by Mia Caldwell
To her surprise, neither man had advocated giving up on competing. Instead, Hugo had suggested she train with the rest of his crew as long as she was physically able to do so. Once she had given birth and was back from maternity leave, he had invited her to join his racing crew at that time. If she chose to wait until the next America’s Cup, Hugo made it plain she would have a position then as well.
She had nearly bawled like a baby at the support from two men whom she barely knew, when she had received absolutely no support from the father of her child. Somehow, she had maintained a cool front, working out the details with Hugo after their lunch.
She would fly to Fiji in two weeks, where the Austania was currently docked, and where Hugo lived with his younger wife and baby. It was an ideal location for training and practice regattas, and she was already in mental mode to prepare herself for living in Fiji and mostly aboard the Austania before she got too far in her pregnancy to do so. At that point, she would relocate to Fiji for the birth and the first few months of her child’s life before returning to skippering or racing.
Part of her had a hard time believing the future she was setting up would actually happen that way, but she clung to her plan tenaciously, needing to believe. Someday, even if she had to wait twenty years until her child was grown, she would be on one of those racing teams. She’d win the Louis Vuitton Cup and the right to challenge for the America’s Cup. If dedication, hard work, and determination could win it for her, she’d have the America’s Cup in her hands.
She hated that it felt like a hollow dream compared to the life she’d briefly seen a glimpse of with Sawyer. It was miserable to realize the dream she had held so close to her heart all her life was now her second choice. If Sawyer had been a different kind of man, one who was eager, or at least willing, to embrace a level of responsibility and have a relationship that lasted longer than a blink of an eye, she would have been happy to pursue her dream part-time, to fit it into her life with him rather than building her life around winning the America’s Cup. It was bitter to know she had found something better than what she dreamed of, only to lose it before it ever fully developed.
At least one good thing had come from it, and that was the baby inside her. After three days of reflection, coupled with a certain calmness now that she had future plans again, she was enthusiastically embracing the idea instead of regarding it with dread.
She was due to fly out to Fiji in a couple of days, but Nadia didn’t feel right about leaving without telling Sawyer’s family about the baby first. It wasn’t a guilt-trip tactic, or some way to force him to be caught up in their child’s life. She had meant it when she’d said she didn’t want him involved. He clearly wanted no part of fatherhood, and she wasn’t going to have him around the baby if he was bitter and resentful, making no attempt to hide how he truly felt.
His family was a different matter entirely. She knew they would be supportive and would love her child even if Sawyer didn’t. If she didn’t tell them, she was certain he never would. If and when he returned, he would be relieved to find her gone and would perhaps convince himself she had aborted the child. More likely, he wouldn’t care either way and would never think of it—or her—again, as long as it wasn’t his problem.
She hadn’t yet figured out how to make her stance clear to his family—that she invited them to be part of the child’s life, but they weren’t to involve Sawyer. It sounded harsh every time she tried to find a way to phrase it, and she couldn’t completely explain why she felt the way she did without giving all the details.
Part of her thought he deserved it if she let his grandfather, mother, and sister know just how horrible he had been about the baby, but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to wreck his family, or their impression of him. They all loved Sawyer, in spite of his faults, and she couldn’t strip their illusions completely from them. It wasn’t for his sake but for theirs that she had to be diplomatic.
With her flight time approaching, she knew she’d have to talk to them soon. Her bags were packed, and most of her possessions were already in a shipping container bound for Fiji, due to arrive a week or so after she did. She was still in the guestroom of their home, allowing herself to indulge in their hospitality without being fully honest. It went against her nature, and she vowed she would tell them the truth at dinner.
Or at least a carefully edited version of the truth, one that didn’t leave them with such a horrible impression of their family member, while somehow keeping them from seeing her as the one taking away his child. Yes, that should be no problem at all, she thought with an irritated grunt.
A knock at her door interrupted her reverie. “Come in,” she called, expecting to see Caitlin, Kiersten, or perhaps one of the maids with a message for her. Instead, Sawyer stood in the doorway.
She had the irrational urge to scream at him to get out. She had her life figured out, or at least the next few months, and she had a plan. He had already derailed her plans far too much, and in light of their last exchange, she had no desire to see him at all. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.
He winced, but that was his only outward reaction to her tone as he came deeper into the room. “We need to talk.”
She scowled. “No.”
Sawyer blinked. “What do you mean, no? I’m requesting a conversation with you.”
“And I’m saying no thank you,” she said in a hard, brittle voice.
“Be reasonable, Nadia. There are things to discuss.”
“There’s not a damn thing to discuss. You said it all the last time we saw each other, when you told me to get rid of it, and I’m not willing to do that. I’m keeping my baby, and we don’t need you.”
He exhaled raggedly, surprising her by appearing relieved. Her anger mixed with confusion when he spoke.
“Thank god you didn’t have an abortion yet. I’m so sorry I said that. It was a knee-jerk reaction brought on by panic.”
