by Kira Ward
“He is.”
She nods, as though I’ve just convinced her of something. “We’re going out tomorrow night.”
“Make him take you to Dakota’s. The ribeye is really good.”
“Are you sure this is okay? I mean, he’s Magnus’ agent. If something doesn’t work out—“
“Don’t worry about it, Amelia. He’s a nice guy.”
Her smile returns, wider than before. “He is. Really nice.”
I like the dreamy look in her eyes. I find myself wondering if that’s how I look when I think about Magnus.
Geez, I’m becoming a teenager again.
I watch as his hand move slowly over my belly, so large that it covers me from hip to hip. He makes his way up over my ribs to my breasts, that big hand covering almost my entire breast with just his palm. I close my eyes as he takes my nipple between his fingers, twirling it around until it’s so hard it feels like a pebble protruding from my body.
“I missed you,” he says softly, his lips close to my temple.
I roll into him, pressing my lips to his chest. “I missed you, too.”
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
I pull back a little and look at him. “Someone very kindly bought me tickets to the Cowboys game.”
“Yeah? Someone I know?”
“Just some guy,” I say, running my finger slowly over his jaw. “Then my mom makes this huge feast at her house.”
“Sounds nice.”
I run my hand over his chest. “What about you?”
He shrugs. “I usually eat with the team. Coach always makes a spread at his place and invites everyone. Those of us without family in the area usually go.”
I push him back against the mattress and kiss his neck, his collar bone. Then I look up at him, run my lips along his jaw. “What about your dad?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t seen him since I left for college.”
That makes me sad. I sit up a little and regard him.
“Why not?”
He shrugs. “We never really got along. And he pretty much told me not to bother going home after I left.”
“That’s sad. I can’t imagine never seeing my parents again.”
“Yes, but you had the classic, suburban childhood. Mine was different.”
“Tell me about it.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not really the kind of story you want to hear.”
“Why not?”
He sits up and pulls me onto his lap, his cock beginning to harden again despite the conversation and the fact that we’d fallen into bed the moment he arrived a little over an hour ago. He kisses me, pulling my hips hard up against his. I let him, relaxing against him as I welcome his touch on my mouth, on my waist. But then I pull back.
“I want to know about you.”
“You do know about me.”
“No. I want to know the real you. The part the press doesn’t hear about.”
He sighs, wrapping his arms around me, trapping me against his chest for a moment. Then he relaxes, falling back against the pillows again, leaving me sitting on his lap, my nudity completely exposed.
“What do you want to know?”
I shrug. “Don’t you want to go see your dad?”
“No.” He runs his hand along my thigh. “I told you, my dad was an alcoholic. We had very little in common except for a sadistic need to hurt each other as much as possible. There’s only so much of that a person can take.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me.” He runs his fingers through my hair, pulling me down toward him. “I don’t want your pity.”
“I don’t pity you.”
“This is why I don’t talk about my dad. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t. I just think our past is what makes us who we are. I want to know who you are.”
He studies my face for a long moment. “I’m just this guy who wants to be with you. That’s all.”
I smile. How can I deny him—or myself—the pleasure that statement brings? I lean close and kiss him gently. “Can I ask you something?”
“If you have to start that way…”
“What do you want for your future?”
“What do you mean?”
I shrug. “Football won’t last forever. What do you see yourself doing when it’s done?”
“You mean, like a career?”
“Career. Family. Your life.”
He runs his hands slowly over my hips, up along my ribs, resting them on my breasts. “All I can think about right now is this.”
I giggle a little because there’s some power in the idea that he wants me enough that he can’t concentrate. But I really want to know the answer to my question.
“Do you want to be a dad?”
“Someday,” he says. “I want a family like what you had growing up. A beautiful wife. Two or three beautiful kids. A nice house. A good job. That sort of thing.”
“But not any time soon?”
He ran his thumb over my nipple, his eyes dropping from my face. “Not while I’m playing football. My life is too busy right now. I want to be able to enjoy my family when I have one.”
“I get that.”
“What about you?”
I shrug as I sit up a little straighter, reaching down to grasp his cock. I’ve pretty much finished talking. Now it was time for other things.
He groans as I rise up a little, guiding him between my legs. When he slides inside, it’s like it’s the first time, but it’s so familiar. It’s like that first taste of pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving. It’s familiar, but it seems so new that the taste buds just don’t know what to do with it.
Magnus sits up and wraps his arms around me, tugging my hips right where he wants them.
“You’re avoiding my question,” he whispers against my ear.
“I thought I was answering you.”
He groans again, but then I begin to move and he forgets everything but the feel of my body wrapped around his. Or, at least, I forget everything but the feel of his muscles wrapped around my body.
