by Kat Mizera
I tossed and turned that night, determined to find her in the morning, talk to her, figure out what had gone wrong and try to fix it. It was a long shot, because our lives were going in two entirely different directions, but I had to try. More than that, I needed to make sure she was okay. I couldn’t imagine what had happened that required her to go home to recover, but I hated that we were in a place where she hadn’t felt comfortable reaching out.
I was up and out early, getting breakfast and then settling in front of her dorm. It was a two-hour drive from Brattleboro and she would have to go through the front of the dorm to get in. I didn’t know what I’d do if she didn’t show up, and I had to leave for the game tonight by three, but I’d sit here until the very last minute if I had to.
Luckily, I didn’t. I spotted her immediately, walking with her friend Chastity and a guy I didn’t know. The guy was carrying her stuff and Ellie was walking slower than usual. Definitely like someone who’d been sick.
I got up and approached her slowly. “Ellie.”
Her step faltered but she looked up as if she’d been expecting me. “Hi.”
“El?” The guy was eyeing me suspiciously.
“It’s okay, Dylan. I’m fine.”
“You want us to stay?” Chastity asked.
She shook her head. “I’m good, really.”
“Let me carry your stuff upstairs,” Dylan said.
“I’ve got it.” I reached out a hand for the two bags.
Dylan hesitated but Ellie nodded and he grudgingly handed them over.
“Call if you need me, okay?” Chastity asked, hugging her.
“Thanks. Both of you.”
Her friends walked away and she dug out her key card. “You want to come up?”
“Yeah, I do.” I followed her to the door. “What happened, Ellie? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me?”
“There was no reason to worry you,” she said, walking in and heading toward the elevator. You needed a special key card to use it as it was usually just for disabled students. Ellie had access as an R.A. but we always used the stairs, so she had to be hurting.
“Of course there was a reason,” I muttered. “I would have been there for you.”
“You were in Connecticut,” she said. “So even if we hadn’t been broken up, you still wouldn’t have been here.”
I grimaced because she was right. Short of a death in the family, there was no way I would have been able to leave Connecticut to be with her. And things like that would be even worse when I got to Vegas.
We got up to her room and I put her things down, watching as she sank onto the bed, wincing.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, pulling the chair from her desk over to sit beside the bed.
“It’s kind of a long story,” she whispered, looking me in the eye for the first time today. She was tired, her face pale with dark circles under her eyes. God, I hated that she’d gone through whatever this was alone.
“I have plenty of time,” I said, leaning forward and resting my forearms on my thighs.
“Well…” She took a breath. “Remember all the broken condoms?”
I frowned. “Yeah.”
“My IUD slipped out of place and though the doctors aren’t sure, it was probably in a position that you rubbed up against something when you were inside of me, tearing the condoms.”
“Oh, Jesus.” I had a feeling I knew what was coming and my stomach clenched painfully.
“On Thursday I started bleeding. Not some spotting like my usual periods, but full-on soak through all the layers of clothing type bleeding. And then the cramping started.” She told me how she’d done her best to suffer through it, eventually calling Chastity and agreeing to go to the E.R.
“Oh, baby.” I reached for her hand. “Was it a miscarriage?”
Tears filled her eyes. “It was ectopic and one of my fallopian tubes burst when I got to the hospital.”
I blinked. I’d heard of ectopic pregnancies but didn’t know what it was. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means exactly.”
“Ectopic pregnancy is when the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube, which is what carries eggs from the ovaries to the uterus. Sometimes it happens in other parts of the body, like the cervix, but mostly it’s the fallopian tubes. Anyway, the baby can’t survive there and the growing tissue, as the baby gets bigger, can cause life-threatening problems to the mother.”
“To you.” My heart squeezed painfully and I moved from the chair to the bed, holding out my arms.
She fell into them without hesitation. “We made a baby,” she whispered. “And then it died before I even knew it existed. I’m sorry!” She burst into tears.
“Sorry?” I was on the verge of tears myself, the scratchy feeling behind my eyes intensifying as she cried. “What are you sorry for? We were so careful and there was no way to know your IUD had moved… Please don’t cry. It wasn’t your fault. Jesus, none of this was your fault.” A million emotions whipped through me, running the gamut from sadness to relief to pain. Pain that she’d suffered alone. Relief that there wasn’t going to be a baby in my life at this stage of the game. Guilt that I felt that way. And then more pain that our baby had died, almost killing Ellie too. So much fucking pain, but all I wanted to do was take some from her. Her sobs wracked her whole body, as if she’d been holding them in, and I would have done anything to ease her suffering, despite my own.
She cried for a long time and all I could do was hold her. I felt even worse than before that I’d been in Connecticut, playing hockey and oblivious to what she’d been going through. That we’d made a baby and subsequently lost it. That all of this had happened despite how careful we’d been. It was a lot to process, but I could do that later, when I was alone. Right now, Ellie needed me more than I needed to sort everything out.
I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose, but I was gratified that she moved back into my arms when she was done.
“So are you okay now?” I asked after a while. “Did the surgery fix everything?”