Despite her resolve not to indulge in a conversation, she couldn’t seem to help responding. “You think I was all handstands and lollipops at the idea, Sinclair? I was freaked out, scared, and worried too. In spite of that, my knee-jerk reaction wasn’t to arbitrarily decide to abort our baby.” She winced at the slip of using our instead of my. She wanted it clear that he had no part in their child’s life. Her child. Her child’s life.
“I get that, but I guarantee there’s no way you were as terrified as I was.”
She snorted. “No, of course not. I just had a silly dream of racing in the America’s Cup, and having a child derails my entire life plan. Why the hell would I be as terrified as you?”
“Because I assumed our baby would die a horrible death.”
She flinched as her mouth gaped open in shock. “I don’t understand.”
Gingerly, he sat on the edge of her bed, but made no attempt to reach out for her. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t very clear. Let me try to explain it better.” He took a deep breath, as though fortifying himself. “I figured I had passed on the gene that would doom him or her to an early death from a horrible disease. Have you ever heard of Huntington’s?”
Nadia shrugged her shoulder. “I think it was on some medical show I used to watch, but I don’t remember the details.”
“It’s a degenerative neurological disease that destroys nerves in the brain. That process shuts you down slowly, in painful and torturous ways. It can steal your memories and knowledge, make you unable to move around independently, cause mental disturbances, and difficulty swallowing. A repetition of a section of one gene can make you lose your motor functions, your reasoning ability, and just about everything that made you who you were. My dad went from having no symptoms to severe symptoms in less than six months.”
She was still angry, but sympathy was creeping in. “I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “It was hard on him, too hard. I don’t begrudge him for what he did, because I’d sure as hell do the same thing in his p
lace.”
A headache started at her temples, and she rubbed the spot carefully. “I’m sorry, but what did he do that you would do as well?”
“He killed himself.” Sawyer made a finger pistol and put it to his temple, mimicking the motion of a firing gun. “He did it at our storage space near the marina, where we kept our supplies for a wooden sailboat he used to own.
“Of course he didn’t expect me to find him. He’d sent a note to my mother, telling her what he had done and asking her to request a coroner. I didn’t know that, and I popped by to surprise him.” His face had gone pale, his expression slack. “I was the one who got the surprise, finding Dad on the floor with his brains spattered across our spare sails and riggings.”
She couldn’t stifle a small sound of horror at the picture he painted. He had been seventeen years old, so no wonder it had scarred him so dramatically. “Is that why you’re so irresponsible? Are you living for your dad or something?”
He shook his head, his lips twitching very briefly. “That’s what Kiersten always says, but no, it isn’t true. I’ve been living for myself, wanting to enjoy every day I have before the disease strikes me down too.”
This time, her gasp was loud enough to fill the room, and she couldn’t help reaching out for him. A second before her fingers brushed his, she put her hand back on her lap. “You have Huntington’s too?”
“It’s hereditary. If a parent has it, they have a fifty-percent chance of passing it on to their kid. If you have the defective gene, you will get symptoms. Some people are lucky enough that it hits late in life, and they die of other causes before the Huntington’s gets too catastrophic. Since Dad had such early symptoms that progressed so quickly, chances are my prognosis would have been more like his. I would’ve been lucky to make it to my mid-forties without a serious decline in my quality of life. I would have been a burden on anyone who loved me.”
She could no longer rein in the impulse to touch him, her hand clasping his. “You only have a few years left?” Despite her lingering anger at him, grief speared her at the idea of losing him so young and so soon.
He didn’t answer as he kept speaking. “Something most people don’t understand about children of people with Huntington’s is we know we have a fifty-fifty chance of having inherited a death sentence. We have that same risk of passing it on if we have the gene, which was why I was so adamant about you aborting to start with. I didn’t want to pass down this curse to another generation. But the truth is, I didn’t know my status. I was afraid to find out, and I’ve just been living my life as though I already have Huntington’s, and the symptoms will appear sooner rather than later.”
She shook her head in confusion. “I really don’t understand. Do you or don’t you have it?”
“I don’t have the gene.” His expression bordered on amazed as he spoke the words. “I just assumed I did, and I was too afraid to get tested. That’s actually more common than you think. About eighty-percent of all people who descend from someone with Huntington’s don’t get tested themselves unless or until symptoms develop.”
Nadia scowled. “That makes no sense. Why wouldn’t you want to know instead of living in doubt?”
“Sometimes, it’s easier not to know that you’re running headlong into the biggest train wreck of your life. I thought it was easier to just assume I was and live accordingly. Kiersten, on the other hand, got tested at sixteen, a year after Dad had killed himself, because she needed to know. She’s always been the more pragmatic type, facing her fears head-on.”
Dread curled in her stomach. “Does Kiersten have it?”
Sawyer nodded. “Yes, she has the defective gene. Someday, she’ll have symptoms, but she claims knowing ahead of time has given her a chance to come to terms with it. For me, from my perspective, it looks like she has wasted her life chained to the office too.”
Shock spiraled through her as she contemplated Kiersten’s future, even as she found herself saying, “You can’t make that kind of judgment on her behalf though. If she’s happy with the life she’s chosen, and she’s aware of what she’s potentially missing out on, that’s her choice and not yours.”
