Game Player

by B. J. Harvey

  “Hell, man. I know I should be pissed as fuck at you for knocking my sister up but after all of that, I’ll bloody stand up there and give her away to you if she’ll let me.”

  Oh, thank fuck for that.

  “I’ve already told her we need to get married. I kind of got carried away when she told me she was pregnant.”

  The guys all chuckle and I soon join them.

  “When Zoe told me she was having Nate, I went straight to the computer and set up a baby registry at Babies ’R’ Us,” Noah informs me.

  “I stormed into Mac’s house like a caveman and made her admit she loved me,” Daniel adds.

  “That worked?” I ask out of the interest.

  “Considering we’ve been married for almost five years and have three kids together, I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

  All eyes turn to Sean, the oldest out of all the guys, waiting for his story. “What?” he asks. “Sam wrapped up the positive pregnancy test when she was carrying Megan and put it under the Christmas tree, of all places. We were already married by then.” A small smile plays on his lips. “I asked her to marry me and married her on the rooftop of my apartment the same day. There was no way I was going to give her a chance to change her mind once she dropped her defenses.”

  “Smart man,” Noah muses, and we all chuckle.

  “These women are wily. They think they know what they want, but sometimes we have to make a statement to get the message across loud and clear,” Daniel says.

  That’s what I’m banking on.

  “Don’t look at me,” Zach says defensively, a little too much if you ask me. “There are no single women left in the group. I’m casting my net far, far away from this little incestuous group of yours.”

  Both Daniel and Zander raise their eyebrows his way, but he’s quick to down his drink and stand up. “Anyone want a refill? It’s my round.”

  Sean, Zander and Daniel all nod at him for another drink. I shake my head, as does Noah.

  “So have you talked to her this week?” Noah asks me.

  “I’m guessing you’d know if I had. I figured space was best at this stage. I want to get all my ducks in a row before I tell her how it’s going to be.”

  “You think she’s gonna fight you on this plan of yours?” he asks, his tone now serious.

  I tilt my head to the side and look at him. “Doesn’t matter if she does fight it; she’s not gonna win. I want her; I’m making sure I’m going to have her. If she protests and decides to fight what we have between us, then she’ll be sorely disappointed, because this isn’t a game anymore. This is our life, our future, and there is no way in hell I’m letting her go.”

  One month after I screwed up.

  One month after screwing up and thinking I was doing what was best for myself and Matt.

  So many times I’ve wanted to go to him, to tell him that I want everything he offered—that I want him. But embarrassment and stubborn pride have stopped me.

  Walking out of the OB/GYN office, I feel like a weight has been lifted.

  I woke up this morning with some spotting and immediately freaked the fuck out; my first thought was that I might lose the baby.

  Everything had been going fine. My HCG levels were high and along with the never-ending morning sickness, I’d been assured that the pregnancy was going well. The last thing I expected was to go to the bathroom and find blood where there shouldn’t be any. It instantly had me fearing the worst. I’d rung Kate and she’d told me to call the OB, and she’d left work to drive me over.

  I was a mess when Kate arrived at my door.

  “I can’t lose my baby,” I sobbed. I was inconsolable and as much as she tried to reassure me that everything would be fine, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—consider anything other than the fact that I was losing one of the most precious things in the world to me and there was nothing I could do about it.

  When I see the baby’s heartbeat flashing on the ultrasound screen, I burst into tears. As if it hadn’t hit me already, I realize that a life was growing inside of me and that I now not only had a responsibility to look after myself, I had a piece of Matt and me—a baby created out of love—that was relying on me for everything.

  I’m twelve weeks now. I’d argued with the doctor when he told me how far along I was, mainly because that meant Matt got one past the goalie that first weekend we slept together. I was adamant—and I’d made that clear to the doctor—that there was no way I’d missed a birth control pill, but he just gave me a knowing smile and said, “Sometimes things are meant to be.”

  “So really,” I say to Kate on the way home, “it doesn’t matter what measures you take. If the swimmers are determined, they’re gonna get right on in there to get the job done.”

  She sniggers and nods. “Pretty much. Although, if you really want to be protected, you use birth control and condoms.”

  “Yeah. I must admit, that gross feeling of jizz dropping down your legs is totally not sexy.”

  Kate snorts loudly. “Amen to that. It’s definitely not as sexy as they make it out to be in romance books.”

  “And it leads to predicaments like this,” I say, gliding my hand over my stomach.

  “Awesome predicaments though,” she whispers.

  “Yeah . . .”

  “You’ve got to take it easy for the next two weeks—doctor’s orders. What are you going to do?”

  “I think I’ll just stay in and binge watch Supernatural or something.”

  “So you’ll be home tonight?” she asks, curiously.

  “Yeah. I think Nat said something about Jase having a family thing, so she might come over. Otherwise it’ll just be me, Jensen Ackles, and a pepperoni and sausage pizza.”

  “Cravings.”

  “Totally savory.”

  “They say that means it must be a boy.”

  “I don’t care what it is, as long as it has ten fingers and ten toes . . . and maybe Matt’s dimple.”

