Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  I ran a hand over my face, but I looked him in the eye. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry—”

  “You don’t have a fucking thing to be sorry about, Jonny.”

  “No, I do.” The list of reasons why only seemed to keep growing, too. I sat down in the chair near his bed, even though I really felt like pacing. I felt like a piece of shit for what I was about to do to him, but when the time came that he learned about the baby, I didn’t want him to be mad at Sara. I wanted him to be mad at me. I figured this was a good way of making sure that happened—the only way I’d thought of, actually—and it would protect her from the brunt of his anger.

  “Sara told me you were looking out for her the last couple of days,” he said, waving my words aside as though they were insignificant. “She said she’d be sure to thank you for me, but I wanted to do it myself.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t thank me. Not until you hear—”

  “No, let me.” He struggled to sit more upright in his bed, grimacing in pain as even more color leached away from his face. “She’s always worried about me and trying to take care of me, and I worry that she doesn’t have someone doing the same for her. I—” He cut himself off and struggled for air. This had been too much already, and I hadn’t even said what I’d come to say. “I haven’t done a very good job being her father. It’s been all about the job for so long that sometimes I forget she just needs a dad. Sometimes she needs to not have to be the parent in this relationship. She shouldn’t ever have had to be.”

  He looked as though he might cry, which had me squirming. I was fine with most people crying, but the idea of my coach being one of them just felt all kinds of wrong.

  “She does have someone looking out for her,” I said, hoping to curtail any waterworks. “Me. I have been for a while.”

  Scotty’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head like he was going to say something.

  If I let him start talking now, I might not be able to get it all out. I kept going before he could interrupt me again, bracing myself for the yelling that was sure to follow—because I was sure as hell about to earn a good yelling session, after what I was about to do. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Sara and I have been seeing each other behind your back for a few months. I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t think you’d like the fact that one of your players was dating your daughter.”

  He blanched to an even paler white than he already had been, but his eyes flashed with the anger I’d been expecting. Good. He should be angry. That was the whole purpose of this—to get it directed at me so it would deflect away from Sara.

  Anger seemed to be the way Scotty functioned, the way he got through life. I couldn’t understand why she adored him so much if he treated her the way he treated everyone else, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was different with her. If so, I wanted to keep it that way.

  “She wanted to tell you,” I said before he could interrupt. “She didn’t like keeping secrets from you, but I made her promise not to say a word. I thought you might bench me or try to get me sent down to the AHL to try to force me to break up with her. But with everything that’s happened, I need you to know the truth. I’m crazy about her, and I’m going to keep seeing her, and there’s nothing you can do to me that will make me change my mind about that. But I just don’t want to keep lying to you, and I don’t want her to have to lie to you any longer, either.”

  He wouldn’t stop staring at me, but he didn’t say a word. Not a single fucking word. For the first time, I realized that he and Sara had the same eyes. Clear blue. Bright. Full of some emotion that I couldn’t fucking interpret. Anger, yes. There was definitely some anger there. But there was more, and it was the more that was confusing me.

  A nurse came in and walked over to the other side of his bed carrying a new IV bag. “Visit’s over,” she said to me. “He needs to rest.” She set to work changing the bag.

  I wished he would say something before I left. Anything. Anything at all. He could tell me to go fuck myself. He could threaten to kill me. He could curse me and rail at me and do all the screaming and yelling I’d come to expect from him. At least then I’d know where I stood.

  Granted, I doubted the nurse would be too happy with me if he started doing anything like that. That was what got him here in the first place. It didn’t matter what she would think about it, though, because he didn’t even attempt to do any of it.

  I shook my head and got up to leave, a frustrated breath working its way out of my lungs.

  He grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong for as weak as he looked. “Jonny.”

  I turned back to face him.

  “Don’t you dare fucking hurt my baby girl. You keep looking out for her.”

  Whether what I’d told him was true or not, he ought to be fucking livid with me about it, but he seemed okay. No, with the way he was reacting, it almost felt as though he approved, which was the last fucking thing in the world I would have ever expected. The anger was still there, of course, but it seemed like that was more because we’d been keeping the truth from him than from the fact that I was dating his daughter. I didn’t know how to take that. His reaction caused a giant fucking lump to form in my throat that wouldn’t move in either direction.

  “I’m not going to hurt her, Coach,” I ground out. That much, at least, was true. I was doing everything I could to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt at all.

  He nodded. “Get the fuck out of here. I need to rest, and you have a plane to catch.”

  DADDY WAS IN a really odd mood the day the guys left. I was pretty sure it was because his team—his players and coaches and the entire group he’d had a hand in preparing all season—was leaving to go play in the postseason and he was stuck in the hospital. It probably didn’t help that Dana had come to visit him with me. He tended to get kind of quiet when other people were around, at least when he wasn’t screaming his head off.

  I didn’t mind that he wasn’t feeling very talkative, since I was in a mood of my own. Everything that had happened between me and Cam just left me feeling confused and conflicted, and I didn’t really want to be around anyone until I was able to sort out what I was feeling.

