by Daphne Swan
“Molly, push!” says one of the nurses.
I push like my life depends on it. I squeeze Eric’s hands as hard as I can and he doesn’t even flinch. Gazing up at him, I’m so overcome with love for him that the pain actually seems to be lessening.
Once the agony subsides and I manage to catch my breath, I let go of one of his hands and reach up to run my finger along the part of his cheek that isn’t covered by the surgical mask.
“Eric, I’m so sorry about the way I’ve been acting. It was wrong to push you away. I was scared and confused and I was denying the way I really felt.”
He reaches down to stroke my face and leans down to say, “You don’t have to apologize. I completely understand how you feel, what you were going through.”
I don’t know where this courage is coming from, but I have this overwhelming urge to lay it all out on the table. And so I do.
“I love you, Eric, and I want to be with you for real...oh, shit!”
Before he can even respond, I get hit with another contraction. They’re coming faster than ever now, and they’re getting more intense as well.
“Push, Molly!” says a nurse.
I squeeze my eyes closed and lean back against the bed and I push. Eric takes my hands in his. Mom kisses me on the forehead, and Nina pats my arm.
It’s over almost as soon as it started.
I open my eyes with hesitation. What was I thinking, blurting out that proclamation of love at the most inopportune time ever? Is Eric about to run for the hills or what?
“I love you too, Molly,” he murmurs.
Thank GOD!
“But I don’t think we should make any hasty decisions right now. I mean think about it. This is the most intense, the most emotionally charged experience of my life, and yours, too, I’m sure,” he says. “Isn’t it possible that you’re caught up in the moment, and that you won’t feel this way after the intensity wears off.”
“No. No way.” I take his hand and press it to my heart. “I’m seeing things clearly now for the first time, and I know that’s not going to change.”
“She’s right,” Mom says.
I crane my neck and find her standing behind me with tears brimming in her eyes. Mom leans down to give me a kiss on the cheek before straightening back up to address Eric.
“I could tell Molly was in love with you on the day of her graduation. And I was fairly positive that you returned her feelings. The way the two of you related to one another was so natural and affectionate.” She glances back at me and says. “I don’t think even your father would deny the bond between the two of you.”
Shit!
We’re forced to put the conversation on hold while another contraction rips through my body and I push with all my might.
Once it subsides, Nina pipes in with her two cents.
“You guys should definitely give it a go,” she says. “Molly’s a big pain in the ass sometimes, and that fit she threw about the rent money was beyond the pale. But she was just scared, and she was trying to protect herself—which she wouldn’t have bothered to do if she wasn’t smitten with you.”
Eric gazes at her for a long moment before turning to me.
“Are you sure about this? Is this really what you want?”
I nod. “More than anything.”
His eyes are overflowing with emotion, and they’re crinkled up so that I can tell he’s smiling again.
“Let’s do it,” he says.
Yes!!!
Relief washes over me as I reach for him. He leans down to me, and I inwardly curse the stupid surgical mask. How dare conventional medicine deprive us of our big, Hollywood-style kiss!
“Fuck it,” Eric mutters, tugging down the mask and crushing my lips with his own.
I wrap my arms around his neck and lose myself in his kiss. Oh my god, I’ve missed this so much. I never want to be without Eric’s kisses again. I never want to be without Eric again!
Unfortunately, our kiss is cut short by the next contraction. Eric’s kisses are powerful, for sure, but not quite powerful enough to ward off excruciating, torturous agonizing pain. When I start to whimper, he draws his lips away and grabs my hands again.
“You can do it, Molly,” he murmurs.
“Push, Molly!” the doctor says. “I need one more big push from you!”
I push. I push my ass off. This time it hurts even more than it did the other times I pushed. I want to give up, but everyone’s cheering me on, and saying I can do it, and I really want to get Junior out of me so I can start being his mommy. After a while, I feel this strange sensation like the pressure bursting, and everyone’s so noisy, I know it’s happened.
And a moment later, I hear a strangled little gurgling cry.
He’s here! He’s arrived!
I exchange hugs and kisses and exclamations of joy and gratitude with Eric and Mom and Nina while one of the nurses gets Junior cleaned up and does whatever needs to be done. She seems to be taking forever, though. I’m chomping at the bit. The need to hold him is so powerful, so desperate.
At long last, the nurse brings him to me, and my heart soars as I take him in my arms. He’s a big baby. That’s for sure. And he’s absolutely gorgeous. With big blue eyes and a tuft of dark hair on his head, he’s the picture of perfection. The best baby ever.
“Congratulations, Mom,” the nurse says with a smile. “He’s a healthy boy. Twelve pounds, eight ounces.”
Holy crap. No wonder the doctor wanted me to induce.
“I’d say you’ve got a future linebacker in your arms,” she adds.
Well...we’ll see about that.
I turn to Eric. His whole face is lit up like a star. He is positively radiant. He leans down to kiss the baby on the forehead and then looks up at me.
“I love you, Molly.”
“I love you too, Eric.”
Maybe it won’t work out. Maybe I’m just caught up in the moment, but deep in my heart, I feel like this is the start of something real and amazing.