When I fall asleep hours later, it’s curled snugly against his body. I feel truly secure for the first time in my life. I want to lie there like that for always, to lose myself in the warmth of him. But just as I’m drifting off, I feel him carefully untangle himself from me. He’s pulling away even as I’m trying to hold on.
Chapter Nineteen
Magnus
I’m sitting in front of my locker, pulling my shoes on, thinking about the conversation I had with Cricket last night. One of the other guys, a running back, takes a seat next to me.
“How’s it going?”
I shrug.
“You seem a little distracted lately.”
I glance at him. “You’re married, right?”
The guy smiles, one of those charming grins that I’ve noticed most star players seem to develop. “I heard you were seeing that girl, the one from Dallas? The one you somehow managed to peg with a football.”
I incline my head slightly. “Cricket Monahan.”
“She’s a school teacher, right?”
“Yeah. High school English.”
“Sounds like a nice girl.”
I drag my fingers through my hair. It’s still wet from the showers. “She’s different from the other girls I’ve dated.”
“Uh, oh,” the guy says, that charming smile returning.
“Uh, oh, what?”
“That’s always trouble, brother. When you meet that girl whose different from all the rest, you know you’re on your way down a road you can’t exit.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know how I knew I was going to marry my wife?” He doesn’t wait for my response. “Because I knew the moment she opened her mouth that she was different from all the other girls. I knew that she was going to be the one girl who would really matter, the one who would lift me up or completely destroy me.”
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“You knew from the first moment?”
He laughs. “She took one look at me and told me I was a fool and I should go waste my time with some other girl.” He shook his head. “I’d never had a girl turn me down before I even opened my mouth.”
I remember how Cricket tried to put me in my place on our first meeting. Granted, she was in the hospital with a concussion because of me at the time, but it was still ballsy of her to stand up to me in a way no one else bothered to do. And to do it from such a beautiful mouth…
“Just don’t let her distract you too much, brother. You have a lot on the line this year.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It’s times like this, you have to decide what you want more, the girl or the job. I was lucky I didn’t have to make that choice.”
He gets up and walks away without stopping to consider the impact of his words. But I can’t shake them as I go through the rest of my week. Meetings and practices and more meetings. I’m exhausted by the time Sunday rolls around. And just as fucking distracted as I was before.
I stand out on the field, watching the Chicago players line up, and I’m thinking about Thanksgiving. I’m thinking how badly I want to spend it with her, but she hasn’t offered an invitation. I’m not sure why, but it bothers me. And then I fumble the damn ball and the Chicago defense recovers it and the coach is screaming in my face.
We lose 21-7. To the fucking Chicago Bears.
I’ve got to clear my head. I’ve got to stop letting Cricket take over so much of my thoughts. I’ve got to…I’ve got to get my head back into the game.
So what do I do? I go party with the boys.
Chapter Twenty
Cricket
My eyes drift closed for the third time in less than a minute. I’m trying to listen to what Amelia’s saying, but I’m suddenly so exhausted that I can’t do much of anything but attempt to count the cracks in my eyelids.
“Sorry I dragged you out so early in the morning,” I hear her say.
“No, it’s not you. I guess I just haven’t been sleeping well. I went to bed early last night, and I thought I slept well. But I guess not.”
I am pretty sure I’m coming down with a stomach bug, too. The bus seems to hit every pothole in the street, bouncing us all over the place. And every time my stomach wants to roll over and rid itself of the pastries I ate so ravenously this morning on the way to the one-act play competition.
“I can’t believe we advanced,” Amelia says, the joy so apparent on her face that its catching.
“Your kids are brilliant,” I say, loud enough that the students around us can hear. They cheer, one girl reaching over the seat to pat me on the shoulder.
When they settle down again, Amelia leans into me. “How’s Magnus? I heard they lost last night.”
I nod. “He’s not thrilled about it. But it’s only their second loss of the season, so it’s really not that big of a deal.”
“Frank said that Magnus is hoping to take the team to the playoffs so that he’ll have leverage when they renegotiate his contract at the end of the season.”
I look at her, impressed. Amelia doesn’t normally pay that much attention to anything having to do with football.
“Things went well with you and Frank?”
She shrugs. “At first all we talked about was Magnus. But then he seemed to relax a little and I managed to convince him to talk about himself.”
“And?”
She blushes a little. “He’s a really nice guy.”
“He seems to be.” I brush my shoulder against hers. “Maybe after the holidays and everything, we could do a double date.”
She smiles brightly. “That would be fun.” Then she pulls out her phone. “Speaking of holidays and whatever, we need to figure out if the next round of competitions is going to interfere with the trip to the Shakespeare festival in Austin.”
