by Brenda Novak
He regretted that was no longer the case. His hip felt like it was on fire.
“Fuck,” he muttered, leaning forward and hanging his head. Not only was he upset by his performance, he was worried. When he hadn’t been able to get hold of Aaron before the game, he’d called Aiyana Turner, the woman in charge of the boys ranch in Silver Springs. She’d told him Aaron wasn’t doing well, that he couldn’t keep any food down and was back in the hospital. She’d been scared—he could hear it in her voice—and that had scared him.
Would the news be even worse now?
He was afraid to find out, but he pulled his cell phone from his gym bag and called her, anyway. “Hey. How is he?”
“Better.”
The pain in his hip eased a bit as he drew in a deep, hopeful breath. “Yeah?”
“They’ve got him on an IV to make sure he’s getting the fluids he needs.” Aaron, like Hudson, didn’t have any parents, at least not reliable ones; Aaron had a mother in a halfway house somewhere. Aiyana did her best to look after him, the way she’d tried to look after Hudson when he’d been at New Horizons. With nearly three hundred students at the school, however, many of whom came from tragic situations—and eight boys she’d officially adopted over the years—one person could do only so much. That was the reason Hudson had finally purchased a home on the edge of Silver Springs three months ago, even though he already owned a place in LA—so during his off-seasons, he could mentor the boys at the ranch who needed someone most.
“Bet he loves having another needle in his arm,” he said. The poor kid had been through so much...
“So far, I’ve convinced him not to tear it out,” she said.
“Stubborn as he is, I’m sure that hasn’t been easy.”
“No. But we can talk later. He’s sitting right here, asking for the phone.”
“You’re at the hospital?”
“Yeah. I had some things to do earlier, but I came back around three.”
“Okay. Let me hear what he has to say.”
Aaron didn’t bother with hello. “Seriously, man? Two interceptions? What happened?”
The relief Hudson felt at the pique in Aaron’s voice—irritation he wouldn’t feel if he was too sick—put the loss, and his own poor performance, into perspective. Maybe the kid really was doing better. “Had a bad game, dude.”
“I saw that. I hope you know you owe me twenty bucks.”
Hudson straightened. “I do? Why?”
“I bet a friend the Devils were going to win, damn it!”
“Watch your language.” Although he wasn’t upset by a few curse words—he said and heard worse on a daily basis—he was the kid’s mentor.
He couldn’t inject any real sternness in his voice, though.
“Damn? You think that’s a swear word?” Aaron asked.
Perhaps he was being a little ridiculous, but he had to send the right signals. “It is a swear word. And Aiyana’s sitting there, too.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“Yes, she does. Show some respect. You shouldn’t be betting on games in the first place.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because you’re not old enough to gamble!”
“But I may not live until my seventeenth birthday!”
Those words pulled Hudson back to reality, helped check his emotions. Aaron sounded better today, but what would tomorrow bring? “Don’t say that. You’re going to be fine.”
“Chances are I won’t be fine. You need to be prepared.”
“I’m not listening to that.”
“Just because you don’t want to face it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Sometimes I think you’re more afraid of death than I am.”
Hudson wasn’t afraid of his own death, but he was afraid of Aaron’s. He was more than afraid; he was terrified. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“If you say so. Anyway, about that twenty bucks...”
“Forget it. I’m not paying that.”
“Why not? You’re loaded.”
Hudson had to smile. “Gambling often means losing. You need to learn what that’s like so you’ll think twice about doing it again.”
“I wouldn’t have to know that if you’d been yourself out there today. I still don’t understand how you let the game get away from you. What was going through your mind when you threw that last pass, man? What did you think you were going to be able to do while you were falling backward?”
He’d been trying to take control of something—trying too hard, in retrospect—because he couldn’t control what was happening to Aaron, couldn’t even be with him when the boy needed to go to the hospital. “We all have bad days.”
“Yeah, well, give me a heads-up when you’re out of sync next time so I can bet on the opposite team, will ya?”
Hudson promised himself he’d never self-destruct in another game, especially one Aaron was watching. The boy needed something to smile about. Instead of giving him that, he’d panicked and let fear undermine his concentration. “You’ll never get a call like that from me, because it’s not going to happen again.”
“Good. So when will you be home?”
“Team’s flying out tonight at eleven-fifteen.” They had a chartered flight via one of the major airlines, with the Boeing 757 reconfigured to contain half as many seats as usual. It even had eighteen beds to fit the large bodies typical of football players, plus massage therapists, big-screen TVs for gaming and a smorgasbord of food catered by a local restaurant.
But since they’d lost, the mood on this evening’s flight would be subdued. Hudson wasn’t looking forward to spending five hours cooped up in a plane with his teammates, especially since he was to blame for today’s loss.
“Hey, are you going to get showered? The bus is waiting.” Bruiser was back, all six feet eight inches and 370 pounds of him. No one else would dare try to roust Hudson. The fact that Hudson had done his interviews before he’d even taken off his uniform told them he was in no mood to be bothered.