  Dana and I didn’t stay long. None of us really had much to say, and Daddy had his grumpy face on. We stuck around until the cardiologist came in and told us that Daddy would be moving out of the ICU the next day, barring any complications, and then we left.

  Once he was out of the ICU, they wouldn’t have him under such strict visitation limits and I’d be able to spend more time with him. I’d be sure to go up on my own then so we could talk about whatever was bothering him.

  In the meanwhile, I headed back to Dana’s house with her.

  The dining room table was covered with wedding stuff—invitation designs, lookbooks from florists and decorators, pamphlets from potential venues, color swatches. You name it, you could find it on that table.

  Dana took one look at all of it, shook her head, and curled up on the couch in the living room. She toed off her shoes and tucked her legs up beside her. “Mom’s flying in this weekend to help us plan. She’s bringing cake samples from the baker we agreed on.”

  I sat down next to her, sinking back into the cushions. I grabbed one of the throw pillows from the corner and tugged it onto my lap, holding it over my belly. “Will there be enough for me to help sample?” I tried to mask the fact that I was fishing for an invite to be involved in the wedding stuff, but I totally was.

  “I was counting on your input,” she said, laughing. “And if you can get enough time away from your dad, Rachel and I want you to come help us when we go dress shopping. Laura and Katie have already signed on, too.”

  “I’ll probably need some excuse to get away for a little while by the time you do that.” Daddy would be getting discharged sometime over the weekend, most likely. Then it would be the two of us, all day, all the time. I wouldn’t even have him going to work to break it all up. That was going to be way too much da
ddy-daughter time. For both of us.

  “Good.” She shifted around until she was sitting cross-legged like a kindergartener during story time. “Rachel wants Noelle to come with us, too.”

  Noelle was an odd cross between a bohemian and a fortune-teller or something, totally out there not only in demeanor, but in her clothing choices. I’d never seen her wearing anything other than bright-colored, long, floral skirts. She was not exactly the height of fashion. In fact, she might be the total opposite. That said, she was possibly the sweetest and most selfless person I’d ever known. That girl was eternally kindhearted, always trying to help everyone around her out even though she might need more help than anyone. She infuriated me in the best way.

  “She’s not going to let Noelle influence wedding dress choices, is she?” I didn’t want to be rude, because I really did adore Noelle. But I would never let her decide what I was going to wear.

  “Nah. Rachel just wants her to be included. Just so we can all get to know her better.”

  “Okay.” That sounded like a great plan since none of us had really spent much time with her yet, and I expected that she and Kally would be around for at least a few seasons.

  “Maybe we can look at bridesmaid dresses while we’re there, too.” She just left that hanging between us, as though I hadn’t been dying to know who she wanted to have as her bridesmaids.

  “And who would you be shopping for those for?”

  “Hopefully you. I was going to ask you after the game the other night, but then things…everything…happened. And Laura and Katie. Noelle, if Rachel can convince her. Maddie and Tuck are going to be our flower girl and ring bearer, of course.”

  Tuck was Maddie’s little brother, Rachel’s son. The whole lot of them were petite, redheaded, freckled bunches of adorableness, but Tuck pretty much always stole the show. He had a big enough personality to take over Hollywood, New York, and Bollywood all on his own, all at the same time.

  “Of course,” I said, laughing. “So you really want me to be one of your bridesmaids?” I don’t know why it surprised me so much. Maybe because I’d never been in anyone’s wedding party before, other than as a flower girl for one of my mother’s friends back when I was so little that I didn’t remember it. I only knew I had been in the wedding because of the pictures.

  “We do.” Dana leaned in, tucking her blond hair behind her ear. “Me and Rachel, both of us. We decided we’d share everything in the wedding. The guys are, too. They’re picking out a set of joint groomsmen, since they would each choose the other if we weren’t doing the weddings all at the same time.”

  “You realize that’s all sickeningly sweet, right? Like, almost on the verge of certifiable?”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  “You know me,” I said. “‘Cotton Candy’ is my middle name.”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking you were more ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame.’ A bit of melodrama and a lot of tears.” She winked when she said it.

  I laughed. “You don’t even know the half of it lately.”

  “You’re right. So tell me.”

  “I don’t even know where to start. I don’t have the first fucking clue…”

  Dana pulled a throw pillow out from behind her back, tossed it at me, and then leaned back against the arm rest. “How about you start with whatever’s going on with you and Jonny? I don’t have the first inkling what it is, but it looks hot. The way he was staring at you when we got to your place? Wow.”

  Hot didn’t even begin to describe it, whatever it was. And that kiss this morning before he left…

  I wasn’t going to be able to keep this shit from Dana and the other girls for long. Hell, I didn’t want to keep it from them. Maybe they could help me to figure out what was going on in my head. Lord knew I wasn’t getting there on my own.

  “Okay.” I took a breath and grabbed the pillow she’d tossed at me, adding it to the one I was already holding onto. “So he’s kind of… Well, he calls it pursuing me.”

