Dirty Baller: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (16 page)

I wait before I speak again, letting her words hit me with their full force. “What if I can’t forgive her for what she wrote about me?”

Megan reaches into her purse and pulls out a copy of a glossy magazine. My face glares up at me from the front cover. “I think you should read this and then decide if you can forgive her or not.”

Megan puts the lid on the leftover curry and places it into the fridge, grabbing her keys and walking around the counter. She kisses me on top of my head. “I love you, big brother. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

Her words echo in my head as I go to bed that night. I know that she’s right. She’s completely right.

I can choose to be different.

I can choose to be better.

I can choose to be somebody’s father.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

RYAN

I don’t open the magazine until the next morning. I flip through the glossy advertisements for cologne, expensive watches, and running shoes. I stop in the middle of the magazine when a photo of my team catches my eye.

BRAVE NEW TEAM: HOW ONE FOOTBALL CLUB LEARNED TO EMBRACE THE UNKNOWN

I read the first paragraphs and realize I’ve made a huge mistake. An enormous mistake. A life-changing mistake.

Hayley didn’t write about me. She wrote about the team and how I fit into the group dynamic. She didn’t betray me.

I scramble for my phone and dial Hayley’s number. I spent months with a bottle of liquor next to me, my finger hovering over the dial button on her number. And now I’m finally doing the right thing.

I’m finally calling her.

It rings seven times before she answers. “Hello?”

“Hayley?” I say. I haven’t talked to her on the phone much but her voice sounds different on the line. “I need to meet with you. I’m so sorry, I-“

“Hayley can’t come to the phone right now,” the woman who is clearly
not
Hayley says.

“Who are you?”

“I’m nurse Jackson at Royal Hospital of London. Hayley’s been admitted.”

My heart pounds, threatening to burst out of my chest. “What happened?” I ask in alarm.

“I’m sorry, I can’t divulge that unless you are next of kin.” I hear voices and beeping behind her. It sounds like a lot of people just rushed into the room at once. “I wasn’t supposed to answer the phone, but I did out of reflex. I suggest you come down here if you can.” She sounds worried. As if I needed another reason to make it to the hospital.

I hang up my phone and throw on a t-shirt and running shoes. That hospital is just around the corner from here.

I don’t even know how I get there, but I do. I remember none of it, but my feet lead me to the front desk.

“Hayley Childs. Where is her room?”

The desk clerk clicks the keys. She’s taking too long.

I tap my fingers impatiently. “Could you maybe bloody hurry that fucking computer along?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I can’t make a computer run any faster than it’s already running, alright? Just calm down.”

I take a deep breath. I can’t let my anger get the best of me. Hayley needs me right now, and I need to honor and respect that. I can’t fly off the handle.

“She’s on the third floor. Room seven on your right.”

I’m running before she even finishes talking. I run through the corridors, through automatic doors just trying desperately to get to Hayley.

I find the room and peer in the window. There are doctors and nurses everywhere. I open the door. “Hayley!” I yell out.

“Ryan,” she says. She sounds like she’s been crying. Her voice is hoarse. I move around the doctors and see her. There are wires going in and out of her body. “The baby’s coming already.”

I feel my stomach drop through my feet. “No, there’s no way. That can’t happen. It’s too soon. It’s entirely too soon.”

“Sir,” says a nurse. “I’m going to need you to move. We’re taking her in for surgery.”

“Surgery?” I ask. “Can’t you slow down the baby?”

The doctor speaks up from his clipboard. “We tried that all night. This baby wants to come out
now
. The odds of survival at close to seven months are good. We just need to make this happen sooner rather than later for the safety of both the baby and your wife.”

I don’t correct him on the wife part.

“Hayley, I’m sorry,” I say, holding her hand as they wheel her down the corridor. I’m not leaving her for anything. “You’ve been here all night and I should have been with you.”

“You didn’t know,” she says. She’s crying. “I’m so sorry about the article.”

“Don’t be. I read it. I loved it. I know you must have risked a lot to write that instead of what your boss wanted,” I say.

We make it to the surgical ward.

The nurse looks at Hayley. “Do you want your husband in the room with you for the delivery?”

