Her voice yanks me back. Her hand cups my face, thumb brushing along my jaw like she’s soothing something she can’t see.
“Yeah?”
“Where did you go?”
I huff out a laugh. “I think I just blacked out for a second.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I am.”
She frowns, guilt flashing across her features. “I should’ve taken you home and tucked you in bed.”
I grin, stepping closer until she has to tilt her chin up. “Well, you didn’t.” I brush my thumb across her bottom lip and nod toward the stairs. “But the tucking-in-bed part… that can still happen.”
26
Rowyn
“I think I’m going to be sick.” The words scrape out of me as I clutch my roiling stomach, half convinced the organ is trying to climb up my throat.
Gina slips an arm around my shoulders. “Playoff jitters,” she says knowingly. “People say you get used to it, but that’s a lie. I’ve spent years waiting to feel normal.” She presses her own hand to her belly, wincing. “Honestly? I might be sick too.”
“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Josie teases, rubbing the tiny swell of her already-adorable bump.
Gina whips a finger at her. “Don’t even joke about it,” she warns, but her laugh is bright, genuine. Then she folds Josie into a soft hug. “I’m so happy for you guys.”
I watch them, this easy, intimate moment that comes with shared dreams and hard-won happiness. From what I know, Josie and Jesse tried for years. And now she glows—radiant and grateful and terrified all at once. It’s beautiful.
“I can’t wait to feel the kicks,” she says, her eyes sparkling like a woman who’s already imagining tiny feet pressing from the inside. “The morning sickness I could do without, however.” A groan escapes her, and the women around us echo with sympathetic noises.
I don’t add mine. I stay quiet, because I don’t know what morning sickness feels like. And part of me…well, part of me thinks I never will. The thought brings on an ache of loneliness. I rub my stomach again, almost absent-mindedly.
When I lift my head, Josie is watching me with a too-curious expression. I bark out a laugh—high, weird, chipmunk-on-energy-drinks weird. “No, I am not pregnant,” I insist.
Everyone laughs with me, but Melanie…she watches me with that therapist gaze. Soft, patient, knowing. Like she can sense the things I don’t say out loud. God, I hope she can’t.
“If you ever decide to have kids,” Gina says, nudging me, “You’ll be amazing. I think my kids like you more than they like me.”
“That’s not true.”
Her raised brow says otherwise.
“I adore your kids,” I admit. “They’re sweet. And tiny. And sticky.”
A ripple of laughter goes around the group, but my stomach flips again as the commentator’s voice booms through the arena. The air vibrates and the crowd surges with noise. I press my palm firmer to my abdomen. Logically, I know what these flutters are. Nerves, adrenaline, fear, excitement, all tangled into one disastrous emotional cocktail.
But for a split second, my brain betrays me and wonders…is this what Josie feels? That first spark of life reminding her she’s no longer alone in her own body?
The idea sends an unexpected thrill dancing under my skin, lighting something up deep inside me—a something I’ve spent years ignoring. It’s like my biological clock suddenly woke up, stretched its arms, and chose not to let me ignore it any longer.
Not that I want to be pregnant right now. I have a career. Plans. A life. And good God, if anything like that ever happened by accident, Jaxon would?—
Well. He’d freak out.
And not in the let’s-go-shopping-for-cribs way.
“How do they do it?” I murmur, leaning forward as the guys pour from the tunnel, the crowd erupting around us. “They look so composed. Meanwhile, we’re up here unraveling.”