  Over the next hour or so, I told her everything that had happened in the last few days, or at least the parts of it that I could manage to talk about—the fact that I’d slept with Cam, the way he was so fucking gentle with me, how I didn’t know if we were a couple or if he just wanted us to be a couple, that he’d said he wanted to go with me when I finally got around to going to the baby doctor but didn’t want me to wait so instead he was sending me with a list of questions…

  Which, of course, meant I had to tell her I was pregnant. And confused. And scared.

  I hadn’t admitted that last part to anyone but myself, not until I told Dana. But I was. I was scared to death because my mother had been the worst example in the world of what a mother should be, so how the hell was I supposed to be able to do this? And how the fuck could I do it alone? I didn’t think I could, but I was even more positive that I couldn’t give the baby away or have an abortion or anything else they said was an option for women in my position. I couldn’t hold it against anyone who chose to do either of those things, but I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t do that.

  I wanted a baby.

  I wanted a family.

  I wanted to have more than just Daddy, especially now that I had to question how much longer I would have him in my life. But at the same time it scared me. Anytime I let anyone but my father in that deep, they left.

  Was that a good enough reason to have this baby, though? I just didn’t know.

  Dana sat there and let me pour all of this out on her. She didn’t try to solve my problems for me. She didn’t judge me. She just listened and hugged me and got me tissues when I needed tissues. I didn’t have any more answers when I was done, but I felt a lot better that I’d gotten it all off my chest.

  “Well,” Dana said when I finally stopped blubbering about my problems, “I guess we have to tell Laura that she’s going to have to keep the wine to herself for a while.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “But that also means we’ll get to plan a baby shower soon.”

  I wished I were able to get more excited about that. Maybe someday. Hopefully someday in the not too distant future.

  I COULDN’T BRING myself to stay at Cam’s house without him there, but I figured, since he’d given me a key, I could go over and hang out with Buster for a while. Or at least I told myself that was why I was currently on Cam’s couch. Yeah, Cam was supposed to have a dog sitter coming to check on Buster, walk him, feed him… But that fluffy little dog seemed to really like me, and it couldn’t hurt him to have more attention and affection, and it wasn’t like it was a hardship for me.

  He was standing on his two back paws on my lap, trying to lick my face, when my phone rang. It wasn’t one of my special ring tones, so I had to fish the phone out of my pocket to see who it was. Cam. Hell. So I guess he’d been serious when he’d told me he intended to call me every night.

  For a moment, I debated letting it go to voice mail, but that would be really cowardly of me. I slid my thumb across the screen to answer and held the phone up to my ear. “Hello?”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left.”

  Buster barked, since I’d stopped scratching his head.

  “Are you at my house?” Cam asked.

  “Yeah. I came to see Buster.”

  “Lucky dog.” He didn’t sound facetious in the least.

  “I’m going back to Dana’s in a bit,” I said. For whatever reason, I didn’t want him thinking I was going to stay here.

  “Too bad for Buster. He’d love to share the bed with you.”

  That statement led to all sorts of memories of the last few nights, especially with the needy tone in Cam’s voice, and I got all hot and flustered and needed to change the subject. “So you guys got in all right?”

  “Yeah. In the hotel now. Jens left with a few of the guys, so I thought it would be a good time to stay behind and call you.”

  “Oh. Jens is your road roommate?” I knew that in the NHL,
until a guy reached a certain level of seniority, he had a roommate when the team traveled. I guess I’d just assumed that Cam had already reached that point in his career. I hadn’t really thought about it much, though. Andrew Jensen was a young, hot shot defenseman who was new to the team this year. He wasn’t too young, though, and he wasn’t one of the guys who liked to party all the time like Keith Burns, so I supposed that was as good a fit for Cam as there was on this year’s team.

  If Jens was with the team on the trip, he must not have been hurt too badly in that fight, I realized. I hadn’t even spared him a thought since the end of the game, when they’d taken him off the ice on a stretcher. My mind had been too busy with other concerns.

  “All season long,” Cam said. “He still can’t play for a few more days—concussion protocol. He’s not having any symptoms, but he was out cold on the ice.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad he’ll be okay.”

  “Jens is a good guy to room with, all things considered. Doesn’t snore. Keeps things tidy. Doesn’t talk so much I want to punch him just to shut him up.”

  “You wouldn’t punch him.”

  “Nope. Not as long as we play for the same team, at least. But a few of the boys sometimes need a good punch in the face.”

  “You know, a few of them might think the same thing about you sometimes.”

  “They are welcome to punch me anytime they want, as long as they’re willing to face the consequences. I never hit a guy without thinking through what will come of it.”

  “Even when you went after that guy in the last game?”

  Buster finally settled down and curled up on my lap. I lazily petted him, running my fingers through his fur and rubbing his ears. He let out a contented sigh.

  “Even then.” Cam fell silent for a moment. “There were a few consequences I hadn’t anticipated, though.”

  He must still blame himself for Daddy’s heart attack, then. I wished I knew how to convince him otherwise.