Page 128 of False Start

“Do you need ginger ale? Water? Saltines?”

“Oh, my God, Kyle.”

“Shit, did the pizza make you sick? You didn’t eat much. What do you need?”

“Shutup,” she said, and she wound her arms around my neck and pulled my lips down to hers. “I’m fine. I… I’m just shocked, I think.”

“Yeah, this was definitely unexpected.”

“No, I mean, I’m shocked by your reaction.”

“What did you think I’d do?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, you didn’t sign up for this. You’re supposed to be fucking models and actresses and living it up as a rookie in the NFL. Instead, you got a single mom with a batshit crazy ex-husband and, now, a baby on the way.”

The wordbabymade my face split with a grin. “A baby.”

“A baby,” Madelyn echoed on a whisper, and she shook her head, burying it in my chest.

And the moment hit us.

I felt it, not just how it slammed into my chest, but how it knocked the breath from hers, too.

This very same moment had been stolen from us years ago.

This elation, this celebration, this immeasurable amount of love had been ripped away from us.

We’d lost our first child — and neither of us had been able to properly grieve that loss.

Madelyn’s arms slipped from my neck to wind around my waist, and she squeezed me tight, her brows furrowing as I hugged her and held her to me. I kissed the crown of her head, and we both let out long, slow breaths.

It was the most delicate mixture of pain and elation, that hug shared in her half-packed living room.

I felt the loss of innocence, the loss of another life.

But I also felt the birth of a new one — one that was so far from anything I’d ever imagined, and yet brought me so much joy I wanted to burst with it.

“I have a request,” I said after a while, still stroking her hair.

“No, we aren’t naming them Madden.”

I smirked. “Let me be the one to tell Sebastian.”

At that, Madelyn pulled back, her eyebrows sliding together as she looked up at me.

“He’s going through a lot of change right now,” I said, as if his own mother didn’t already fucking know. “I want to make sure he knows that he’s supported through that. That it’s okay to not feel happy about it all. I want him to know we’re a team. And I want to talk to him about being a big brother, about how…”

I swallowed, unsure of how she’d feel about what I was about to say next.

“I want him to know that I see him as my own just as much as this one on the way,” I said, floating my hand down to her stomach again. “And for the next nine months, I want him to know he’s my priority, and that even when the baby comes, he’sneeded. And he’s allowed to needus. And… fuck. Do I sound stupid? Am I failing as a dad already?”

Madelyn was watching me with an amused smile, but her eyes were glossing again. She sniffed, shaking her head.

“No,” she whispered. “You’re going to be the best dad in the world. To both of them.”

I let out a puff of a laugh from my nose. “Holy shit. I’m going to be a dad.”

“You already are.”