He nodded. “Of course my brain tells me that, but I can’t control my more visceral reaction to her decisions. I was viewing her choices through a lens distorted by my own perceptions. I believed I would die young, and we know Kiersten will likely do so, either by allowing the disease to take its course, or opting for suicide as my father did when her symptoms get too bad.
“When you have just a few precious years, you went to cram as much life as possible into them. At least I did. Kiersten chose a different path, and the irony is I don’t have Huntington’s, so I’ll never develop symptoms of the disease.” His gaze moved her stomach. “Most importantly, our child will not inherent Huntington’s. I don’t have the defective gene, so I can’t pass it on.”
Nadia sagged forward, hugging her stomach as she tried to process his words. They explained so much about Sawyer and his actions. Examined in a new light, she could appreciate why he had been so reckless and irresponsible, always ducking out on his obligations. It still didn’t make it any easier to accept he had wanted to abort their baby, that he’d insisted on it. “Why were you so determined to get rid of our child, even if he or she had Huntington’s? It would be years before it would affect him or her.”
His lips tightened. “Not necessarily. My uncle had juvenile onset, and he was dead by twenty, choking to death on his own saliva. The earlier symptoms present in a family, the more likely anyone with the gene is to have a severe form. I didn’t want that kind of life for our child, or the uncertainty of knowing or not knowing what he was facing.
“As I said, it was a knee-jerk reaction. I’ve spent my whole life fighting against the idea of having children, convinced I never wanted them, because I didn’t want to pass on the curse of Huntington’s. It was my original, honest gut reaction, but it’s not how I feel now.”
She sneered at him. “Now that our child should okay, it’s fine to let it live? That’s horrible, Sawyer. What if it has some other defect, like Down Syndrome? Will you want an abortion again?”
“No, of course not.” He spoke with quiet conviction. “It was a horrible reaction, and I want you to know that during the past three days when I waited for the results, I realized I would love our baby no matter what, even if he had juvenile onset, and even if I was dead within ten years, and he barely remembered me. I want to be here to help you. I wanted to support him and you during the time I had left. The life I had before is meaningless and worthless, especially without you and him. I’m sorry.”
They were simple words, clearly heartfelt, and they penetrated the anger she clung to like a blanket. She still hadn’t forgiven him for hiding so much from her, or his handling of the shock of the pregnancy, and it would take a while before she could trust him completely again, but she believed he genuinely wanted to be involved with their child. Just how involved was the major remaining question.
“How do you envision your support working, Sawyer? Are you going to mail a generous monthly check, but never see him? Will you fly him in to see you a few times a year, along with all the nannies money can buy? Will you take him for holidays and summers on the Quixote? I’d like to know what level of involvement you’re envisioning, Sinclair?”
He visibly winced at the use of his surname. “I’m envisioning a wedding ring, a lifetime commitment, being by your side when you give birth, and giving him three or four more brothers and sisters too. I see us supporting you from the sidelines as you race in the Louis Vuitton Cup, and as you eventually win the America’s Cup. Whatever life we have, I see you beside me, and him between us. I want that so badly for all three of us.”
Nadia stared at him helplessly, unable to hide the tears streaming down her face. “I’m not sure I can trust you, Sawyer. You hurt me so badly.” Abruptly, she remembered there was one more urgent question for which she need an answer. The answer that would
determine the outcome of everything else. “Did you sleep with Paige?”
Sawyer shook his head vigorously. “I wasn’t at all interested in her. I’ve only been interested in you since I saw you that morning on the boat in that sexy bikini. At first, I’ll admit it was strictly physical, and I was envisioning another one of my shallow flings with you, with the added bonus of getting my grandfather off my back for a while. I didn’t expect to feel anything more for you than simple desire, and I sure as heck didn’t expect to fall in love with you.”
She flinched at the word, not ready to hear it on his lips. “Don’t say that.”
He smiled tenderly. “You just told me you don’t trust me, so I have to tell you the truth so you’ll trust me again someday. The truth is I love you, Nadia. I went out of my way to drive you away because I knew it was becoming something special between us. It would inevitably lead to a long-term commitment, and I didn’t want to marry someone thinking I had only a few years left to live.
“I didn’t want to be the burden on you that I would have become if I went downhill too quickly, or if I didn’t have the nerve to follow through with suicide. I sure as heck didn’t want to have children that would have this curse, or leave them fatherless within a few years. Driving you away was the only solution I could think of, but it ripped my heart into about a million pieces to do so.”
She wanted to cling to her anger and her disbelief, but it was increasingly difficult in face of his sincerity. Was she punishing him for hurting her, or was she trying to shield her own heart from further hurt? She wasn’t entirely clear on the answer, which left her unsettled. She didn’t want to penalize him out of spite, but it was only natural to protect herself after what he had done before. “I’m willing to give you a second chance to prove these things, Sawyer, but I’m not jumping into anything right away with you. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” He squeezed her hand before tugging her closer to put his arm around her. There was nothing sexual in the touch,. It was simply an embrace of comfort and affection. “I love you enough to wait for you however long it takes. I’m going to be a better man for you and our baby, Nadia.”