Floored

by Karla Sorensen

  "Okay." I squeezed her back, letting the hug fortify any part of me that felt ill-equipped for ... well ... any of it, really. I sniffed. "And Jude?"

  She exhaled a laugh. "Well ... I think Jude needs two things."

  "What?"

  "An excellent therapist and a kick to the balls. He should’ve warned you."

  It felt good to laugh, even if it was through my tears. I sank onto the bed, wiping my cheeks. “I think parents need the kicking even more than their son.”

  She nodded. “I can’t imagine saying those kinds of things to your son.”

  I buried my face in my hands and took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have stormed out like that.”

  “No, probably not.” Isabel was quiet for a second. “Why did you?”

  My cheeks puffed out on a hard exhale. “I swear, my body moved before my brain knew what I was doing. I just wanted … out. I didn’t want to face how little I knew about him, and them, and the kind of family this baby is being born into.”

  She hummed, rubbing a hand down my back as she sat next to me.

  "The stuff that was good between us, Isabel, it's so good. The parts that are just me and him. I was falling in love with him before I even knew it was happening." She sat next to me, and I lowered my head to her shoulder. "I think that's what made it so easy to ignore all the things that were ... I don't know, separate from us. It sounds so immature when I say it like that. A hot guy made my head spin, so I forgot to talk about what would happen when our child was born."

  "You didn't forget, Lia. You're barely into your second trimester." She nudged me with her shoulder. "Go easy on yourself. You're in a different country, away from family, and he made you happy. Right?"

  I nodded.

  "Did he ever mention the future?" she asked.

  "Not really. I mean, he mentioned the fact that he'd be done with the season and could travel to Seattle for the birth, so we both knew that I'd be home. But I think he counted on my understanding the demands of his career, you know? It's not like he can just ... press pause on the season and come hang out in America and watch me get puffy ankles."

  "No," she said cautiously, "he can't. He must have thought about it, though."

  "I think he did." I stood, snagging my water bottle off the nightstand to take a long sip. Emotional outbursts made my throat all scratchy. "I remember he asked me something odd, when we were watching the Wolves game a couple of weeks ago. He asked me what it was like to see my family doing what they did."

  Isabel hummed. "That was it?"

  "It's like ... it's like he never had true support, so he doesn't understand the family as a unit, you know? And aren't we our own little team? The Wards?"

  She snorted. "The Wards are like their own gang. We'll defend each other to the death, and once you're in," she said ominously, "you can never get out."

  I missed them. Our team. With the exhaustion of the day settling in like an iron cloak around my shoulders, all I wished for was the power to blink and find myself back home. Find myself surrounded by all the people who knew me best. Normally, I lived life wanting to see and do and go. But all of this, the newness and novelty, it made me crave home.

  For the first time in my life, I craved the routine I had there and the sameness that I'd left.

  Even though whenever I went back home, whether it was with Isabel or a couple of weeks later, I wasn't returning to the same life.

  Everything, my entire life, would be different. And I couldn't ignore the parts that were hard, the parts that scared me anymore.

  "What's that look on your face?" Isabel asked quietly.

  "I think it's what Claire would call self-realization, or whatever the counselor speak is." I sighed heavily. "I have to talk to Jude."

  She rubbed my back. "What are you going to say?"

  I shrugged one shoulder. "I figure it'll, I don't know, magically appear in my head when I see him."

  Reaching for my purse, I dug out my phone, and there was his name, in a series of texts.

  Jude: I'm sorry about my parents. They're raging arseholes.

  Jude: Your sister asked me to give you tonight, and I'll respect that.

  Jude: But I didn't want to be across London at the hotel with the team, so I booked a room at the same hotel you're staying at. If you want, I can come to your room in the morning, or I'm in 327 whenever you want to talk.

  I shook my head. "Pushy-ass footballer, used to getting his way."

  "What?" Isabel looked over my shoulder. "Oh my gosh, he did not."

  Standing up, I risked a glance in the mirror and cringed.

  "It's not that bad," Isabel said.

  I pointed at my face.

  She grimaced. "Okay, you get a little splotchy when you cry. But if you plan to talk to him now? A plus for impact, I'll tell you that."

  Rolling my eyes, I tapped out a text to Jude telling him I was on my way to his room.

  "You sure you want to go there?" Iz asked.

  I nodded. "It gives me control of when I want to leave. I don't want to have to ask him to go ... if it goes badly."

  "Want me to come with you?" It was a token invite; I could see it on her face. I knew and she knew I needed to do this myself. "I can wait out in the hall, if you just ... want to know I'm out there."

  I smiled, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. "No, but thank you. I'll be back soon."

  When the hotel door closed behind me, I took a moment to take a deep breath before I went down the flight of stairs that separated his room from ours. There was no magical moment when I knew what I should say to him, the first moment of reckoning between Jude and me.

  Actually, I realized, that wasn't precisely true. We'd had one before. When I told him I was pregnant, and in that split second before he could filter his reaction, the words that came out were selfish. Thoughtless.

  And the words that came out of mine were angry.