  “You heard from him?”

  “No. I was thinking today that I should let him know when I have doctor’s appointments and scans. He might want to come along.”

  Kate nods, but doesn’t tell me anything. Zoe has been the provider of all Matt-related information. I haven’t seen him since the day I told him I was pregnant.

  I should’ve contacted him; I should’ve reached out to him and made that first move. In all honesty, I pushed him away as a knee-jerk reaction to the pregnancy and not trusting my judgement when it came to him.

  “Do you want to be with him?” Kate asks softly.

  Have I said how much I love my sister-in-law? “I want everything he said he wanted to give me.”

  “You think it might help if you put him out of his misery and tell him that?” she says with a wry smile.

  “I’ve got one foot in my big-girl panties . . .” I reply cryptically.

  “Well hurry up and pull those suckers up, ’cause we’re sick of seeing you both miserable.”

  One thing’s for sure—even if I have irrevocably fucked up things with Matt, I have an awesome support system and family around me.

  Kate pulls up outside my apartment building. “Seriously, Mia. You’ve got to take it easy. Bed rest means bed . . . rest. All weekend. We want that baby of yours to stick,” she warns.

  “Yes, Aunty Kate,” I reply mockingly.

  “Oooh, I like that. You better have a girl though; I need another princess to spoil. I don’t think the world could handle another male Taylor. The three we’ve got already are enough trouble as it is.”

  She’s not wrong.

  “Matt, your dad’s here,” Jase calls out across the room we’re working on.

  I’m busy doing last minute checks before the building refurbishment’s final inspection later in the week. All things going well, we’ll get final sign-off on Friday, and I will be able to hand it over to the client ahead of schedule and five percent under budget. I wasn’t expecting to see Dad again until the end of the week tho
ugh so an impromptu visit is definitely a surprise.

  Five minutes later, he appears through the doorway, looking around the room and walking toward me with a huge grin on his face.

  “Your mother is going to be over the moon,” he announces.

  My head jerks back in surprise. “Why?”

  “Because when you sign off on this job next week, I’ll officially become semi-retired.”

  I stand frozen in place, watching him as he offers me everything I’ve worked so hard for.

  “What?” I rasp, bending down to drop my hammer on the ground before standing up to face him.

  “You heard me.” He steps closer and grabs my shoulder, giving me a quick squeeze before moving away. “You’ve proven yourself ready, Matt, and I’ve always been proud of you, but I’ve never been as proud as I am right now, seeing what you’ve achieved with this project.”

  I may be thirty years old, but it never gets old hearing my parents say how proud they are of me. Now, twice in a month, I’ve had my parents tell me they’re proud of me. The last time was three weeks ago when I drove out to my parents’ house to tell them they would be grandparents again in eight months’ time.

  I clear my throat and look at the floor to compose myself glancing back up at him. “Thank you.”

  “I should be thanking you. Now I get to work on my golf handicap more than one day a week,” he replies with a grin. “And annoy your mother more often.”

  “Bet she’s looking forward to that,” I reply, unable to wipe the smile off my face.

  “Probably not, but she is looking forward to the two week Caribbean cruise I’ve just booked for her at the beginning of summer.”

  “That would’ve won you a lot of points.”

  “You’re telling me,” he says with a grin. “You won more with your little announcement, though. When do you close on the house?”

  The other development in the past month is that I put an offer in on a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house not far from Mac and Daniel’s place. The bank was foreclosing, and I swooped in with an offer they couldn’t refuse. With everything sorted, all of the inspections carried out, and my mortgage approved, it’s now another thing I can cross off my Future With Mia list.

  “Tomorrow at five p.m.”

  “Excellent. And when are you planning on seeing Mia?”

  “Friday night after work.”

  “Does she know this?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “And are you feeling good about everything?” he says, continuing to grill me. When I told them about Mia and the baby, Dad started to give me a lecture about taking responsibility for my actions. When I stood up and laid it out for him exactly what had happened and what I was going to do about it, he backed off and then shocked the shit out of me by asking how he could help.

  Helping me fast-track the mortgage by letting me use collateral from the business—half of which I own—was Mom and Dad’s contribution to ticking off that part of the Future With Mia list.

  “Now, can you spare a few hours today? I’m sure Jase can cover you for an afternoon.” He looks over to Jase, who just nods and sends a knowing smile at us both.

  “Okay. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. I just figured it was time you went ring shopping, and then you’re going to join Noah and myself for a round of golf.”

  “I can’t take the afternoon off. I’ve got too much to do,” I protest.

  “And that is precisely why you are having the rest of the afternoon with me because you’ve been working yourself into the ground. I know you’ve been doing twelve-hour days and working six-day weeks since the Mia thing. You can call this an intervention. Your mother, Noah, Zoe, and I are all worried about you, and have decided to do something about it. Zoe is taking you ring shopping so that you’re prepared for Friday; Noah and I are taking your mind off everything with nine holes of golf and drinks at the club afterwards.”

  I open my mouth to argue but Dad just glares and me, shakes his head, and then points to the door.

  Guess I’m taking the afternoon off then.

