“Too bad. You’re gonna need it,” Jaxon declared.
“Fuck. This is bad, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not good.” Jaxon ran a hand through his pitch-black hair and blew out a breath.
“I stood there like an idiot, thinking she was buying period products. Even as I watched her, it crossed my mind that shehadn’t had it once in all our time together, but I never put two and two together.”
“Maybe she had it, and you just didn’t know.”
“No. I’d know. Since Christmas, the only day we haven’t been together was when she was sick and missed the game.”
Jaxon stared at me. “Damn. Every day?”
I nodded, throwing back the scotch that had been placed before me. Making a circular motion to the bartender, signaling to bring another, I replied, “Yep.”
Looking at me like I was his personal hero, he asked, “What’s that like?”
“Fucking amazing.” I sighed. “Perks of having your girl come on the road with the team.”
“I’m not even getting it every day when we are home. Half the time, Nat’s tired out of her mind from running the kids around. The other half, Charlie wants to sleep in our bed. If you’d have told me five years ago that a two-year-old would be cock-blocking me, I would have laughed in your face.”
“Sucks, man.” That sounded terrible.
“Don’t ‘sucks man’ me. That might be the future you’re looking at.”
Fuck. “I still don’t understand how this could have happened.”
Jaxon sipped his first scotch as my second arrived. “You were being careful, right?”
“Of course,” I scoffed. “Hannah said she was on birth control.”
Jaxon choked on his drink for the second time since we entered the bar. “Shesaid? That’s it? You’re banking your entire future on her word? I mean,youtook care of it on your end, too, right?”
Hearing Jaxon’s outrage and disbelief, I knew I’d fucked up. “No. But come on, this is Hannah. I trust her.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Even I wasn’t that stupid when I slept with Natalie.”
“Yeah, for all the good that did you,” I grumbled.
Narrowing his eyes and crossing his arms, he asked, “So tell me this. What kind of birth control is she on?”
I squirmed in my seat under the weight of his glare. “I don’t know.”
“Jesus, Cal,” he muttered.
“I know. It’s bad. So, I’ll ask again. What did you do when Natalie told you? I’m spiraling here, and I need you to tell me what to do.”
Jaxon pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes. He was stressed out to the max, and this wasn’t even his situation. Who was I kidding? When Coach found out, it was going to blow up the team. I might end up dead in a ditch, but everyone left still standing would feel the effects of his wrath.
“My situation was very different from yours. Natalie and I weren’t together; we had a one-night thing.” He gave a little huff. “When she told me, she wanted me to sign away my rights to Charlie. She didn’t want me involved.”
That was the first time I heard any of this. Granted, they’d kept everything hush-hush because Natalie was newly divorced, had kids, and was hounded by the press.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I told her over my dead body. Well, I said it in a nicer way, but that was the message. How could I be expected to live next door to my kid and have no contact, no place in their life? Wasn’t going to happen. So, I told her I wanted to be involved, and man, getting past her walls was hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Do you know what it’s like to have the love of your life right there in front of you and know she would rather you disappear?”
Natalie and Jaxon were the happiest married couple I’d ever met in my life. And that included my parents, and my sister and brother-in-law. They made each other better in a way that youhad to see to believe. They survived independently—they weren’t co-dependent—but they thrived when they were together. You could literally feel the love pouring off of them.