I glance over her shoulder to look at the calendar app on her phone. Our calendars are sync’d in order for us both to keep track of the drama club activities. But that’s not all. We both have personal information on the app—Amelia keeps track of her doctor’s and dentist appointments on there and we both make little notations to keep track of our menses. So when she brings up the current month and I see her notation, but not mine, the wheels in my head spin out.
There should have been a notation a little over two weeks ago.
I grab the phone from her hand and scroll back a month. There’s the last notation. But there’s nothing—I’m so careful about these things because I don’t want to be caught unaware in front of a class of sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys. Been there when I was a sixteen-year-old girl.
It should have happened already…and then I know. I’m so regular that my college roommate once joked that she could tell time by me. I’ve never been late.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit!
I can’t think of anything else all the way back to the school. As soon as I’m alone, I call my doctor’s office and beg for an appointment as soon as possible. I need to know and I don’t want to be a cliché, to run out and buy one of those over the counter tests that are supposed to be incredibly accurate but aren’t always.
I’m relieved when the receptionist tells me they have a cancellation for first thing in the morning.
“Everything okay?” Amelia asks as she sticks her head in my classroom.
I look up, slipping my phone sheepishly into my pocket like she can tell what I’m thinking by something on the dark screen.
“I’m good.”
“You ran off the bus in a hurry.”
“I thought I’d left a stack of essays in my desk but I didn’t.”
She frowns, but inclines her head slightly. “Mr. Rudolf just told me that the principal cancelled the meetings she had scheduled for in the morning, so we’re free until Monday.”
“Great.”
She studies my face a minute longer. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?”
I shrug, standing and snatching my bag off the floor. “I’m just tired. I think I’ll go home and take a nap.”
“Okay. Then I guess I’ll see you on Thanksgiving. Tell your mom again how much I appreciate her including me.”
“I will.”
The doctor’s office is surprisingly crowded. I find a place to sit off to the side of the room, across from a young mother with three very loud, very undisciplined children. They scream and yell the whole time I’m waiting there, and all the woman does is look at me with this look of exhaustion on her face.
I want to tell her to take charge of her kids. I want to tell her that the smallest one needs a diaper change. I want to tell her that she shouldn’t have brought so many children into the world if she didn’t know how to deal with them.
But then I realize I have no right to correct her, especially since I’m sitting there for the reason that I am.
When the nurse calls me back and asks why I’m there, I’m almost too ashamed to say it out loud. “I think I might be pregnant.”
The nurse doesn’t seem to hear me. She makes a notation in my chart and leads the way down the hall to one of the exam rooms. It feels sort of anticlimactic. That’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
She checks my blood pressure and my temperature, then hands me a gown and tells me that the doctor will be there soon. I expected to pee in a cup, but she doesn’t say anything. I wonder again if she didn’t hear me.
The doctor comes in, all smiles.
“Cricket,” he says, taking my hand in his. “The nurse tells me you think you might be pregnant?”
Dr. Andrews has been my doctor since I turned seventeen and my mom decided I needed a general practitioner instead of a pediatrician. He’s been there through the acne crisis my senior year of high school and my desire to get the pill in college. He’s seen me through countless colds and flus, ear infections and a year of chronic sinus infections that we finally realized were caused by an allergy to mildew
. It seems appropriate that he’d be here for me through this. But it’s also humiliating, like I’m letting him down somehow.
“How long have you been sexually active?”
I blush. “A month.”
He studies my face for a second, like my mom might do if I was having the same conversation with her. “And you’re still taking the pill?”
“Yes.”
“Have you missed any?”
“A few, here and there. But I always take them the moment I realize I missed them.”
He looks through my chart, scrolling through the screens on the small iPad he’s holding. “We discussed this when we first prescribed this birth control. It’s very important that you take it consistently.”
I nod. I remembered that conversation after I missed the little notation on the calendar app.
“Well, we’ll do a quick urine test, and then we’ll exam you. Okay?”
He walks out the room before I can respond. The nurse comes in a second later and hands me a small cup, explaining the process like she’s done a million times today already.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous to pee into a cup before.
After the cup, I’m hoping when the doctor comes back he’ll tell me that I was mistaken, that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why I missed my period for the first time since I was fifteen. Instead, he comes into the room with a portable sonogram machine.
It’s no bigger than the end of my pinky finger. But it’s about to turn my life upside down.
Chapter Twenty-One
Magnus
My head is pounding, my muscles aching. I stand in the center of the field and try to pretend that I want to be here. In truth, I’d rather be at home nursing my aches and pains out of sight of these fools. I can see them watching me, whispering behind my back. And, after the way I behaved Sunday night, I can hardly blame them.
I never should have gone to that damn party. What had I been thinking?
I know what I was thinking. That it sounded like fun. That it was better than sitting at home stuck in my own thoughts, my own self-doubts, my own stupidity.