“Be there in ten,” he muttered.
Bruiser looked as though he was tempted to stay until Hudson proved his words by heading for the showers, but he didn’t. After giving him a skeptical once-over, he left.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Aaron asked on the phone.
Hudson returned to the conversation. “Yeah. I’ll come by the hospital.”
“No need. They’re going to release me.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Doctor said so. I’m gonna be okay, Hudson. For now, anyway. So quit fretting like a little girl. It was just a bad reaction to the meds.”
Chuckling at the “little girl” comment and ignoring the “for now,” Hudson finally stood up and pulled off his shirt. “Then I’ll come see you at New Horizons.”
“Will you be up for the drive?”
The town of Silver Springs, population five thousand, was between ninety minutes and two hours northwest of LA, but once he broke free from the big-city traffic, the drive wasn’t too bad. Hudson made it often. Ojai, where the hospital was located, wasn’t much farther—if, for some reason, Aaron wasn’t released as planned. “’Course I will.”
“Maybe you should stay in the city and get some rest. You were hit pretty hard at the start of the game. I saw how slow you got up. And you don’t have a lot of time to recover. You’ve got the 49ers next weekend.”
Fortunately, that game was at home. The travel during the season was the biggest nuisance of Hudson’s job. “I’ll be fine,” he said and believed that would be the case, as long as Aaron was, too.
After saying goodbye, he hung up and hurried over to the showers.
When he eventually boarded the bus, Hudson was mildly surprised that so many of his teammates made an effort to rally behin
d him. Once he’d returned from his interviews, they’d given him space, quietly showered, dressed and left the locker room, allowing him time to cope with his frustration and disappointment. But now they were offering their support.
“Anyone can have a bad game... No loss is due strictly to one guy... Hey, it’s a team effort... We’ll get our groove back... That was just four quarters. We still got plenty of season ahead of us... Don’t worry about today, man. Next time, huh?”
As Hudson nodded at each encouragement, he promised himself he’d never let them down again.
5
The next seven weeks were every bit as difficult as Ellie had feared. Initially, Don had been penitent enough to smile or try to speak to her as a friend might when they passed in the halls or had to interact at work, but he quickly grew resentful that she wasn’t doing more to help his family adapt to his new lifestyle. Apparently they were still having a problem with his sexual orientation or they didn’t like Leo or something. But Ellie wasn’t trying to subvert him. She didn’t feel it was her place to get involved. She had her own problems, was struggling to get over the rejection and adjust to a very different future than the one she’d planned.
Sadly, Don and Leo didn’t see it that way. They shot her pouty, sullen looks whenever they were in the same meeting together, and they were in a lot of meetings since the entire staff gathered often to go over recent progress, set current priorities and discuss the merits of outside projects. Others in the room could feel the tension between them and would shift nervously—or worse, begin to whisper. Ellie always felt as though they were talking about her, because they probably were. Poor Dr. Fisher. Can you imagine what it would be like to find your fiancé in bed with another man?
To make matters worse, with her parents away, she had nothing to do in the evenings. She was used to spending most of her leisure time with Don, Don’s family or his cat (if he was “golfing” with Leo), and now all those people, as well as his pet, were out of her life. Although Amy invited her to go clubbing almost every weekend, so far she’d refused. She’d enjoyed that night at Envy—probably too much—but she wasn’t looking for a repeat. She wasn’t really the kind of person who did things like that, and she didn’t want to leave herself vulnerable to what could go wrong if something similar were to happen again. She knew she was unlikely to enjoy another fairy-tale ending like the last one.
Instead, she tried to ignore the emptiness of her personal life by chasing her dream of finding a safe and reliable method to protect transplanted insulin-producing islet cells, so no one else would have to suffer the way her aunt had. As it stood now, without harsh immunosuppressant drugs, the immune system saw the cells as foreign and destroyed them. Finding a way around that was important if transplantation was ever to become a routine solution for diabetics.
So she told herself she didn’t mind spending longer and longer hours at the lab. Not only did the challenge keep her focused, it gave her a purpose.
But on a Saturday evening at the end of October, she hit a wall. Too exhausted to continue, she forced herself to knock off at six. She was planning to treat herself to a grilled cheese sandwich and some chocolate-chip cookies while watching the first season of Outlander. Diane DeVry, who headed up the fund-raising entity that supported the BDC, had brought in the first two seasons to share with her. And if Outlander didn’t “sweep her away” as Diane promised it would, she had several medical journals she’d been meaning to read.
Content with her plans, she almost didn’t answer the phone when Amy called as she was driving home. She was afraid her friend would once again try to press her into going to a club, and she wasn’t interested.
She let it ring four times before she knocked over her purse trying to catch the call. She figured she’d be a fool to alienate Amy. Amy was the only friend she had left—other than her colleagues at the BDC, almost all of whom had families they went home to at night, worked the same crazy hours she did or sided with Don.
She turned into the driveway of her rental house as she answered.