She nodded. “They removed the IUD and the fallopian tube that burst, and I’ve already stopped bleeding, so I’m on the mend.”
“Is there any permanent damage?”
“No. If I want to have kids in the future, the other fallopian tube is perfectly healthy. But I’ll never use an IUD again, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t blame you.” I stroked her hair and held her tightly. “I’m the one that’s sorry,” I said after a little while. “I should have been there for you. I hate that I wasn’t.”
“It’s okay. Nothing you could have done would have changed the outcome, and hockey is more important.”
“What? No, that’s not true. It’s important but not more important than your health. If you hadn’t gone to the E.R., you could have died.”
“I didn’t let it go that far,” she said. “I called Chastity when I realized something was very wrong.”
“I still hate that I wasn’t there. It was my baby too. I would have wanted to be there with you, had I known.”
“Honestly, I just wanted the pain to stop,” she said softly. “I didn’t give much thought to anything else. And I was so scared…”
“I know.” I kissed the top of her head.
We sat like that for a long time, her small body engulfed in mine, and I never wanted to let her go. The chaos in my brain calmed the moment I wrapped my arms around her and I didn’t know how to move forward without her. I didn’t want to either.
“I wanted to tell you,” she said after a while, “but I didn’t know how.”
“I’m sorry we’ve gotten to a place where you don’t feel like you can talk to me anymore, but Ellie, I miss you. I want to fix this.”
“We can’t,” she said sadly, lifting those big blue eyes to gaze into mine. “If nothing else, this whole thing has shown me that I’m not ready for…this. Us.”
“Not ready?” I wasn’t sure what she meant.
�
�I’ve been trying to play catch-up, so my maturity and life experience is at least a little closer to my book smarts, but right now the gap is too much. I’m beyond overwhelmed. School, careers, a serious, sexual relationship, unplanned pregnancy, surgery… It’s too much too soon. I wanted to be a normal teenager and have a little fun, but I got way more than I bargained for. And I’m mentally exhausted.”
I pulled her close again, unable to respond because she’d just broken my heart into a zillion pieces. I hated that she was going through this and that I’d inadvertently added to her pain, but I didn’t know how to fix it.
“I don’t want to add any more stress to your life,” I said. “I’d do almost anything to try and work things out, but not if it’s going to cause you pain.”
“I wish I was stronger,” she whispered. “I wish I was older, more mature, so I could be the woman you need in your life, but I can’t, Patrick. I’m so sorry, but I can’t.”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but I cared for her enough to pretend it was, to hide my broken heart from her because she didn’t need me adding anything else to her already overflowing emotional plate. There was so much I wanted to say, feelings I wanted to explore, but not now. Not if it was going to hurt her or confuse her. I loved her too much for that.
I squeezed my eyes shut as reality dawned.
When the fuck had I fallen in love with her?
29
Patrick
The game that night was probably the worst I’d played since I’d gotten to college. I couldn’t do anything right, got several penalties, and broke my scoring streak. I was fucked in the head after my emotional morning with Ellie, and it took all of my self-control not to start throwing punches at anyone and everyone. Everyone noticed, and Paxton tried to talk me down like he usually did, but it didn’t help. Nothing was going to soothe my broken heart. Not yet anyway.
I’d never had one before. I’d never had a relationship like the one I’d had with Ellie before either. Most of my relationships had been sex-only or friends-with-benefits, so Ellie had broken all the emotional barriers I’d put up over the years. I’d been laser-focused on hockey and getting a degree, and there hadn’t been time or energy for anything serious. Then Ellie had caught my eye across the room and I’d been a goner. I couldn’t explain it, but I’d known something was different about her the minute I laid eyes on her.
How we’d gotten from there to here was beyond me and while I hadn’t said as much to her, I felt guilty as hell about the ectopic pregnancy. I had all the sexual experience. I should have known it wasn’t normal to break that many condoms. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but I should have pushed her to have it checked out. Maybe if she’d gone to her doctor right away, they would have discovered the pregnancy and taken care of it before she started bleeding.
“You okay, man?” My friend and teammate J.D.—Jonah Daniels—fell into step beside me as we headed out. We’d won the game so there had been journalists all over the place as we geared up for the championship games coming up, but I’d hidden from them, unwilling to answer questions about why I’d sucked so hard tonight.
“Yeah.” I gave him a half-hearted smile. “Just some personal shit going on. I’ll shake it off by tomorrow.”
He frowned a little. “You and Ellie hit a rough patch?”
I sighed. Everyone knew about Ellie and now I was going to have to say it was over. “Something like that,” I said vaguely. “I don’t wanna talk about it yet. It’s kind of new.”
“Hey, no problem. If you want to go tie one on, I’m happy to.”
“Tomorrow night,” I said. “I can’t be hungover for tomorrow’s game.”
“You got it.” He strolled off, leaving me even lonelier than before. That was probably the least masculine thought I’d ever had, but it was accurate. I didn’t think about it much, but my mother was gone and my father was an emotionally abusive asshole, so the only person I’d ever been able to rely on was Paxton. Now that he had Naomi, I’d lost a little bit of the closeness we’d shared too, and with him going to Seattle soon, I realized I had no one. Not really.