  Yes, I could understand his reaction, given the nature of his job. And I could understand mine because no one wanted to be called a lying ho. But as I walked down the hallway, I knew the inescapable truth. Our instincts in this, the desires that ruled our reactions, that ruled our interactions and tangible chemistry, needed work. At least if we were ever going to co-parent in a healthy way.

  Co-parent. No more sleeping together. No more making out on his couch. No more holidays in the English countryside.

  A few stray tears escaped the corner of my eye when I thought about all of those things, and how I'd allowed them to cloud my judgment for months, simply because we had a talent for making each other feel good. Making each other forget.

  When I arrived at his door, I let out a slow breath. Before I could even raise my fist to knock, he swung it open. Jude, in just the short time since I saw him at the pub, looked wrecked.

  His hair was a mess, like he'd been running his hands through it.

  "Lia," he exhaled, "I'm so bloody sorry."

  Without a word, I walked into his room but didn't sit. He stood across from me after the door enclosed us into the space together.

  “I’m sorry too,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have run like that.” I tilted my head at him. "What are you sorry for?"

  He blinked. "F-for my parents. That was ... well, it was awful."

  Nodding, I gave him a careful study. The words, it seemed, were there, right when I needed them. "It was. They shouldn't speak to you that way, and I can only imagine how badly that's hurt you over the years."

  He averted his gaze. "Doesn't hurt me anymore. They lost that power years ago."

  Denial and shame often went hand in hand. One of the random things I remembered about helping Claire study for some of her psych classes. I was familiar with both because there were so many things I hadn't told him either, all the ugly parts of my own past. The fears I'd confided in Isabel had still been held out of reach for this man I'd been falling in love with, and I couldn't ignore that anymore.

  "Jude, I need to know something important."<
br />
  "Anything," he answered fervently.

  That fervency had me tearing up again. I didn't want him to make this harder by being amenable. I didn't want to ask him these questions, but that was the point. It wasn't about me anymore. I slid my hand up over my belly, and his eyes tracked the movement, almost helplessly, like he couldn't look away.

  And when he did watch, he looked miserable. It took me a second to voice the question in my head.

  "Do you see where we went wrong?"

  His face went blank in part confusion, part shock. "Have we?"

  My hands shook slightly, and I knit them together in front of me. "I had no idea what kind of stuff you were dealing with, with your parents."

  "It's not exactly my favorite topic," he answered evenly.

  "And I get that." I licked my lips. "But ... at their farm, when we stopped, and then tonight, I was kinda tossed headfirst into the fire, you know?"

  "Believe me, if I'd known they were at the pub, I never would've come."

  I felt my brow wrinkle as I studied him—the set of his jaw, the line of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. "Yeah, that was ... awkward."

  "Again, I apologize for how my parents acted, if that's why you're upset."

  He was at a loss, that much was obvious. Jude wasn't entirely sure what he should be saying, and maybe I didn't know either. But what I did know was that we'd done a stellar job of burying ourselves in each other while ignoring all the things that swirled just outside of that bubble.

  I ran a hand over my belly. "I don't even know if upset is the right word, Jude."

  "You looked pretty upset when you walked away from me without another word." He lifted his eyebrows, and my face warmed in embarrassment at how I’d acted. "And when you did, I saw that side of Isabel you warned me about. She looked like she wanted to feed me my bollocks from a blender, just for going after you."

  It was the kind of thing I wanted to smile about, but even that felt too hard.

  “She’ll never not protect her family, even if she disagreed with me leaving like I did.”

  He swallowed. “That’s a good trait to have in a family member.”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t quite know what that’s like,” he said quietly.

  "The things your parents said to you," I paused, shaking my head, "and the things you said back … it was awful. I wish they could see how selfish they’re being.”

  “Me too.”

  I chose my words carefully. “But I think it just all felt like a giant blinking sign of how little we really know about one another."

  His jaw clenched.

  "My time here, Jude, it's like ... it's like being on vacation, you know? It's fun and exciting, and I'm doing something I love to do, but it's still not real life."

  "It felt pretty real to me," he said in a rough voice.

  The look in his eyes was full of unsaid things. And maybe my gaze was the same. Something big and important changed when we slept together, and he felt it too.

  "I know. A lot of it did. But this whole time I've been here, the whole time we've been making up the little rules that gave us permission to do what felt good and right, we were avoiding everything hard and scary."

  He exhaled a dry laugh. "I don't know about you, love, but I've come face-to-face with a lot of hard in the past few months. Do you think it's easy to get your arse benched?"

  My mouth fell open. "Today you did?"

  Jude slicked his tongue over his teeth before answering, but eventually gave me a reluctant nod.

  "Oh, Jude," I whispered, "I'm so sorry."

  As he propped his hands on his hips and stared at the ground, my stomach churned uncomfortably because I had to come to grips with the fact that Jude hadn't confided in me about anything important. Not one thing.

  Not about his job.

  Not about his family.

  On an elemental level, the part of us that was instinctual and immediate, I knew him.

  How he looked when he woke up in the morning.

  How he smiled when a fan approached him.

  How he kissed me.

  How he made me feel, how thoughtful he was, how easy he made it to fall in love with him.