Hayley squeezes my hand. “Yes.”

“Sir, you’ll need to scrub in and put on a gown and a mask. The nurse over there will help you.”

I let go of Hayley’s hand. “I’ll be right there in a minute. Don’t start without me!”

Hayley lets out a weak laugh. She’s pale and sweaty, which worries me more than anything. “I’ll try my best, Ryan.”

Hearing her say my name is the best sound in the world.

I scrub in as fast as I can, taking the instructions from the nurse and speeding them up into double time. I burst through the operating theater doors and rush over to Hayley. They’ve got a blue paper curtain bisecting her body.

“Hey,” she whispers to me. “I think they’ve started.”

I grab her hand and peer over the curtain. “They did.”

“I tried to get them to wait,” she says.

“Don’t talk, just focus on me, alright?” I say to her as her heart monitor starts racing.

“I’m scared, Ryan,” she says quietly.

They put a surgical cap on her head, but it can’t contain all of her gorgeous auburn locks. A stray curl falls across her sweaty head. I push it back with a gloved hand. “I’m here. You don’t need to be scared. We’re here together. That’s all that matters.”

I glance over the curtain and see a foot. “Oh my God, Hayley,” I say.

“What?” she says, panicking.

“I see the foot. I see the foot.”

Hayley bursts into tears. Then they pull out our child and a tiny cry comes out of her mouth.

“It’s a girl!” I say.

“Is she beautiful?”

I look again. “She looks just like her mother. So of course she’s beautiful.”

I try to keep my face even as I see the neonatal unit rush around attending to our daughter.

Daughter.

I have a daughter.

I’m somebody’s father.

“Hayley,” I say, turning back to her. “They’ve got her taken care of. She’s in good hands.”

She nods. “Good.” She pauses. “Promise me something, Ryan.”

“Anything in the world for you,” I reply.

“Don’t leave us,” she says.

I have a sudden surge of inspiration course through my body. I get down on one knee. “Hayley Childs, will you marry me?”

Hayley starts sobbing and pulls her IV arm up to her mouth. “Yes, yes!” she says.

I hug her as the operating room rushes around the two of us. We kiss and it’s the best thing in the entire world.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

HAYLEY

“I don’t want gelatin, I want to see my baby,” I say to the nurse who is insisting I eat something.

She nods at me. “I understand, Ms. Childs. The doctor wants you to eat something before we take you down to the neonatal intensive care unit to see her.”

I wait for the nurse to leave and I look at Ryan. “Do something.”

He looks at me seriously. “Give me three minutes.” He stands up and leaves the room.

He returns in under thirty seconds with a wheelchair.

“That was easy!” I exclaim, throwing the blankets off my legs. I try to push myself upright but Ryan flies across the room to stop me.

“No, no, no. I don’t think so. Let me help you. You’ve got a six-inch incision going vertically down your abdomen. You need to not move as much as you can, okay?”

“It’s not that bad,” I say stubbornly.

Ryan laughs. “If I could bring the baby to you I would. That’s how bad your incision is. I saw you cut open. It was like something out of
Alien.”

I chuckle and immediately stop from the sharp pain radiating through my body. “Oof,” I say.

“Told you so, Hayley.”

I glare at him in mock frustration. “You’re right. You win.”

Ryan reaches underneath me carefully and lifts me out of the bed. I feel a few twinges of pain but I don’t say anything. Ryan’s strong touch makes up for it and I don’t want him to put me down. I’m seeing my baby.

No matter what.

Ryan gently places me in the wheelchair and pushes me out into the hallway. “If anyone asks what we’re doing, we’re making a run for it and not answering, okay?”

“Roger roger,” I say back jokingly. I tuck the blanket more closely around my legs as Ryan rolls me down the nearly-empty hallways. It’s past visiting hours, clearly.

We follow the signs to the NICU. Each foot closer my heart pounds more loudly.

Finally, we make it to the glass windows. Babies the size of my hand wiggle behind hard plastic enclosures, safe from germs or any worldly harm. I push myself up in the wheelchair so I can see better but Ryan pushes me down gently.

