IMPACT: A Secret Baby Sports Romance

by Vivian Lux

  "I'm self-taught," Kyle huffed.

  "What books did you use? Were you high when you read them?"

  "It's a little messy, I know. But you know your shit. That's why I hired you."

  I winced, then sighed and looked back at my screen. "I know my shit, yeah. And this is definitely shit."

  "It's fine for me."

  "Define 'fine.'"

  "It works."

  "You also think those pleated pants work. And I'm here to tell you that they are also shit. "

  Kyle made a funny little humming sound.

  "What?" I demanded.

  HIs face broke out into a wide grin. "I'm glad you came on board, Bryant. This is gonna be fun."

  I bit my lip to keep from grinning back. Instead, I wrinkled my nose. "I still want a raise."

  "Fine." He waved his hand. "Done."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that."

  "Don't you have to, uh, run it by payroll or shit?"

  "You're looking at payroll."

  "You're doing that too? God, I hope you're better at payments than you are at decorating and dressing yourself."

  He chuckled. "We'll see, I haven't found anyone to take on yet. You know any finance guys?"

  "Who says they have to be guys?" I shot back. Then I thought for a second. "No, but I'll let you know."

  "Thanks, Bryant." He went back to his work.

  The feeling of triumph over netting a raise my very first day lasted for exactly three seconds - which was precisely how long it took me to turn back to my desk and catch sight of my still silent phone. Here I didn't even like Kyle, well not much, not really anyway, but I could talk to him freely, tell him exactly what I wanted and know for certain that he was doing the same for me.

  But with the guy that supposedly loved me? It was all secrets and lies by omission.

  It was fucked as hell, and as soon as he fucking called me I planned on telling him as much. He was the one that wanted to make this into something real. If this fucking thing didn't work, it was on him, not me, right?

  Then again, I had made a fuck-ton of assumptions about Brad that had turned out to be entirely untrue. I assumed he was a dog when he was actually a stand-up guy. I had assumed he was just in this for sex when he actually really cared. I had assumed he was a caveman when he was actually pretty damn articulate when he put his mind to it. And if the way he treated Romeo was any indication, he was really good at taking care of animals. Maybe he'd be good at taking care of a baby too?

  Unbidden, the image of Brad - shirtless of course - cradling a tiny pink infant, popped into my head. My heart splashed down into my stomach.

  "Goddammit," I shouted at my screen.

  "Oh cut it out, Bryant. My code's not that bad," Kyle complained.

  "No, it's not that, it's...."

  But I was saved from spilling my guts to Kyle Jarrett by the shrill sound of my phone ringing on full blast. My heart leaped back up from my stomach and lodged itself right in my throat.

  Was he finally calling me?

  No, but it was Candace and this was a conversation I was infinitely more excited to have. "Hey mama!" I chirped. "Did you get sick of lying around on the couch eating bonbons already and decide to call me at work? Don't relax too much on this maternity leave, I don't want you getting soft on me."

  "I won't," Candace said drily. Then her voice caught in a little gasp. "Because I'm on my way to the hospital!"

  I jumped to my feet, knocking my chair into a crazily spinning orbit. "Is the baby coming?" I asked stupidly.

  "Baby's coming," Candace said, and I heard her catch her breath again. "And my best friend better be coming too!"

  I hung up on her. "Kyle, forget the raise. I need more time off."

  "O-okay," Kyle blinked. "Sure, I can do that."

  "Good. Because I'm taking it right now. Candace is on her way to the hospital."

  Kyle cleared his throat. "How long do you think you'll...?"

  But I held up my hand, cutting him off. "My best friend is having a baby." I waved. "I'm leaving now. Bye!"

  Chapter 30

  Brad

  The lawyer for the Blackhawks was the kind of slick, smooth-talking douchebro I had always secretly despised. So it was really fucking disconcerting how genuine he sounded over the phone.