  I check myself in the mirror one last time before grabbing my keys and wallet off the counter and walking toward the door.

  I’ve never been as nervous as I am right now.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’m as confident as they come, but four weeks without seeing Mia has driven me crazy. Noah refused to speak with me yesterday because he knew that my nerves were completely shot and would stay that way until after I’d seen her.

  Four weeks without her smile, her sass, and her sexy body. Four weeks of not being there for her while she suffered through morning sickness, nausea, and all of the other symptoms I’ve been reading about in Noah’s What To Expect When You’re Expecting book.

  Then Zander rang me an hour ago to tell me that Mia had a scare this morning and had been bleeding. He assured me that both she and the baby were fine and after a few days of bed rest, she’d be in the clear.

  My heart had stopped and I’d dropped everything, left work without so much as a goodbye, and came home for a quick shower before I went over to see her and demand that she give up the fight and let me take care of her.

  I love her. I have to believe she loves me too. She’s holding me at arm’s length because she doesn’t want me to feel trapped.

  I fucking want to be trapped. I want her tying me so fucking tight that there’s no way I can ever get free. There’s nowhere else I want to be or anyone else I want to be with.

  And it’s about time she fucking accepted that.

  Opening my front door, I step out and come face to face with a wide-eyed and shocked Mia.

  “What are you doing here?” I growl.

  “What?” she asks, her entire body jerking at my tone.

  “You’re supposed to be on bed rest. Get inside and sit down, for fuck’s sake.” Concern for her and our baby converges with my anger and frustration at her stubbornness. I step sideways and hold the door open, swinging my arm wide toward my living room.

  Her eyes flash just as she lifts one of her hands to rest on a jutted out hip. “Telling me what to do now?” she snaps, but she does that while walking past me and into my apartment. I get a whiff of her perfume and my cock—the discerning bastard that he is—pops out of its Mia-induced hibernation at the memory.

  “You have no fucking idea, Legs. Get your ass on my couch,” I command, earning a frustrated huff.

  “Were you going out?” she asks, as I watch her tight, jeans-covered butt walk over to my couch. She sits down on the edge and wrings her hands in her lap. She’s anxious, and every fiber of my being wants to put her at ease.

  “I was on my way to see you, actually.”

  “What? Why?” she asks, ridiculously, I might add, considering she’s the one who turned up on my doorstep out of the blue.

  Shutting the door behind me, I walk to the couch and sit down beside her—right down next to her. She looks uneasy and starts to inch away, but I quickly wrap my hand around her thigh and pull it hard against mine.

  What I really want to do is pull her into my lap and hold her captive while making her listen to everything I want to say to her, but I know she’s more likely to knee me in the ’nads than sit there and take it all in.

  “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?” I ask, my heart racing at the thought of anything happening to either of them.

  She gives me a small smile. “Yeah. I had a scan this morning and saw the OB/GYN. Everything looks fine. Apparently spotting can be quite common in pregnancy, but I was kind of freaked so I wanted to get checked out.”

  “I’m glad you did, beautiful. I wish you’d called me.”

  She looks tentative, completely unlike the Mia Roberts I know. “I wanted to. I just . . .” she looks down and wrings her hands in her lap, “I just didn’t know what you’d say.”

  “I would’ve been right there beside you, holding your hand, and worrying like fuck that something was wrong. I’m glad you reached out to
Kate but, Mia . . .” I turn toward her and lift my hand to cover hers. “I was always coming back to you. There was never a doubt in my fucking mind that I wouldn’t be with you. I nearly had a fucking heart attack when Zander called me today.”

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Beautiful, don’t be sorry. Just tell me that you’re going to let me be there for you.”

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think . . .” she says. I can’t read anything from her voice or her expression, and it’s doing a number on me.

  My heart doesn’t know whether to stop or beat frantically. It’s caught in a flux between slowing down to a halt and vibrating out of my chest. For the first time since I started this thing with her, my confidence slips a little and let doubt creep in as to whether she’s actually going to want all of the things I’ve done for her and the baby—for the three of us—while we’ve been apart.

  “Legs, please don’t tell me you came over to—”

  “No . . . shit . . . fuck no!” she says, her voice getting louder.

  “Thank fuck,” I spit out, leaning over and putting my head in my hands, releasing the breath I was holding in.

  “What on earth would make you think that?” she asks.

  I sit up straight and raise an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I think that? I thought you were . . .”

  Shocking the shit out of me, she stands up and walks over to my window that overlooks the common grass courtyard for my complex and doesn’t say a word.

  Now I’m worried and getting kind of pissed. I don’t know what the hell is going on and this situation—which was supposed to be under my control—now feels like it’s anything but.

  “I came over to fight for you, Matt. I came to apologize, not . . .”

  Then she wraps her arms around her middle and her body starts shaking. I jump up off the couch and rush to her side, wanting to comfort her. When I reach her, putting my arm on her shoulder and spinning her around to pull her into my arms, I realize she’s laughing her ass off.

  “What’s so fucking funny?” I snap, not having a chance to take a deep breath and recover from the whiplash my emotions are being subjected to.