Heidi paused and took full stock of her body, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.
“Actually,” she replied, laying her hand over his, “I feel wonderful.”
He grinned. “You were a superstar. I heard the doctor whisper that you oughta be studied as a modern medical marvel.”
Heidi giggled and shooed away the compliment. Just then, from across the room, she heard a squeal, a shriek, a cry. Leaning on Bradley’s hand, she propped herself up on the pillows, anxious at hearing her baby wail.
“Doctor,” she asked loudly, “is he okay?”
The doctor and nurses swiveled around from their spot in the corner, and began to make their way back to Heidi and Bradley.
“You have a perfectly healthy baby boy,” the doctor said warmly.
She came to a stop in front of Heidi’s bed, and very gently shifted his weight from one arm to the other as she prepared to hand him off.
“Careful. He’s pretty, uh, enormous for his age. 22 inches, 10 pounds, actually.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Heidi saw Bradley beam with pride. Healthy and huge? Yep, this kid would be an athlete.
The doctor at last passed the baby over to Heidi, whose entire world slowed down and came to revolve around the child in her arms. He settled onto her chest, which was still a little slippery with sweat. She ran a single finger over his head, which was covered in soft black hair, and then shifted so that she could see his face.
Her heart stopped dead. He was perfect, a tiny replica of his father. Bright green eyes, pink little lips.
“You’re my favorite person,” she said to him, and meant it.
Nothing mattered anymore, nothing besides this boy and his happiness. She’d kill for him or die for him. It was revelatory, to feel her heart expand to envelop another person so wholly; it was unexpectedly divine.
Their son gurgled back at her, lips spreading into the tiniest grin she’d ever seen. Was that really a smile, so soon?
“He’s got his father’s smirk,” Heidi said to Bradley, laughing.
Bradley had stood, astonished, looking at the little creation, afraid almost to touch the perfect, tiny being.
“May…may I hold him?” he asked tentatively.
“Of course. He’s as much yours as he is mine.”
Heidi scooted over in her wide bed, careful not to jostle the baby. She patted the newly vacated area next to her, gesturing for Bradley to sit. He sat on the side of the bed and swung his legs over. They sat stilly, side by side, staring at their child.
“You’re gonna want to hold him by the butt, and support his neck. Cradle him close to your chest,” Heidi instructed.
“I actually helped look after a lot of kids in my town when I was younger,” Bradley replied with a little puff of his chest. “I’m pretty good with babies.”
Heidi smiled internally at this reveal, thinking that he seemed equally proud of his time as a caretaker as his Super Bowl win.
The man’s definitely complex, she thought as she passed over their child, shifting him from mother to father.
Bradley took him, and held him tight to his chest, instinctively protective. How did such big arms hold something so small with such gentleness? It was like seeing a lion hold its cub by the scruff of its neck and tenderly carry it through plains and valleys. Heidi was witnessing something primal, something deeply loving, and she appreciated it boundlessly.
“Bradley,” she said softly, “we need to give him a name.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Bradley’s brows furrowed, and a stressed look briefly crossed his face. “Are you asking—”
“I want you to help name him. I want him to go by something that we decided on, together.”
Bradley looked up from his light cooing over the baby, and into Heidi’s eyes. He didn’t ask her what that meant, but she hoped he understood the implication all the same.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “maybe something from your family?”
“My family has kind of, um, traditional names. Like Tom.”
“Speaking of which, where are your parents?” Bradley asked with sudden urgency, realizing he had forgotten all about them.
“Oh, they’re in the hallway,” she said. “I think I’ll ask one of the nurses to put him in a crib and take him to see them.”
“You don’t wanna, um, introduce him to them?”
She sighed. “Later, I will. But first, we need to decide on a name. Then, I think we’d better, y’know, talk.”
Bradley nodded. There was a lot they needed to talk about.