  But all the foundational things that made him that way ... they were a complete mystery.

  "I know not everyone likes to talk about what's stressing them out," I said carefully, "or how they feel about it. But Jude, you didn't even tell your brother I was pregnant, and you like him. I wish you'd see that not everyone is like your parents. There are people who want to know what you're going through, so we can support you, so we can know you."

  Jude stared at me; his thoughts hidden. "You think you've got me figured out then?"

  "I want to, Jude." I held my arms out. "But we've talked about nothing. We've ignored all the important things, and we ... we just ..."

  My speech-making skills faltered, as thunderclouds formed on his handsome face. "We just, what? Got to know each other naturally? That's how you categorize all the nights we spent together. Wasted. Nothing. Unimportant."

  "No," I said in a rush, "no, I just mean ... we didn't talk about anything. Your job, your family, my family, the future. What are we going to do when I go home?"

  "Well, you've got it all cleared up, I suppose. Why don't you explain to me how this whole sharing thing works, and I'll follow the bullet points as best I can." He held up a hand. "Just make sure the words are small. Not all of us go to Oxford."

  He was like a lion, sitting back with a bloodied paw, swiping at anything that came close. Maybe I hadn't been the one to injure him, but in his mind, I was digging straight into the wound all the same. All I could do was shake my head. Anger wouldn't help right now, even if I wanted to tell him he was acting like a freaking child.

  "Tell me what you want to hear, love, and I'll say it."

  "Don't call me that," I snapped. "Not like that."

  He pushed off the desk, where he'd leaned his weight. His eyes had a strange flatness to them. They were cold, behind the normally warm color. "Maybe it's best you're leaving soon then."

  I sucked in a breath. "Why are you acting like this? Jude, we have to be able to talk to each other about the hard things, and I-I avoided that because it's what I do. I storm out when I should stay and I don’t push to have uncomfortable conversations. I'm not perfect."

  "You felt pretty perfect to me," he said silkily. Like he was wearing a mask, his lips curled up in a slight smile, but I wanted to slap it off his face. "Don't worry, love, all the distractions were my fault. Not the best idea, I'd wager, considering it just mucks things up now when we have to be adults."

  Disappointment was ... I wasn't even sure what it was. It wasn't a rock in my gut because it felt so, so much bigger and more painful than that. I wasn't a poetic thinker, but all sorts of dramatic proclamations ran through my head because like I'd told Isabel, I'd started falling in love with him before I even realized it happened.

  And maybe this, this version of Jude that was smooth and slick and studied—was armor, but I didn't want the man I gave my heart to, the man who I'd made a child with, to use that armor with me.

  I rubbed my forehead. "Jude, maybe I came in here wrong, but I just ... I don't want our issues to bleed into this new life. You've got yours, and I've got mine."

  "Oh, I'd wager mine wins, love."

  "It's not a competition," I said, with an edge of frost in my words, "and you know nothing about what my family has been through."

  The mask dropped, just for a split second, and it was the regret in his eyes that tempered my immediate flare of anger.

  He held up his hands. "You're right. I don't. Because you haven't told me much either."

  Embarrassment and shame warred mightily in my chest, because I had no choice but to concede his point. I was just as much at fault as he was, maybe even more, since only one of us bolted from the pub.

  I didn’t want it to be like this anymore. And there was only one way to c
hange it.

  "My mom left a few years after my dad died." As I said the words, Jude's forehead creased, his eyes taking on a curious light. I shrugged one shoulder. "That's why Logan raised the four of us. Why my family is so important to me. And I hate talking about it, so I get it, Jude. I get it more than you can imagine. I just ... don't want to make things worse by doing the same things over and over simply because they're easier."

  "You're right." He sounded exhausted, and I took absolutely no pleasure in hearing the words.

  In the wake of his concession, I deflated. Everything on my body felt like it dropped an inch, simply because I couldn't hold up the weight anymore. "Now what?"

  Jude's gaze tracked over my face, which was probably still splotchy and red and awful looking. "I think, love, that you go home and be with your family. I'll finish my season. We'll talk every week, yeah? We'll figure out all those unanswered questions."

  I swiped at a tear that leaked out. What a rude little tear, I'd given no permission to cry in this conversation.

  It wasn't like I wanted him to know that I'd fallen in love with him, or that I was closing a door by ending things like this.

  He watched the tear, which I'd missed, and a muscle clenched in his jaw.

  Noisily, I sniffed. "Okay."

  Jude's fists clenched, but his face smoothed out. "Do we ... shake hands? Hug?"

  I tried not to think about whether it was smart, but I stepped forward. Immediately, he opened his arms. They folded around my back, and while he held me, chin resting on the top of my head, I allowed one more tear.

  "You changed my life, Jude McAllister," I whispered. His chest, warm and broad and strong, expanded slowly. "I'm glad I met you."

  He didn't answer right away, but I felt the whisper of his mouth against my hair. "I'm glad I met you too, Lia Ward."

  If I looked up at him, with the loaded, rough tone to his delicious voice, I'd probably want to kiss him. How stupid I was when it came to this man. So, I pulled out of his arms and walked out of the room.