I had a handful of friends, like J.D., Tate, and Lex, but it wasn’t like what I had with Paxton or what I’d shared with Ellie. And dealing with everything I was going through right now on my own was harder than I’d thought it would be.
I’d hoped to talk to Paxton tonight but he and Naomi had gone out after the game, so I sat on the couch, opened a beer and turned on the TV. I wasn’t really watching, though, mostly staring at nothing as I sucked down one beer and then another. I was in a bad place, my heart heavy and my stomach churning. I’d had no idea a broken heart would feel this way, and coupled with the guilt of Ellie’s pregnancy, I’d never been as down as I was tonight.
I heard the key turn in the lock and Paxton and Naomi came in, laughing.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Paxton asked curiously, eyeing me.
I shrugged.
“You okay?” He came around the couch to frown down at me.
“Not really.” I met his gaze warily, unsure whether he was going to make fun of me or if he would instinctively understand how much I was hurting. I didn’t have it in me to spar with my twin tonight and thankfully, he must have sensed this was different.
He murmured something to Naomi and she nodded and left the room. He sank down next to me and gave me a gentle nudge with his elbow. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been out of sorts for a week. Something happen with Ellie?”
“So much.” I closed my eyes and let my head fall back.
“You break up?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the worst of it.”
“Uh-oh.”
“She was pregnant, Pax.”
“Was?”
I told him the latest, starting with our trip to Montreal to breaking up to finding out about the pregnancy and her subsequent surgery.
“Oh god, I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “Is she okay now?”
“Physically, she’s going to be okay, but she’s dealing with a lot.”
“So why aren’t you there with her?”
“She’s overwhelmed and instead of helping, my presence just adds to her stress.” I told him the rest, how Ellie was second-guessing everything about her life and future, how she didn’t see a way for us to go forward with our relationship, and how the events of the last few months had been more than she was ready for.
“She found out she was pregnant and then immediately had to have surgery to remove it,” he said sadly. “All on her own?”
I nodded miserably. “Jesus, Pax, we made a baby… a baby!” That weird scratchy feeling behind my eyes came back and I pressed my thumb and forefinger over them to hide my tears.
“I’m so sorry.” He reached out and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “What can I do? Are you okay?”
“I’m fucking miserable without her. And I can’t fix it. I can’t put her in a position where she has something else to juggle on top of all the other shit in her life.”
“But did you tell her you love her?” he asked quietly.
“No.” I swallowed hard. “How could I? I didn’t realize it until we were broken up and then when she told me how much of the stress in her life was because of me—both directly and indirectly—I couldn’t. I don’t want to hurt her any more and she’s already hurting so much.”
“I wish I had words of wisdom,” he said quietly. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling knowing she went through that whole pregnancy thing alone.”
“So much guilt,” I admitted. “Guilt that I got her pregnant, guilt that the baby had to die and I wasn’t there with her… Fuck, man.” My eyes felt wet again and I turned away, unused to showing so much emotion. We were close, but I didn’t think either of us had cried since our mom had died more than a decade ago.
“You can’t feel guilty about getting her pregnant,” he said. “She had an IUD and you were using condoms. This wasn’t about carelessness or heat of th
e moment. There was almost zero chance of her getting pregnant.”
“I should have made a bigger deal about the broken condoms. I’m the experienced one—I was her first and only. She wouldn’t know that breaking so many wasn’t normal.”
“The doctor couldn’t verify one way or the other if the IUD caused that. It could be coincidence, but either way, focusing on that is a waste of energy. It happened and it’s over. Yeah, it sucks that you weren’t with her, but even if things were hunky-dory and she was going to Vegas with you, you still wouldn’t have been with her. Any woman you get serious with is going to have to get used to you being gone and missing a lot of important things. It’s part of life with a professional athlete. And maybe Ellie realizes it’s not for her.”
“Yeah.” Fuck, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. “And that’s why I didn’t tell her how I feel.”
“Maybe you did the right thing.”
“Sure doesn’t feel like it.”
“I know.” He paused. “You want to watch a movie and get drunk?”
I managed a half-hearted smile. “I don’t want to be hungover tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m here for you. You know that.”
“You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”
“I kinda do.”
I’d forgotten all about my stat test that week and grimaced when I walked into the classroom. I hadn’t cracked a book in more than a week and it was probably going to show in my grades. I’d had straight A’s all semester and hated that I was going to blow it now, but without Ellie’s help, and her in my life in general, studying was nothing but a nuisance. At this point, having decided to go pro, I almost didn’t care whether I graduated or not.
That wasn’t entirely true but in my current state of mind, I didn’t have it in me to give a shit. In fact, I barely gave a shit about hockey, and it showed in the games that weekend. My head and heart just weren’t in it and I didn’t know how to fix it. I couldn’t make myself forget Ellie or the baby we’d lost or anything else, and after another pair of terrible games, I did something I never thought I’d do: I reached out for help.