand the idea of you giving up the baby,” I said.

  “So you expect me to give up everything else?”

  I shook my head and dropped it in my hands. “That’s not what I mean. How can you be okay with it, though?”

  “With an abortion?”

  I looked at her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know how else to deal with it. This is as much of a shock as it is to you, trust me.”

  I could understand that. The idea of having a baby now was terrifying. But an abortion? It felt like the wrong thing to do. I believed in playing the hand you were dealt, no matter what. Even if it was a bad hand. I’d had such good hands lately that something was bound to go wrong. There had to be some kind of balance in the universe.

  Then again, I didn’t see Jess as a bad hand, no matter how she ended up being in my life. Even now that she was telling me she was pregnant, I didn’t do what other men might and ask her if she was sure it was mine. I trusted her, even if it meant that the baby ended up being mine. Even if it was easier to hope that it really was someone else’s and she was that kind of woman.

  “What if we did it, though?”

  She frowned at me, leaning back a little, distancing herself from me as much as possible without actually moving.

  “Did what?”

  “The whole thing. The dating and the parenting and everything we had to do to make it work.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God, Logan. Are we back to that?”

  I was offended. “You’re shutting me down without even thinking about what I’m offering.”

  She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as if it hurt.

  “I told you we couldn’t be together because of my friendship with Liv. How much worse do you think it’s going to be if your family also finds out we’re expecting a baby? I can’t think of anyone in my life who will be happy about it.”

  I took her hand and she looked at our laced fingers. She didn’t seem thrilled, but she let me hold it.

  “I want to do the right thing. I want to be a father the way the baby deserves, and I want to be with you. I’m not just saying this because of the baby, you know. I’ve wanted to try
it with you anyway.”

  She pulled back her hand and I let it go. I didn’t want to force her into anything; I would lose her completely. She was already reluctant about almost anything I suggested other than the glass of water.

  “Come on, Jess. We can do this. We can make it work.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how to do this. I already feel like I’m losing everything else: my future career, my life… I can’t lose my best friend, too.”

  I got up and paced around again.

  “So you just want to shut me out of this whole thing, get rid of the baby and then carry on like nothing happened?”

  When I looked at her, she didn’t nod. She didn’t have to.

  I threw my hands up in the air. “I can’t believe this!”

  She got up and walked toward the door.

  “It was a mistake coming here. I’m sorry I did.”

  “Please, don’t leave now.”

  She turned. She looked angry now which was a nice change from the nervous, switched off Jess here before. When she showed emotion – any emotion – she was beautiful. There was a fire inside of her that was dim when she closed herself off, and I wanted to see more of it.

  “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know what I’m going to do about this, but you don’t have to worry, it won’t involve you.”

  Dammit, I wanted to be involved. Why was she being so damn difficult about this?

  “Can’t you just come back and sit down so we can talk about this?”

  She hesitated. For a moment, I thought that she would do as I asked, but then she closed off again, that fire draining until she had an expressionless mask on.

  “I’m going, Logan. You don’t have to worry about what happens. Whether I keep the baby or get rid of it, I absolve you of all responsibility.”

  She turned around and walked out the door, banging it closed behind her.

  I kicked the coffee table and her untouched glass of water fell over, splashing onto the carpet. I swore out loud.

  Why was she being so full of shit? She reached out to me, but as soon as I reached back, she withdrew. It had happened that night when we’d slept together only for her to reject me. Now she’d come to me to tell me she was pregnant only to tell me she didn't want me to be a part of it at all. What the hell was wrong with her?

  I stared at the closed door she’d stormed through. She was complicated, a pain in the ass, and yet I still wanted her. Was it normal to go for the thing that could destroy you?

  Chapter 7

  The gynecologist was really nice. She was calm and collected and made me feel good about how everything was going to work. I’d been terrified to go.

  “Let’s talk about this.”

  She asked me a lot of questions. Questions about my health and my lifestyle, but also questions about how I was coping with it, how I was dealing with my emotions.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” I admitted. “I don’t always know how I’m going to make it.”

  “Do you have support?”

  I nodded yes, but the answer was really no. The father wasn’t involved and no one in my life knew about it. Not even my parents.

  “That’s good. You need to have someone who will support you through the hard times.”

  I swallowed. I was going to go through the hard times alone.

  “Let’s have a look at your baby.”

  I had to lie down on a chair and pull up my shirt. I rolled my pants down enough to expose my lower abdomen, and she put gel on my skin that was cold.

  She pressed her ultrasound wand against my skin, and a mass of gray appeared on the screen. She moved around a little and then honed in on a gray mass. She moved around a little more and then showed me.

  “This is your baby,” she said. It was tiny, still. A small little mass with small arms and legs and an oversized head. It moved. I was a baby. My baby.

  My throat closed and my eyes welled up with tears and my heart went out to the little bundle that was nothing more than tissue and a heartbeat at this point. And it was still beautiful. My heart went out to the baby on the screen – my baby. I was here because I was thinking about keeping the child already, but now that I saw the baby on the screen, it crystalized everything for me. How could I let it go? How could I not do what I was meant to do – how could I not be the mother of this child who didn’t ask to be in this world in the first place?