“You don’t need to get up. She’s right over there.” He points at a baby in the second row. I see her pink cheeks and her impossibly tiny hands curled up against her chest. There are so many tubes and wires going in and out of her I nearly start crying in anguish.

“She looks strong,” I whisper.

Ryan squeezes my shoulder. “Of course she is. She’s got you as a mum.”

Those words do it. They send me over the emotional precipice I’ve been hanging onto all day. I cry. I sob, actually. And bawl. And sniffle. Ryan gets down on his knees and pulls me into his embrace.

“She’s going to be fine. The doctors know it. They say she had just enough time. If it was going to happen, this was the time to do it.” Ryan kisses the top of my head and strokes my hair back. “She just couldn’t wait to meet you, that’s all.”

I laugh and rub my nose against my gown. I’ve left tears all over Ryan’s polo. “I’m a mess,” I say apologetically.

Ryan takes my face in his hands. “You just did the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed. You gave birth to a perfect human being. Right in front of my eyes. You’re not a mess. You’re beautiful.”

He kisses me on the lips as a doctor and nurse walk by.

I hear the footsteps stop and a clucking of a tongue.

“Ms. Childs, you really couldn’t wait fifteen minutes for me to get you?” The nurse reprimands.

Ryan smiles at me and stands back up. “It’s my fault. I’m the one who made the escape with her.”

The nurse smiles. “Let’s take you in to get scrubbed up.”

Too many minutes later, we’re all de-germed and covered in paper gowns, hats, and masks. Ryan wheels me carefully through the ICU to our baby’s side.

“You can reach in and hold her hand,” the nurse says. “It’d be good for her to have some human contact.

I pull open the round hole cover and push my gloved hand through. A moment later, I’m touching my baby. “Oh, Ryan,” I whisper, the tears falling fast.

He crouches again and wraps his arms around me.

I never want to stop touching her. I never want to leave her side.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

RYAN

“Can I speak with you outside?”

I jolt awake when I feel the hand on my shoulder. I blink a few times, delirious as to where I am. It’s still the hospital.

Still.

And the doctor is standing next to me; he’s the one who woke me up.

“Sorry,” he says. He jerks his head towards Hayley. “I didn’t want to wake up Ms. Childs.”

I nod and stretch, padding out of the room. “What is it? Is the baby okay?” It’s been a week of hospital recovery and we still haven’t named her. I think Hayley is afraid the second we do, she might slip away from us.

The doctor puts his hands up defensively. “She’s okay. But she’s not
great
. She could be better. I don’t want you or Ms. Childs to panic.” He pauses and puts his hands together in thought. “There’s a syndrome called failure-to-thrive. We see it in twins sometimes. I think it might be best if you and the baby had some skin-to-skin contact. Hayley shouldn’t be sitting upright for too long. It would be best if you did it.”

“Anything,” I say. “Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.” If he had just told me I needed to build a ladder to the moon, I would have started gathering the supplies before he was even finished talking.

“Great. Follow me,” the doctor says.

I walk ahead of him to the NICU, wanting to get there as fast as humanly possible. I wash my hands and put on a hat. I start to put on scrubs but the doctor shakes his head. “We’ve moved her to a different section with the older babies. You won’t need a paper jacket. I want you shirtless, actually.”

I pause and grin, not sure if that’s a joke.

The doctor waves a hand in the air, clearly embarrassed. “That sounded weird. It’s not that
I
want you shirtless. Your baby needs as much contact as possible.”

I nod, understanding at once. We walk into a separate area of the NICU. I see my girl. My baby. My daughter.

She’s the love of my life.

But she’s so small. Too small.

She seems like she’ll shatter if I pick her up.

The doctor looks at me as if reading my mind. “You won’t hurt her. I’ll help make sure her leads and IV don’t get tangled. Lift her carefully.”

As if he needed to say that last bit. I’m handling her like she’s a bomb I’m supposed to disarm in the middle of a packed football arena. I pause before I pick her up.

“I’m supposed to-“ I motion to my shirt.

He nods and I strip down, feeling awkward. I’ve been shirtless a thousand times, hell – I’ve been totally naked in front of a dozen other men. But this environment isn’t that of a locker room. This place feels sacred.