  "This is way bigger than you, okay?" Ethan said, and I could hear the excited grin on his face as he talked. "In fact, there are a whole bunch of teams now filing ethics violations paperwork based on the relationship you discovered."

  I took a deep breath, not daring to hope. "I'm not so worried about his ethical breach...."

  "Well you should be..." he interrupted.

  "I'm more worried about my own," I finished. The ref was home from the hospital with a clean bill of health. No stitches needed. In spite of his insistence that his bloody mouth was the result of a broken jaw, it turned out that he had just bitten his tongue.

  Still, I had punched the fucker pretty hard, and as good as it had felt at the moment, I really would rather that Marcus stays the only Scott brother with a rap sheet.

  But Ethan, or "Bro-than" as I had named him in my head, seemed pretty ebullient. "Listen to me, Scott, the last thing this ref wants to do is bring this thing to trial. He's already looking at a suspension just for being in the bar with the player. He's not looking to meet us in court. You ever heard of Operation Slapshot?"

  I sucked in my breath. "The undercover operation? You think this goes that deep?"

  "Nah bro!" Ethan laughed and I imagined him doing fist-bumps with his frat brothers. "But that's the kind of shit they're trying to avoid. So you got what every player dreams of doing here. You got to punch a ref in the face and not suffer any consequences! High-fucking-five!"

  "Thanks, man," I muttered, hanging up the phone.

  It immediately rang again and my heart sank. "What'd you forget to tell me?" I asked Ethan, ready for the other shoe to drop.

  But it wasn't Ethan at all. "Dude. Ah, the baby's coming," said Ian.

  We hadn't spoken since Friday, hadn't talked about the punch or the fact that Ian hadn't come to bail me out.

  "Yeah?" I asked, feeling guarded.

  "Um, so yeah. You were right and I was wrong and I'm more than a bit of an asshole. These are the facts as they stand," Ian took a deep breath. "Thanks for watching out for my health and shit. Can we just put this bullshit behind us?"

  I nearly started laughing in relief. Instead, I just shook my head. "Why can't girls be this easy?" I wondered out loud.

  "Beats me," Ian muttered. "Candace is screaming at me that I'm holding her hand too hard, and then when I stop holding her hand, she screams at me."

  "Oof, want me to stop by for moral support?"

  "That's pretty much exactly why I was calling."

  "Anything I can grab you?"

  "Um, a pillow. We're gonna be here a while and I forgot mine."

  "Sure. Do you have your toothbrush?"

  "What are you, my mom?"

  "Do you have your toothbrush, Ian?"

  He exhaled heavily. "No."

  I laughed. "Your girl is gonna thank me for bringing that by when she wants to kiss you again."

  He sounded pained. "From the looks of things, I'm never getting kissed again."

  "He's never touching me again, period!" Candace shouted in the background.

  Ian and I both paused.

  "So, uh, yeah, be right there," I muttered.

  "Thanks," he muttered back and hung up without saying goodbye.

  A flutter of something unnamed and ephemeral drifted by. Ian and I were approaching thirty, and things, well, things were changing. And while that should be scary as hell, I was surprised to find that it just... wasn't.

  Ian Carter was going to be a dad. A year ago that thought would have horrified me. Now it just seemed right.

  I wondered when I'd ever get the chance to join him.

  I stopped by the drugstore on the way to the hospital and
bought my idiot best friend an entire travel kit. Then I got a terrible feeling that I was going to be late and sped through the Chicago traffic to the hospital. I declined to wait for the elevators in the parking garage and instead took the stairs down to the main entrance.

  But there was no chance of avoiding the elevators up to the labor and delivery floor. And so there was no way to avoid stopping and standing there, staring at Olivia's back.

  Of course she was here. She and Candace were like sisters, and she looked like a worried sister now. She rocked from side to side, unable to keep still, staring down the elevators with a death glare. For a fleeting, nonsensical moment, I pitied them.

  I'd really fucking missed her.

