SWNOVELS Pucking Sweet: Chapter 66
Three Weeks Later
“Are you ready to hear the heartbeat?” The doctor smiles up at us from her place at the end of the exam table.
It’s the day after New Year’s, and Poppy and I are at her ten-week wellness check. It’s amazing to see the changes three weeks can bring. She’s finally starting to look pregnant. She’s hiding it easily at work with open blazers and the cut of her clothes. But when she’s at home in her ratty cross county tee, I can see the little curve of her tummy.
I take her hand and nod. “Yeah, we’re ready.”
Poppy lies back, one arm stretched over her head as Doctor Renner glides the wand through the jelly and turns up the sound on the monitor. A strange womp-womp-womp fills the room that sounds more like the first encounter with alien life than a human baby’s heartbeat.
I kiss Poppy’s hand as I watch the sound waves flash on the monitor. The baby sits in the middle of the screen, floating like a little peanut.
Poppy smiles up at me. “Pretty cool, right?”
I nod, tears in my eyes. “Yeah…can we get a copy of this?” I ask the doctor.
“Of course,” she replies. “We can provide you with an audio file as well.”
I let out a shaky breath, eyes locked on the monitor. Hearing the heartbeat is making me way more emotional than I expected. But, hey, I’m a heart guy. Hearts and their functioning have been my life for so long. My obsession, my hill to endlessly climb.
You need a good heart in your chest. That’s why the news of this pregnancy rattled me as deeply as it did. I wasn’t ready to have my dream shift into a reality. I definitely wasn’t ready for the crippling fear that would creep in with my joy. Those dark thoughts that whisper to you in the quiet moments. Genetic abnormalities. One in a million chance. I won the bad heart lottery, and I don’t want this child to suffer like I did. I want our baby to have such a good, strong heart.
“And everything’s okay?” I say, looking from the monitor to the doctor.
“Mhmm. The fetus is measuring just as it should—”
“With the heart,” I say over her.
Poppy wraps her other hand around mine, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Everything seems fine,” the doctor assures us. “No irregularities in rhythm. Poppy told me heart health is a major concern. As things progress, we’ll be sure to monitor closely. Starting in the second trimester, I think it may be best to have biweekly check-ins, just so we’re not missing anything.”
Poppy asks a few questions about diet and exercise as I turn my attention back to the monitor. The last three weeks have been a total blur. We’ve had so many games, so much travel. I feel like I’ve pretty much been living out of a suitcase. I spent the only few days I had off at Christmas down in Orlando with my mom and my sister Jasmine’s family. Poppy came with me, rather than go home to her family in DC and risk breaking the news that she’s pregnant.
We’re not ready to tell people…not with things still so up in the air.
But it was a good weekend. My mom and sister are in love with her, obviously. The morning we left, Mom pulled me aside and gave me her old engagement ring. Colton from three months ago would be leaping at the chance to plan some elaborate proposal, desperate to put that ring on Poppy’s finger. Now it’s sitting in a box in my sock drawer, untouched.
Then, to celebrate our first year in the League, the Rays were put into the Winter Classic, which means we had to work over New Year’s Eve. It’s just an exhibition game, but it can be a ton of fun. The atmosphere is usually pretty festive, especially when it’s hosted in New York City. Poppy even traveled up to help run a few pre-game events.
New Year’s Eve in the Big Apple with my girl and my…
Well, it could have been fun.
Instead, Poppy spent the night watching Hallmark movies alone in her hotel room, and I spent half the night in the hospital with Langley. He took a hard hit on the ice and banged up his knee. We just got back yesterday, and I drove him over to Mars’s bungalow where he’s gonna recover for a few weeks.
Now, I’m holding Poppy’s hand, looking at our baby for the first time, feeling like a goddamn ghost. I know she feels it too. It’s like we’re stuck in limbo. Can’t move forward. Can’t focus on the past. We just…are.
How can one person go from being all but a nonfactor in your life one moment, to carving out the center of it in the next?
It’s not like I haven’t seen Novy. We both see him all the goddamn time. I skate with him. We workout together. We still share a bench in the dressing room. He sits in my row on the plane. He sits behind me on the bus. He’s fucking everywhere.
I’m not the goddamn ghost. He is. He’s haunting me, haunting my life…the life we could have shared. Does he miss us? Is he hurting like we are? Will he ever come back?