EPILOGUE
“Ugh. Do you have to do that in here?” Tricia asks.
I turn to her with a frown.
“What’s your problem?”
She and Beth both dissolve in a fit of laughter. When they’ve recovered their composure, Tricia says, “Don’t you remember? Last Thanksgiving you said the exact same thing to me when I was nursing Lucas.”
“I did not. You are so making that up.”
I rub my hand up and down my little boy’s back as he chows down on breast milk straight from the source.
“Not true,” Beth says. “I was here, and that’s exactly what you said.”
“I concur,” Michael adds.
“Me too,” says David.
“Wow, really?”
It’s hard to believe how much has changed in one year. A year ago today I was still glowing after what I thought was a red hot one night stand with the guy I’d been crushing on since forever. I was watching him on the screen with a self-important sense of propriety. And now, the guy in question is my boyfriend and we have a baby together. And now as I watch him on TV screen at my parents’ house, I’m filled with pride, but also a lot of worry about his safety. I love him so much.
Things are going great. We’re taking things kind of slow. We’re still living in our separate apartments (and I’ve swallowed my pride and agreed to let Eric pay half the rent on mine, by the way) but he sleeps over at my place a lot, and vice versa.
We decided on the name of Jacob Martin Wenzel for the baby. It wasn’t easy for me to keep from giving him my last name, but Eric and I both feel that two last names are a pain in the ass to deal with and that Jacob should only have one. Agreeing to use Wenzel without any resistance on my part was a sort of leap of faith. I’m not saying I expect Eric and me to get married anytime soon, but it’s a definite possibility and, well...we’ll see.
One thing’s for sure. Choosing Martin for his middle name has gone a long way towards strengthening the bond b
etween Dad and Eric. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, mind you. It’s not like we named the baby for him with the intention of sucking up. I wanted to honor him because he’s my dad and I love him. And Eric does, too. Before all the drama of the previous year, he looked up to my dad as a father figure and held him in high esteem.
In any case, family dynamics have improved considerably as of late.
Jacob is thriving. He’s at the top of the charts in terms of height and weight. Looks like he’s going to be as big as his daddy when he grows up. And he’s ahead of the curve in terms of development as well. I know I’m biased, but I wholeheartedly believe that he’s an exceptional baby. I’m having such a great time with him.
Not that it’s all rainbows and roses, of course. I’m sleep-deprived and exhausted a lot of the time, but I wouldn’t change things for the world. I love playing with Jacob, and teaching him things, and holding him, and kissing him, and loving him.
With the world’s best baby in my arms and the sweetest, most gorgeous boyfriend by my side to help me through the difficult moments and revel in the joyous ones, I feel very grateful for my lot in life. I feel very blessed.
* * * *
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Halo Violation.
I would like to thank the lovely Mary Downs Moore for being an amazing beta reader, and for offering all sorts of wonderful suggestions in regards to football practices, lingo and whatnot. Any technical mistakes in the book are my own.
Stay tuned for more football romances coming soon. In the meantime, here are the first three chapters of Hearts in Overtime.
Daphne
xoxox
HEARTS IN OVERTIME
Daphne Swan
1. CHARLOTTE
“Are you sitting down?”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. Gina is always so dramatic. It’s obvious that she’d called with news of a job, but she wants me to draw the details out of her.
“I sure am. Do you have something for me?”
“Tell me you love me,” she says.
“I love you more than life itself,” I tell her. “You’re the best literary agent a girl could possibly hope for.”
“This is big, Charlotte. This is really big.”
I’m beginning to see that. She usually doesn’t go to these great lengths to deliver the details of a new job, so I start getting pretty excited. The past few writing gigs she arranged for me were extremely lucrative. I was able to pay off most of my credit card debt with that last one.
Although my ultimate dream is to storm the New York Times bestselling charts with my literary fiction, this is a massive goal that’s going to take time to achieve. In the meantime, a girl has to eat. Gina came to me last year with a proposition. A tech genius out of Silicon Valley wanted to write a book about his life and his work, but he could hardly string a sentence together unless it was packed with tech jargon. That’s where I came in.
I basically wrote the whole thing based on a few interviews with him, and then he slapped his name on the cover. This was more than fine with me. He got to enjoy the ode to his ego, and I got a check for $20,000. Nobody bought the silly thing; it was a vanity project, pure and simple, which was perfectly fine with everyone involved.
After that, Gina started shopping me around as the go-to girl for businessmen and industry leaders who had money to burn. For these insanely wealthy men, who had homes all over the world and thousands of people working for them, they considered a biography or an autobiography to be one of the essential feathers in their caps. I was more than happy to oblige. It’s nice to finally be making a living as a writer, even if I’m not working on my own stuff at the moment.
“I’m dying of curiosity,” I say to Gina, dutifully playing along. “What’s the skinny on the new job? Details, please!”
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“Tell me!”
She laughs. “Okay. First thing’s first. The client is offering...wait for it...two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
$250,000.
I can hardly breathe.
$250,000?!?!?