  She hadn't seen me yet, and I made sure to stay off to the side, where I could watch her without her seeing. I drank in the sight of her like a tall glass of cool water, gulping down her green eyes and long dark hair that I loved to twine in my fist as I kissed her. It had only been two days since she left me standing there on the sidewalk, but my body reached for her like it had been two years. It was all I could do not to run up and grab her.

  But I stayed put. She had left me standing there as I stammered and stuttered, trying to find my words. If she had only waited, listened to what I had to say once I found the words to say it, I would have told her that I did trust her.

  That what I didn't trust was myself.

  That I was trying like hell to keep a million balls in the air and had managed to drop them all at once.

  Including the most important ball of all.

  Her.

  I took a deep breath. I could wait here, in the shadows, and let her take the elevator up first. Spare myself the awkwardness of riding with her.

  Or, I could be a fucking man.

  "Hey there," I said, stepping from the shadows.

  She jumped nearly a mile when she saw me. At first, she looked wildly desperate, a look of fear in her face that made me want to punch something.

  Then she settled into the same bored indifferent mask that I knew was her way of letting me know just how pissed she was. "Brad," she sighed. "I guess I should have figured you were coming."

  "Likewise, I guess."

  "Candace is my best friend," she told me fiercely. "In case you think this had anything to do with me wanting to see you ever again."

  "Oh I know," I said, as the door slid open. "I know you don't want to see me again."

  She pressed her lips together and I suppressed a private smile. She definitely wanted to see me again, there was no hiding that. She just was going to make me work for it.

  Okay, I knew how to do this.

  I took a deep breath as the door closed behind us. "So, about me not talking to you."

  "Yeah?" The little quirk of her head betrayed how interested she was.

  This was it. I loved this girl. And I was going to share everything, pride be damned.

  "I stutter," I said, as calmly as I could. There were exactly three people in the world that I had volunteered this information to. My third-grade teacher, my brother, and Ian. I hated to tell people because saying the words out loud made it seem like I was giving in.

  But it was the only way I could make her understand. "That's why I don't talk about things that are uncomfortable. That's why I never mentioned my brother, because he was in prison and that's really fucking embarrassing. That's why I don't talk about myself nearly ever, because I have a lot of fucking regrets in my life." I reached out and closed my fingers around her wrist, loving the way we fit together. "But I don't want losing you to be one of them."

  Chapter 31

  Olivia

  "A stutter?" I repeated.

  He was looking at me so gravely, so seriously, that I knew this wasn't a joke. And for once in my life, I managed to catch myself and not ruin the moment.

  "So you don't talk to me sometimes because you're embarrassed?"

  He nodded and turned away, the tips of his ears reddening. The doors swished open and by the way he bolted from the elevator, I could tell he needed a break to collect himself.

  I'd figured that much out about him so far.

  Quietly, I followed behind him, all of the questions I wanted to be answered swirling around at the tip of my tongue. But I waited. And as I waited to hear what he had to say, the tightness in my chest that had dwelt there since I'd met his brother started to loosen.

  His brother.

  I sat down next to him. "I'm going to ask you a few things, okay? Just nod or shake your head until you're ready to talk."

  He placed his hands on his knees and looked angry for a moment, and then nodded.

  All around us were the sounds of babies being born. Maybe that's why I was so eager to get past this problem. At any other point in my life, I would have harped on this, made him pay, made him think he owed me.

  But this, this baby... fuck it, we were in it together, right? I wasn't doing it alone. That was for fucking sure.

  So I needed to be a grown-up and find a way for us to work it out.

  "Your brother spent time in prison," I began.

  He nodded.

  "Is he violent?"

  He shook his head.

  "Do I need to be worried around him?"

  He shook his head harder.

  "I'm going to trust you on this."

  He nodded once.

  I thought back to the blue-eyed man in his apartment. "He's kind of creepy though."

  Brad opened his mouth. "Marc spent three years in prison. He's an idiot, but he's not violent."

  "What did he go in for?"