I watch him as best I can. He’s smiling and laughing, putting on a good show. But he’s not chirping. He’s not pulling pranks. He’s like Novy in 2D. An artist’s abstract interpretation of Lukas Novikov. This version lacks all vibrancy, all the color and life that made him so goddamn obnoxious…and likable.
Hell, who am I kidding? He’s lovable. I don’t know how he did it, but that shitty little prank-loving, French fry-eating asshole has wormed his way into my life and into my heart. I love him. As a friend, as a partner. I love what we had together. I love how he loved Poppy. God, he can make her laugh like nothing else.
I mean, I can tell a joke too. But Nov gets this glint in his eye, like he’s reeling you in. He knows when he has you hooked. You can see it in the subtle curl of his mouth. Then, when he lands the punchline, and you laugh, his eyes flash with a secret. He locks each laugh away, like he knows something essential about you.
Watching him do it to Poppy is intoxicating.
“Colton? Honey, you okay?” I glance down to see Poppy, the doctor, and the nurse all looking up at me.
My heart starts racing. “I…don’t—”
No, I’m not fucking okay.
Shit, am I having a panic attack?
“Could you give us a minute?” Poppy says, sitting up on the exam table.
The others clear out, and I finally suck in a shaky breath. “Ohhh fuck.”
Poppy keeps hold of my hand, her other rubbing up and down my arm. “Honey, it’s okay.”
“Fuck—no, I’m sorry,” I say on a breath. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” comes her soft voice. “Neither of us is fine.”
I shake my head, looking back up to the monitor, where the image of our baby is still frozen. “He’s missing so much, and I’m just…I’m so fucking frustrated.”
“He wants to miss it,” she says gently.
“Oh, and you fucking believe him? You really think he’s happy without us?”
She just shrugs, tears in her eyes. “It’s not about whether he’s happy. He doesn’t want children, Colton. He’s made that clear, and we have to respect it. As much as I love him, I would never push a child on someone who didn’t want one with their whole heart. We can love him, and miss him, and wish him well.”
“It’s fucking killing me,” I admit.
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, even to myself. I’ve been trying so hard to just keep it together, keep us moving forward.
She’s quiet for a moment. “Have you talked to him about it?”
I glance down at her. “About the baby?”
“About any of it.”
I shake my head. “No. Not since he left.”
He never even came back for his stuff. It’s all still just shut up in the guest room like a fucking time capsule. I’ve all but moved myself into Poppy’s apartment, but I go back occasionally for clothes and random crap. Seeing that door closed in my face makes it feel like it’s a vault I can’t access.
“If you’re this upset, maybe you should talk to him,” she offers.
I glance down at her again. “And you’re not upset? Are you over it then? Have you suddenly moved on without telling me?”
She blinks back her tears. “Please don’t be mean. You know I haven’t.”
I sigh and kiss her forehead. I do know. I catch her crying all the time. Sometimes she still sleeps in his shirts. We’re a pair of lovestruck fools, hopelessly pining after an emotionally unavailable wannabe playboy who walked away from us and didn’t look back.
Actually, he ran. Like he was on fucking fire.
I frown, my mind humming as it tries to latch onto something, some glimmer of an idea.
“Colton?” Poppy takes my hand. “What is it?”
“What if we’re going about this all wrong?”
“Going about what?”
“Lukas. What if respecting his wishes, and giving him space, and waiting for him to come to us is the wrong tactic?”
She squeezes my hand. “Honey, we can’t force him to want to be with us. He knows how we feel. We both told him. Repeatedly. And, frankly, it would hurt my heart too much to keep trying and get shot down. A girl can only take so much, you know?”
“Yeah, but what was it that he said at that benefit? The silent auction thing?”
A smile flits across her mouth. “He always says rather a lot. Usually it’s inappropriate.”
“You told me he said something about Leos and Scorpios.”
Now she really smiles. She looks up at me. “He said Leos love at first sight and stay loyal until they die…which seems to be true.”
“And Scorpios?”
She sighs. “That they’ll want you at first sight, and fight it till they die.”
Oh, fucking hell.
“Babe, I have to go.”
“What?” She slips off the exam table. “Col, you were my ride here.”
I groan. “Fine, I’ll drop you off at home. But then I really need to go. I might not be back for a little while.”
“What are you doing?”
I brace my hands on her shoulders. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Something…maybe something crazy. Possibly even illegal. But it feels right.”
Anxiety flashes in her eyes. “Oh god. Colton, what are you gonna do?”
I smile, set on my course. Bending down, I give her a quick kiss. “I’m gonna go be a Leo.”