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Gina was playing some sort of sick joke on me. But I know deep down she would never be so cruel. Which could only mean...
$250,000!!!!!
That’s a quarter of a million dollars! With that kind of money, not only will I be able to pay off my credit card in full, but I’ll also be able to wipe out my student loan debt! And not only that, but I could also put a down payment on a house! A house! Sure, I’d have to leave New York and move somewhere way cheaper, but still! I could buy a house!
I reach down to give myself a hard pinch on the arm just to make sure this is really happening.
“Well?” Gina prompts. “Are you going to say anything or are you in shock?” With a shrill little laugh, she says, “Make a noise if you need me to call you an ambulance.”
“Who?” I manage to say.
“I guess technically speaking the client is Bruce Maddox because he owns the team, but the subject of the biography is going to be none other than Ryan Blake. Can you believe it?”
“Who?”
There was a pause before Gina speaks again.
“Are you asking who Ryan Blake is?”
I shrug. “Yeah. I mean, I guess he’s an athlete if he’s on some team.”
This prompts a peal of laughter from my agent. I wait patiently until she gets it out of her system.
“Yes, Charlotte. He’s an athlete. He’s only the starting quarterback for the Brooklyn Vipers, two-time winner of the Super Bowl MVP, two-time winner of the league MVP and brutally hot brooding bad boy. I can’t believe you’ve never even heard of him.”
Apart from the “brutally hot brooding bad boy” part, Gina’s explanation sounds like gibberish to me. I’ve never paid any attention to football or any other organized sport. I just don’t understand the appeal.
I feel the need to point out the obvious.
“I don’t know the first thing about sports—about football or whatever. Are you sure I’m the right person to write his bio?”
“Please don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about turning down the offer,” she says. “It’s not like you knew much the tech industry or the world of finance before you wrote the other bios. You learn as you go. And you get paid handsomely for the on-the job training, I might add. Need I remind you that they’re offering two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“And why is that?” I can’t help but ask. “Why so much?”
“What do you mean?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars seems wildly excessive. Where’s the catch?”
“No catch,” she assures me. “Honestly, Charlotte, when it comes to money, these guys have a warped sense of value compared to you and me and the rest of the world. They drop two grand on dinner without batting an eye. They fly private jets, they keep endangered species as pets and they shower their wives and girlfriends with jewels that cost more than most people’s houses.”
I shake my head in dismay. I covet wealth as much as the next guy, but once you reach a certain point the overabundance becomes garish and tasteless. At least that’s how I look at it.
Then again... I’m pretty far from that point—which is putting it mildly—so I have no problem with trying to extract as much as I can from these people.
“If they’re bleeding money like that, how come you didn’t negotiate a higher price?” I ask Gina. “You did say they offered two hundred and fifty thousand, right?”
“That’s right. And I did consider doing just that. I still can if you want me to, but I would advise against it when it comes to this project. After it’s complete, I’ll be able to market you as a biographer to the star athletes. Once Ryan Blake’s book is on the market, your value as a writer is going to skyrocket. Believe me.”
I do an involuntary shiver. “You really think so?”
“I know so. This book is going to s
ell, Charlotte. It’s not going to be like your other projects where the subject of the bio prints up a couple hundred copies to give to all his minions. This one’s going to be sold through all the major channels. I guarantee you it’ll hit the bestseller lists. They’ve already lined up a publisher and everything.”
When she names the Big Five publisher who will be handling print and distribution, I almost fall out of my chair.
“So, yeah, I could demand a higher price. Obviously, they could afford to pay a hell of a lot more than two hundred and fifty grand, but I really don’t think we should rock the boat at this point. They could easily go with another writer.”
“You’re right,” I tell her. “You’re absolutely right.”
“So can I get started on that contract?”
“Yes. Please do,” I say, unable to resist the urge to bounce up and down in my chair. “I can hardly wait to sign.”
“Fabulous. Now, are you free on Friday? I want to take you out to celebrate...”
After we make arrangements to meet for a celebratory dinner and end the call, I get online and immediately Google “Ryan Blake.”
Whoa.
Gina was right about the guy being brutally hot. My eyes are immediately drawn to the photos that appeared on the first page of results. With ink black hair and piercing blue eyes, he is absolutely gorgeous. Even though he’s clearly a muscular guy, he has the sort of bone structure that would easily land him all the modeling jobs he could ever want. He’s that hot.
I feel a little stir of excitement in my body as I gaze into those spellbinding eyes of his.
To think that I’ll be getting paid $250,000 to interview this guy... Hah! I probably would do it for free if I had to. How many other times in life am I going to get the chance to spend time alone with such a sizzling hot hunk of man?
I cannot wait to get started.
And then, as my gaze travels down the page, my heart begins to sink. Scattered amongst the football-related news are tidbits about his run-ins with the law. “Assault charges dropped against Blake, following altercation in Denver,” announces one headline. “Court sentences Blake to thirty hours of community service,” declares another. “Is Ryan Blake too big a liability for team owner Bruce Maddox to contend with?” questions yet another headline.