“I think,” she said, switching subjects, “the name Isaac would fit. It’s strong, sturdy, classic. A name that works no matter who he becomes.”
“It’s perfect,” Bradley agreed. “Would you mind if I gave him a middle name?”
“I’d love that,” she said honestly.
“In Hawaii, Kanē is the name of the god of creation. It’s a big, powerful name, but I think he’s going to be a big and powerful man.”
Heidi felt water on her cheek, and realized she had let slip a tear at the beauty of Bradley’s suggestion, and what a strong legacy her child would carry.
“Yes,” she whispered to him, “Isaac Kanē.”
Bradley moved the baby between the two of them, so that each parent could see his big green eyes, staring up at them in amazement. Silence filled the room as the little family reveled in their joy.
At last, Bradley broke the quiet, whispering in awe, “Isaac Kanē.”
They could’ve stayed in this blissful position for months, but after some time, Heidi remembered how anxious her parents must be. She couldn’t leave them sitting out there waiting. She clicked the nurse’s button by the side of her bed, and moments later one of the nurses stepped into the room.
Another perk of a private suite, she thought happily.
To the nurse, she said, “Could you please put him a crib, and wheel him out to my parents, his grandparents? They’ll be wanting to meet him.”
The nurse nodded. “Oh yes,” she said. “They’ve been pacing the halls for hours, and your mother’s been asking for updates every five minutes.”
“Yeah, that sounds like them, all right.”
The nurse took Isaac from Bradley’s arms, and his face fell as he watched his son get placed in a crib and carted off.
“Will he be okay, do you think?” Bradley questioned nervously.
“Well, he’s got to leave our sides sometime. Unfortunately, we can’t just watch him for the rest of his life.”
“Oh, just you wait—I’m gonna have cameras installed in every damn inch of our house. I’ll get a monitoring app so we can check on him at all times, and…”
Bradley pulled up short, realizing the implication: that they would all live together.
“I love the sound of that,” Heidi said with a chuckle, “But first, catch me up on the past few months of your life. What have you been doing since…”
She broke off, unable to say the words, to recall the full extent of their mutual pain. Bradley sat up in bed and rubbed a hand over his forehead; the memories clearly hurt him, too.
“Well,” he began shakily, “you heard a lot of this in court. Stop me if I’m repeating myself.”
“I don’t care if you do.”
“Okay…so you know the part where my lawyers tried to shut down communication. They handed down strict orders—don’t contact you, or else. At first, I was happy to follow orders. Honestly, I didn’t want to talk to you at all anyway.” His face pulled into a grimace.
“That’s okay,” she comforted. “I understand.”
“I just—and this is my fault—but I thought what they were saying was true. That you’d set me up to turn a profit, had faked what we had…I can’t believe I ever doubted you.”
“Hey, the guys you’d listened to your entire adult life were saying I was bad people. I get why you listened to them. I mean, I was basically a stranger.”
“Thank you for saying that,�
�� he replied. “I appreciate the sentiment. But you weren’t a stranger. Not to be presumptuous…I just felt like I knew you better than I knew myself. We only had those relatively few weeks in the Bahamas, sure, but…”
Heidi interrupted him, anxious to save him the embarrassment of thinking he was alone in this.
“I understand,” she said eagerly. “I felt the same way. Like you fit me.”
He brushed some strands of hair back from her face and let his hand linger on her cheek.
“Yes, that’s it,” he said hoarsely. “You fit me.”
She pressed her cheek into his rough palm, loving the feeling of the two textures clashing.
“You were telling me about the lawyers,” she reminded him.
“Right. So, eventually, a few months in, I started wondering, just what it would be like to reach you. To hear your side of things, uninterrupted. I went on a wild fucking goose chase; every number or scrap of contact info was a dead end. I thought maybe I was going insane, or that I had dreamed you up.”
