The Penalty Box (Vancouver Wolves Hockey #3)(83)

My brain knew that, but my aching heart had never believed it. I took a shuddery breath. “I promised myself that night that I would never do that to a woman. I would never have a child. I would never go through that again. When you told me you were pregnant, I got so scared. Fuck, I’m beyond scared, Charlie. I’m fucking terrified. I did this to you.”

She gave me a watery smile. “We did this together.”

I voiced my darkest fear. “What if something happens to you?”

“I’m safe. Nothing will happen to me.”

I worked to speak through all the emotion, all the fear, all my love. “I never meant to do this to you. That night, I was drunk and so damn cocky. This is my fault.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck. I put my arms around her, yanking her to me. I buried my face into her neck and felt so much relief to feel her fingers stroking my hair, my neck.

Her arms felt so good, if she held me for eternity, it wouldn’t be long enough.

“Thank you for sharing with me,” she whispered against my neck. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

My fear was real, but somehow, she had absorbed some of my pain, relieving some of the pressure around my heart. “I’m scared, Charlie. I’m really scared.”

“I know.”

She pressed her lips to mine.

I spoke against her mouth. “I love you, Charlie.”

“I know.”

“Forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

She leaned back and took my hand to press it to her belly. She looked up at me, looking so vulnerable. “So you’ll do this with me?”

I didn’t have a choice. This woman was my life. She owned my heart. She was my everything. The last two weeks had just proven that life was meaningless without her in it.

“I will be a fucking wreck, but I’m going to be with you every step of the way,” I promised.

She lifted one hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks. “It will be okay. We have the best doctors in the world here. The best medical system. I’m strong and healthy. And nothing will happen.”

You don’t know that. “What if something does?”

“We’ll deal with it. Just like we deal with everything.”





Chapter 27





CHARLIE





I lay beside Mica and watched him sleep. He looked so peaceful, so calm, it belied everything we had endured in the last few weeks.

That night after Mica had shared, we packed up his stuff together, and without speaking I brought him home. The dogs were ecstatic to see him. The feeling was mutual. We crawled into bed together and we talked.

He opened up, telling me happier memories about Nadia and his childhood. We talked about my job and hockey. We didn’t talk about the baby.

One day at a time.

I knew he was afraid, but he was facing his fears with courage. One night he called his mom and talked to her for hours out on the deck. When he came back inside his eyes were red, but he seemed more at peace.

I tried to hide everything pregnancy-related from him, working to not freak him out, but one morning he came into the bathroom where I was silently hanging my head over the toilet.

“Jesus.” He kneeled down beside me. He gathered up my hair and rubbed my back while I barfed. Then he crouched in front of me and pressed a cold compress to my face.

“Thank you.” I sat on the floor, looking up at him.

“Is it always that bad?”

“Not always. Some mornings are better than others.”

That night, when I came home from work, there was a pile of saltine crackers, ginger ale, hard lemon candies and an array of herbal teas sitting on the island.

Mica was doing everything possible to keep me safe. He went on walks with me. He went grocery shopping with me and carried the bags. One night I found him researching portable fetal heart rate dopplers. Another day he came home with a portable blood pressure monitor. He bought me a smartwatch so he could track my heart rate on his phone. When he left for away games, Zoey would show up the night of, suitcase and cat cage in hand.

“You don’t have to keep on doing this.” I opened the door wide for her and Ikea. “We could just tell him you stayed over.”

She reached up and gave me a hard hug. “He thought you’d say that, and he made me promise we wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, what about your life? You can’t keep babysitting me.”

She gave me an impish smile. “You have better food at your house.”

“Is that your party line?”

“When my life went to shit and nothing was right, it was Mica showing up at my place, helping me build furniture and checking me for a pulse. I would do anything for him. Ryan would too.”

That made me misty-eyed.

So, at the end of the day, I didn’t say a word. The guy was dealing with his fears the best he could, so I didn’t tease him or fight him on any of it. I took all his requests seriously. If he asked me to take my blood pressure every morning, I obliged. If he filled my water bottle for me, I drank the whole damn thing. If he wanted to carry my grocery bag that weighed only two pounds, I let him. He was by my side, and that was all that mattered.

The only thing Mica refused to do was touch me. Every kiss I tried to deepen, he kept chaste. When I snuggled too close, he eased his hard body away from mine. I tried to entice him by prancing around in lingerie. His eyes tracked my body, and his hard-ons were more than evident, but he would not come near me.