“What are you doing tonight?” Amy asked.
Ellie thought it was terribly nice of her friend to continue to reach out. She probably would’ve given up by now were she in Amy’s shoes. But Amy was far more persistent than she was. Thank goodness. Even if she didn’t see Amy often, hearing from her brought Ellie some comfort. “You wouldn’t approve,” she said.
“You’re still at work.”
She pressed the button that activated her garage door. “It isn’t quite as bad as that. Just got home.”
“Wonderful. At least you can’t tell me you’re too busy saving the world to go out tonight.”
“I don’t want to go to a club, Amy.”
“I was going to suggest a movie.”
“You’d miss dressing up for Halloween to go to a movie?”
“I’ll celebrate Halloween tomorrow night. Since it’s on a Sunday, this is kind of a weird year, anyway.”
“Then how about an Outlander marathon at my place?”
“You have Outlander?”
“Someone at work lent it to me, promised I’d like it.”
“I’ve seen a few episodes and I’ve been meaning to watch the rest. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the actor who plays James Fraser.”
“That should be safe, then. I can’t get hurt by a fictional character, right? Why don’t you come over?”
A slight pause indicated that Amy was still trying to decide. “Do you have any food?”
“I’ll soon have homemade chocolate-chip cookies.”
“I’m in.”
Ellie laughed. If Amy joined her tonight, she wouldn’t be able to bail out and study, but she figured that was okay. She needed to at least try to stop her world from shrinking down to work and only work. “Great. What time will you get here?”
“Give me an hour.”
“See you then.”
Ellie turned off the engine, lowered the garage door and released her seat belt. Before she could go in, she needed to gather up everything that’d spilled onto the passenger seat when she knocked over her purse.
She picked up the pretty business card case her parents had given her when she landed her job at the BDC, as well as her keys to the lab, some lip gloss, a condom she had left over from the night she’d gone to Envy—she wasn’t sure why she was keeping that—and a couple of tampons.
After a quick search between the seat and the console to check that she’d gotten everything, she was about to step out of the car when the purpose for those tampons registered. She hadn’t used any feminine hygiene products in a while. Wasn’t she due for a period?
She remained in her car as she counted back the days. Her last period was...before Don had broken up with her! Could that be true?
No! Or...maybe.
Her heart began to thump. Yes, it was true. She was late. And not by a mere few days. Her period had just ended when she caught Don in her bed with Leo. Perhaps she would’ve noticed that it had been a long time had she not been so caught up in trying to adjust to the radical changes in her life...
But...what did late mean? It wasn’t so unusual, was it? Lots of things could cause a delay. Stress was one of them. Stress could wreak havoc on a body.
Except...it had never wreaked any havoc on hers. Not to the point that she’d skipped a period. She’d always been regular—so regular that she never paid much attention to her cycle. That part of her life was something she dealt with automatically. It wasn’t as though she ever got cramps or a headache or anything else that made menstruating more than a minor annoyance.
But seven weeks! That was a significant delay, which hinted at a problem beyond stress.
“Oh, God.” She broke into a cold sweat as the possibility of a pregnancy loomed in her mind.
She broug
ht up the calendar on her smartphone. She’d learned about Don’s affair with Leo on September 7. The hair appointment she’d had that same day confirmed that she couldn’t have confused the date. She was staring at the notation for the appointment right now. Afterward, instead of heading straight back to the lab, she’d swung by her place to put a roast and some vegetables in the slow cooker. She’d thought it would be a nice surprise for Don if she had a hot meal ready when they got off work. But she’d come home to see Leo’s car in her driveway. If it had been Don’s car, she probably would’ve entered the condo calling out his name. Finding him here would’ve been unusual, since he was supposed to be at work, but not as unusual as seeing Leo’s vehicle. So, wondering what was going on, she’d entered without making any noise. A sickening unease in the pit of her stomach suggested she was about to find something she wouldn’t like, and that had proven true. Only moments after entering, she’d heard moaning—coming from her bedroom.
She cringed at the memory of how she’d slipped down the hall. Although she didn’t want to recall what she’d seen when she opened the door, it was that shocking incident that made it impossible to forget or confuse the date.
But...was she sure she hadn’t had a period since?
Positive. She’d gone off the Pill two months earlier because she’d started to suffer from nausea and headaches and her doctor had recommended stopping it, at least for a while. She and Don had been using condoms since then. But they hadn’t been together in that way for at least two weeks before she found him with Leo—well before her last period. She and Don had both been too intent on separate projects at work.
The only man she’d slept with after that was...Hudson.
Although her phone was going off again, she couldn’t bring herself to even reach into her purse. She sat there, frozen in terror, scarcely breathing as she stared blankly at the bare wood studs of the garage walls. Surely, after everything she’d been through, she wasn’t carrying a child. That wouldn’t be fair. She’d slept with only three men in her life, and she was nearly thirty! And she’d had just that one one-night stand. Even then she’d used birth control. Hudson had worn one of the condoms Leslie had given her every time.