  She turned up the sound, and a fast thudding filled the room.

  “That’s the heartbeat,” she said, and I started crying. It was one thing to talk about having a baby and getting rid of it because it was inconvenient. It was another thing altogether to see it moving, to hear the heart beating and to know that a child was growing inside of me.

  “Thank you,” I said. My voice was husky, and I felt like I was going to break down sobbing. I held it in. The gynecologist smiled at me and switched off the monitor. Back in the office, she prescribed medication for me – prenatal vitamins and other things I didn’t know I needed. I took the list from her.

  I was going to have to talk to my parents about helping me fund all of this. It was going to be anything but easy, but I had to do it at some point.

  When I told my parents I was pregnant, they were not happy.

  “I didn’t send you off to college, pay that much, so you could get knocked up and spend the rest of your life dependent on a man who’s the father of your child and nothing more.”

  My dad was a piece of work. My mom sat crying in the corner.

  “I’m not the first girl to fall pregnant,” I said. This had turned into a fight when I’d just needed them to tell me it was alright and that we would make it through. “And I’m not in school anymore. I’m old enough, qualified and able. I can do this.”

  I’d thought about what Logan said. He’d wanted the baby. I wanted the baby, too. I’d wanted the baby from the start but had been terrified that I wouldn’t be able to live the life I’d envisioned for myself. Protecting a life was worth sacrificing some things, though, and an abortion was something that I would never be able to live with.

  I realized this after I’d gone to the family planning clinic. They’d explained the procedure to me, and it had all seemed fine until they’d told me what would happen to the baby. It would be discarded, thrown away like it had no value. Burned. The idea of it would haunt me for the rest of my life. This was a person growing inside of me, not a piece of meat that was inconvenient.

  “I don’t understand,” my mom sobbed. “We did everything right. We made sure you knew what to expect from men and what to do.”

  I rolled my eyes. “People make mistakes. Sometimes shit happens, okay? I want to keep the baby. I’ll figure something out. I’m not expecting help from you guys.” I had expected help, or hoped for it, at least, but that was not going to happen. I could see it now. “I just thought telling you would be the right thing.”

  If I was going to get an abortion, I wouldn’t have told them, but the truth was, they were going to be grandparents. I was going to be a mom. Being a mom was a lot harder to take in and the idea that they would be grandparents.

  “What will they think of you?” My dad stood at the window, looking out. “How are you doing to defend people when you’re pregnant and emotional?”

  Right, my career. I hadn’t worked out all the kinks. I hadn’t worked out anything except the fact that I wanted to keep the baby.

  “And where’s the father in all this?” My mom blew her nose loudly. “I hope you’re demanding money from him. He carries half the blame, after all.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not going to be a part of it.”

  My mom clasped her hand over her mouth.

  My dad glared at me. “What kind of a low-life is he that he’s not interested?”

  I shook my head. Logan was a great guy. He wanted to be everything and do everything he needed to for the sake of the baby. “It’s not him, it’s me. I don’t want him involved. It will be better that way.”<
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  It was easier said than done, but my mind had been made up. At least, I’d thought so before I’d talked to my parents. Now, I wasn’t so sure. They were upset with me, and understandably so, but it was harder when I didn’t have their support. I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t.

  Back in my room, I felt terrible. My stomach turned. I was so nauseous I had to lie down on the bed. There was a bucket next to my bed that I’d put there in the beginning of the week, and I felt like I was going to use it. Often.

  My parents were angry with me. I knew that getting pregnant hadn’t been part of the plan, but now that it had happened, I needed my family to be there for me. I wanted my mom to hold me. I wanted my dad to tell me that we would get through this, that he would make sure I had everything I needed.

  Instead, I felt like a scandal and nothing more.

  I put my hands on my stomach. I didn’t even know what the gender was. So much drama surrounding someone that was still so small.

  I took a deep breath and tried to let the emotion out, tried to relax. It just made me feel a hell of a lot worse.

  I had no one to turn to. The only other person who knew about the baby was Logan. I got up and looked in the mirror, making sure I looked alright. On the outside everything was fine – I looked the way I always did. There was no telling the storm inside when you didn’t know what my life was like right now. I needed someone to lean on. I knew I was being unfair, that I was playing with fire, that I was being inconsistent. I needed someone to be there for me more than I needed to be fair.

  He didn’t live very far away, but by the time I knocked on the door I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust. I couldn’t breathe properly. My head hurt, and nausea and nerves formed a toxic concoction in my unstable stomach.

  When he opened the door, his eyes fell on me and I expected him to reject me. I expected him to tell me off because no one deserved to be treated the way I’d treated him.

  “I know I’m the last person you want to see right now, but…”

  I couldn’t finish my sentence. My voice caught in my throat, tripping over the lump that had formed there and tears flooded into my eyes. I started crying. He didn’t say anything, he just pulled me against him. His body was warm and muscular, but soft all the same. I had a flashback to that night with him hovering over me, his eyes on mine, his skin against my skin. I shuddered.