  Brad shook his head. "He did the books for a company that defrauded the city."

  I winced. "Ouch."

  "Yeah. He says he was just trying to keep his job. He wasn't innocent in the traditional sense of the word, but he wasn't malicious either. Just," he sighed, "an idiot."

  "Hmm," I said. "So he's a tax guy?"

  "Yeah, or was. Can't find a job now. Hence why he's living in my apartment and scaring the shit out of my girlfriend."

  This time, it was my turn to nod silently. The wheels in my head were turning. Maybe I do know a finance guy after all, Kyle.

  "Can we talk about the other thing?" I finally asked.

  He closed his eyes and looked pained.

  I chose my words carefully. "You don't...you talk just fine."

  He shook his head. "When I'm careful. When I choose the right words and I work hard to stay relaxed."

  Something sharp ripped through the hole that had been healing in my chest. I stood up and stalked to the nurses' station and loudly demanded that they tell me how Candace was doing. I yelled at them because I wanted to yell at Brad, but that would be really fucking counterproductive. In the midst of my tantrum, I could hear how terribly petulant I sounded, demanding to know how Candace was doing, which room she was in, whether they were sitting on their asses or actually helping my friend....

  When they finally lost patience and ordered me to sit down and wait, I was almost relieved. Because now that I'd lost my shit on the professionals, I could come back and sit next to Brad without killing him.

  "I mean, I didn't expect them to come let me deliver the baby or whatever," I babbled, as I sat down. "Except, maybe I kind of did."

  "Let's just sit tight. You told them to tell Ian and Candace we're here, right?"

  "Yeah, under pain of death. Now, what were you saying?"

  He grimaced. "You mean before you stood up and went apeshit on the nurses for no reason?"

  "I had a reason," I sneered.

  "You listened to what I was saying?"

  "Oh I listened, Brad. And what I heard was that you can't talk to me," I took a deep breath, "you can't find your words when you're with me..." tears stung the corners of my eyes. "Because you can't relax around me."

  Chapter 32

  Brad

  I took a deep breath. "I didn't say that, exactly."

  "In so many words, yes, you did. Which means you still don'
t trust me."

  "Olivia," I sighed. "I think...I th-think...shit."

  Her eyes went wide. "Really?"

  I looked down and pressed my lips together. Distressed, she stood up and knelt in front of me, grabbing my hands.

  "Look, I think I get it. I know I do a lot of talking, but that's how I figure shit out, okay?" She cast her eyes down and I nodded, my tongue feeling like a leaden weight in my mouth. "When we started, we tried so damn hard not to make this a thing. And then it became a thing, so we did a fucking U-turn and fell in love and all that poetic shit. But we haven't escaped our start yet." She grimaced and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, blinking hard. "I just, I know that I haven't escaped it. I'm working on trusting you, Brad, but I keep getting all tripped up because I'm still expecting you to leave. All the men in my life, they've all left," she sniffed and quickly wiped her nose, "and fuck, it's so pathetic for me to be sitting here and claiming daddy issues and I hate that about myself which is why I worked so damn hard not to care if you left."

  She looked up at me with those eyes, the most beautiful eyes I had even seen. "If you left me, then I was right and I didn't have to change a single thing about my life. Which is why I kept pushing you to go."

  I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to hers. We sat there, breathing for a moment. Until the pull of her lips dragged me in and I was kissing her again.

  She clung to me just as hard as I held her, and I quickly lost myself in those lips, that mouth, those little sounds she made. Everything about her was maddening in every sense of the word. I was completely fucked for her and I knew I would be for the rest of my fucking life.

  "Fuck," she exhaled as she pulled back, panting hard.

  I kissed the corner of her mouth, swiping away the tear that hung there. "We'll figure it out," I told her, holding her hands in mine. "Because Liv, I'm not leaving. I'm staying right here, with you." I kissed each finger in turn. "I love you."

  "I love you," she sniffed. Then she nodded and started to smile. "Okay," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere either."