“It’d be pretty hard for you to sue an imaginary person,” she laughed, then regretted the joke as she saw his face crumble. “No, no, I’m kidding, Bradley. I’m not taking the lawsuits personally. I get that you were manipulated.”
He nodded, and then bowed his head, ashamed.
“I should’ve done better,” he mumbled. “I don’t deserve to be in our child’s life. I don’t—”
“Don’t say that,” she interrupted softly. “You belong in his life…if you want to be in it.”
“Oh, Heidi, I do. I’ve never wanted something so badly,” he said lowly, his voice deep with emotion. “But only if you can forgive me for the way I acted these past months.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Please,” he asked simply.
Heidi took a breath, and said those magic words: “I forgive you.”
Bradley smiled, a weight lifting off his shoulders. The lines in his forehead ironed out, and those eyes no longer looked like stormy seas, but instead placid waters.
“Heidi, I’m so grateful. To be in his life, to get a chance at fatherhood. But…” He faltered. “I have something else to ask you. And if the answer’s no, please understand that I’ll get it, and it doesn’t change my desire to be a father. Okay? I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”
Heidi, perplexed, replied, “What is it? You’re scaring me a little.”
“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant to—I’m sorry.” He stopped and focused. “What I want to know…is…could I be in your life not just as Isaac’s father, but as your boyfriend? Could we give what we had a real shot?”
Heidi’s eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open.
“And,” he added hurriedly, “if all the lawsuits, and all my fuckups, have made that impossible, I was serious. I understand.”
Bradley searched her face, trying to deduce what emotions lay beneath.
He continued nervously, “But if, by some remarkable chance, you feel the same way, I want to give us a shot.”
“Yes,” Heidi said intensely. “Yes, Bradley. Yes to trying a life together.”
As if they were two magnets pulled together, Heidi and Bradley found themselves locked in an embrace, the hospital sheets twirled around their legs. Lips found lips, hands found hair, necks curled and dove, swan-like.
She kissed him to make up for the time they’d been robbed of, kissed him to drink in that scent, and kissed him to embark upon their future. She kissed him more soulfully than he had ever been kissed before.
“Heidi Morris,” he said, lips running over her ear and down her neck, “I love you.”
She gasped at the sensation of his mouth, which she’d missed more than she’d even suspected.
“Bradley Fox,” she replied, tugging him closer, “I love you, too.”
“What do you say to spending the rest of our lives together?”
“Let’s,” she said simply, and brought his mouth back up to meet hers.
They fell back onto the pillows of the bed, two souls in heaven.
Chapter 21
Bradley
Seven Months Later
Bradley stood back and looked at his work with satisfaction.
Not bad, he thought smugly. Not bad at all.
He’d used up all the tinsel, so had moved on to pine leaves, and then when those were down, got the fake blankets of snow that were made out of soft cotton. On the fireplace was a small diorama of a train passing through a snow-covered town. It even had miniature people and sheep.
He had set it up only on Saturday, but by Monday, Isaac had insisted it was his favorite thing in the whole wide world, and that it needed to be left up all year, not just for Christmas. What he’d actually said was a little closer to “Goo ga baba,” but Bradley knew by the delight in his eyes and the way he tried to eat all the toy buildings that he loved it.
Heidi had moved in after Isaac Kanē was born, and the seven months since had been pure magic. Their son had been a heavy sleeper thus far—though, who knew what the terrible twos would bring—and generally, every morning of their life looked like the best day of someone else’s.
Bradley woke up first, always, and watched her peacefully slumbering. “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” he’d whisper as he kissed Heidi’s forehead, in what had become his morning catchphrase.
They would throw on workout clothes—or try to; sometimes it would take them a little longer to get started, because Bradley would see her naked in the dawn light and need to postpone the run for some other types of exercise.
After that, they would gingerly lift Isaac Kanē from his crib, his little fists waving around at the disturbance. If he was hungry, Heidi would feed him, but usually, he fell back asleep by the time he was settled firmly in the stroller.
