Chapter Fifteen
River
The doctors were right. Given some time and physical therapy, my leg was right as rain before the end of the season. Two months after leaving Forrest at the cabin and heading back to town, the medical personnel declared me cured. They couldn’t do anything about my broken heart, so I didn’t ask them to. Missing him hung over me like a big black cloud every day, all day, and at night.
No reason I couldn’t hit the slopes and go back into heavy training according to the team physician, the orthopedist, and the therapist. None at all. At least so far as they knew at that point. Skiing would have required getting more than four feet away from the toilet. I’d been throwing up every morning and most afternoons for weeks. If the docs knew about that, they’d have wanted to run tests, see if I had any other injuries that might keep me from my career. I didn’t want that. Besides, I’d already done the one test needed to learn what made the porcelain convenience my best friend.
Seven months later, I was close to having a little Forrest on my hands. Or, rather, a little one half his and half mine. I grabbed for the phone a hundred times, anxious to tell him, when I remembered how he’d let me go. He couldn’t have been more casual. I displayed more emotion when the guy who came to pick up my skis for repairs drove away than my former lover did when we parted forever.
Yes, forever.
I’d thought him different from the other alphas, and he was. They’d never shut me out like that, led me to believe we had something special then just walked away without a word. Technically, I had left, but he hadn’t asked me not to. And for once, I’d behaved like a good omega and let the alpha take the lead. See where that went? One moment, we were all cozy cuddly happy, and the next, he treated me like a door-to-door salesman offering a line of dog poop.
And now…and now I was in the unenviable position of pregnant omega with no alpha. All the romantic images of someone to wipe my brow, bring me cold or warm drinks, tell, me all the misery was worth it because, at the end, we’d have a baby. We’d be a family. I rested my hand on my bulging abdomen and pictured the tiny person growing in there. I hadn’t known much about pregnancy, but reality had a way of teaching an omega things.
For now, I just wanted to keep down something besides crackers and ginger ale.
I was staying at Maria’s. My cousin kindly offered me her spare bedroom during my rehabilitation and what came after, and since I didn’t think I’d be earning much over the next year, I rented out my townhouse up north.
I couldn’t think past the next several months. The baby had to come first. He—I thought of it as a boy although I had insisted the docs not tell me—had only me to take care of him, to give him a happy, secure home. I hoped to God I was up to the task.
I’d slumped around the house all spring and summer and late into the fall, Maria for all her kind caring, was at the end of her rope. If it weren’t for the baby, I think she might have used the rope to strangle me or a least lasso me and drag me out of her house.
When this was over, I would owe her big. So big I couldn’t even comprehend it. I might have to name the baby Maria, boy or girl, to begin to show my appreciation. She never even chastised me for what I knew had to be constantly annoying behavior, like eating all her chocolate then being too full for the dinner she cooked me.
Waddling to the kitchen, I tried to decide what would not upset my stomach. After morning sickness faded, I’d actually felt pretty good until the last week or so. Now I blamed the heartburn and nausea on the almost-ready-to-be-born baby squashing everything inside me. The box of hot chocolate mix on the shelf lay next to a bag of marshmallows, and I reached for it before the memories of when I’d last had the beverage swamped me. Crumpling, I felt behind me and managed to drag a chair under my ass before I landed on the floor and hurt myself or the baby. The little one who made it impossible to tell the difference between hunger, upset stomach, and the eternal need to pee chose that moment to deliver a sharp kick just under my ribs, and I gasped, losing my breath for a moment.
When it came back, it was in a sob, followed by another and another and a storm of tears. I was an athlete. Emphasis on “was.” Athletes were supposed to be tougher than this, but without knowing if my center of gravity would ever return, if I’d be able to go back to my job with a baby depending on me…I felt adrift. Lost.
Maria found me crying into my bent arm, the tablecloth soaked with my tears.
“Well, this is just enough.” She stood over me; I could feel her disapproving presence without even opening my eyes. “I have put up with a lot since you’ve been staying here. Your self-pity and irritation, moping around like there’s no tomorrow. But now you’re working on making yourself sick which is not good for you or the baby.” She bent and spoke close to my ear, her warm breath puffing at my uncut, messy hair. “I know I promised not to get involved. I’ve been Switzerland up to now. But at some point, you need the truth. I picked something up while I was in town today that I think might make a dent in that pathetic shell you’ve been carrying around.”
Her steps clomped away, and I sat up and rubbed at my burning eyes. Maria meant well. Nobody could ask for a better cousin. A kinder friend. So whatever she had to show me, I’d pretend it helped. She deserved that much appreciation.
Sniffing, I straightened my shoulders and gave my tummy bulge a bracing pat. “Time we pulled it together, my child. Otherwise, your godmother is going to lose her good nature.”
Pasting on a smile that made my cheeks ache, I faced the kitchen doorway, waiting for her to return. But when she pressed her purchase into my shaking hands, the storm of emotion threatened to overwhelm me again.