Together, with a speaker strapped to the stroller, often playing classic rock, they’d jog out of the side door and onto one of the nearby streets. The palm fronds did little to protect from the glaring sunlight, so they got early starts, before the sun had come fully into the sky.
They’d run, pushing Isaac, for a three-mile lap, and arrive home barely out of breath. Bradley might technically have been the athlete, but Heidi was also in killer shape; she’d strapped her sneakers back on only a few weeks after giving birth.
When they got back home, Isaac would be wide awake and ready to play. They coddled him, kissed him, cooed over every new ability (look, a laugh!) and so on. Any small sign of advancement in his developmental progress would leave them beaming for hours.
Bradley had, at the advice of his new agent, joined social media, and all he posted were pictures of Isaac in various outfits and activities. Fans grumbled—where were the football training pics? The shirtless cover photos?—but Bradley was immune to their whines.
And when the family went away for weekend retreats, as they so often did, the new agent, Bob, would take over the feed. Technically, that would be Heidi’s job as Bradley’s PR manager, but neither wanted their getaways interrupted by the internet. Besides, Bob had a good handle on things.
He was an older guy, a bit new to social media, but great at finding sponsors for Bradley and coordinating with Heidi to ensure they fit the “new image.” A true image, as it so happened—one of domestic bliss as a proud papa.
All the new sponsors had also helped finance their house in Miami, where they’d moved after Bradley got transferred to the Miami Eels. There were days when he missed the boys from the Sharks, and the years they’d played together, but Miami was so much more fun that he didn’t see a point in complaining.
There was a beach at the edge of their property, quite close to where they docked their speedboat. The boat, named ‘Surely Temple,’ had been a gift to Heidi after Isaac was born. She’d claimed that the labor had been a straightforward one, and thus didn’t warrant a gift, but Bradley had allowed no argument on the subject.
Besides, he liked seeing her face when they were on t
he water; she lit up from within, and stuck her head off the boat to feel the breeze, like a puppy leaning out the car window. They’d gotten Isaac a little inflatable jacket, and would drive out to the middle of the ocean, where they’d sit as a family with a picnic, watching the sunset.
And, besides Miami being an all-around better time, the Eels were no slacks. In fact, Bradley’s intuition told him they may well be posed to go all the way to the Super Bowl. He kept these thoughts private, though; he didn’t want to jinx anything.
Heidi, with all the media drama behind her, had seamlessly slid back into her PR career. It helped that they were out of Orlando, which had become toxic. In Miami, she was able to network with ease, no trail of dirty laundry hitched to her heel.
It also didn’t hurt that she’d gotten all 53 of Bradley’s new teammates onto her roster. Even though she could only work part-time because of the baby, business was booming, so much so that she was trying to persuade Meredith to move down to Miami and help her run things.
The team loved her, and jokingly told Bradley that he was good and all, but they were more grateful for his awesome wife. Bradley was equally amazed watching her multitask, going out for drinks with potential new clients and still getting home in time to put Isaac to bed.
So, here they were, present day—Christmas morning. All last-minute house prep had been finished, stockings hung from the fireplace, etc. They had a real, rustic working fireplace in this house; in the move, they’d decided to find a home that was a little more family-friendly and a little less modern bachelor pad.
Eventually, they’d settled for a massive colonial with distinct Spanish influences. There were rose bushes, a swimming pool with colorful painted tiles, and a winding stairwell through the center of the house. It had been built in the 1920s, and there were hidden passageways, a remnant of prohibition. Down the line, there would be plenty of places perfect for hide-and-seek with Isaac when he was old enough to walk.
It turned out that ‘Winter Wonderland’ was a totally unrealistic theme for a Spanish-influenced house in Florida. Heidi and Bradley didn’t care, though; their son would get a snow-covered Christmas, even if that snow was just cotton.
The Baby Blindside (Baby Surprise Romance) Page 14