Page 6 of Leave Me Not: Nick & Elissa #2 (Badger Creek Duet #8)
6
ELISSA
A nd then my phone begins to go off, the chime of an incoming text message immediately followed by the sound of it ringing. I knew I should have turned my sound off, and I also should have known that no one can keep a secret in this ski village. Thank fuck I made it here to tell him before this shitshow started.
“Guess the secret’s out,” Nick says, making his way toward the door. “Should I open it?” He looks over his shoulder at me, a smile on his face that makes my knees weak.
“Are we excited about this?” I now ask him, testing the situation, but already knowing his answer. I can tell by the look on his face that even with all the uncertainty, he’s happy, the way he practically bounds to the door, excited to share the news with our friends.
“Fuck yes, I’m excited,” he calls, making his way back over to me. “Are you, Lis?” He’s now testing me, and as much as I was terrified when I first found out, I’ve come to terms with it all. And excited is definitely what I’m feeling, especially knowing we’re going to do this whole parenting thing together. It’s all I really wanted out of this when that test came back positive.
“I am,” I reply nodding, the doorbell ringing again along with a steady knocking that tells both of us it’s Alex or Max. “Looks like we’ll be telling our friends we’re back together, huh?”
Nick grabs me, his arms around my waist, he lifts me up off the ground, swinging me around, both of us laughing.
“I’m pretty sure they already know,” Nick jokes, setting me down. He kneels down in front of me, his hands resting against my stomach, he presses a kiss between his hands.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, chuckling a little at how cliched and ridiculous he looks. “You better not make it a habit to be kneeling in front of me unless it’s with my pants off.”
“I was going to talk to the baby, but maybe that is a little over the top, huh?” Nick chuckles, standing up, as he pulls me back into his arms. “I can’t even believe this is happening, but holy shit?—”
“Seriously guys, we know you’re home. We can hear you talking. Let us in!” Max’s voice calls out as he pounds on the door again. “I’m just going to come in through the garage if you don’t let me in.”
“He sounds serious, and I should probably go so I can tell Harper. She’s going to be pissed I didn’t tell her when she was fishing for information about us.”
“Too late!” I hear Harper’s sweet voice call out, and she has me laughing. She’s standing outside the door with Max, listening to us.
“Would you open the damn door, Nick!” Max calls again, and he finally makes his way over there, pulling the door open to find Max and Harper standing on the porch.
“Oh my god, I knew you were lying!” Harper squeals, scampering over to me and throwing her arms around me in a huge hug.
“Okay, it wasn’t so much that I was lying, it was just that we were keeping things quiet until…” I stall out, realizing Nick and I never figured out what is happening with him going back to Park City.
Harper pulls back, beaming, and she lets out this adorable high-pitched screech of excitement before she says, “We’re going to be pregnant together!”
She’s practically jumping up and down, and I have to say her excitement is contagious. It is going to be amazing to be going through this with my best friend who is also pregnant.
“We are,” I say, and now I can’t even imagine not living here. How can I leave my best friend who is having a baby too, my mom who will be who I turn to when I need help or advice, and my job that has been an amazing support when I needed it most?
But I also never want to hold Nick back. I don’t want him thinking I got pregnant on purpose to make him stay here. If I had it my way, I’d tell him to go, to pursue his dream and come back to us when he’s done. That’s never going to happen though.
“When did you find out?” Harper asks, weaving her hand through my mine as she tugs me into the kitchen where the guys are standing at the counter, a beer in their hands.
“When did you find out?” I ask, echoing her question, and she giggles. I’m so glad she’s not mad at me. She could have easily been with the way I kept everything from her.
It still feels shitty that Nick and I did that, but we had our reasons even if they do seem stupid and petty now. Both of us seem to have done a lot of secret-keeping that has only led to confusion and arguments. It stops here.
“I would guess the second the words slipped out of your mouth in front of your staff,” Harper jokes. “You know no one can keep a secret around here.”
“I did ask them to wait until I told Nick, and I guess they did since I came here right after I got off.” I shrug, realizing I wasn’t all that specific about when they could say something.
“Maybe they listened since I didn’t hear anything about it until about twenty minutes ago. They at least waited until you left the building,” Harper says, giggling again. “Oh my god, I’m so damn excited. And Sammie, she’s going to lose it. Two babies!”
“Two hot dads too,” I tease, tossing a thumb over my shoulder to where Max and Nick are talking. “Nick as a dad, holy shit,” I now mutter, shaking my head.
“He’s going to be great, Elissa,” Harper tells me, and all I can do is nod. I don’t doubt he’s going to be a great dad, it’s more about how we are even going to do this. I don’t want Nick feeling stuck here just because the baby and I are here.
Like my mom said, people travel for work all the time, and we could just look at it like that. Nick traveling around with the US team, coming home when he has some free time. But maybe that’s just entirely unrealistic.
I hate that we’re trying to be excited about this, but it’s being overshadowed by something as big as Nick’s career. Would it be unheard of to take a baby on the road, touring with the ski team? I remember my mom telling stories about me crying for three months straight as a baby and it was the hardest thing she’s ever dealt with in her life.
This is still such a fucked up mess.
“You okay?” Nick asks me, coming up from behind and slipping his arms around my waist. “You look deep in thought.”
“I am, but I’m fine. We can talk more later,” I reply quietly, not wanting Max and Harper to think they’re interrupting us. They are our best friends and it’s nice to be able to share the news with them, even if the Badger Creek gossip mill already did it for us.
“How about we go celebrate this news?” Max suggests. “We get everyone together and meet up at The Matterhorn.”
“I think that sounds great,” Nick replies, and I smile at him, enjoying this blissful moment of peace before we have to make some hard decisions.
When we arrive back at Nick’s parents’ house it’s well after midnight and I’m exhausted but feeling happier than I’ve felt in years. It felt like our old life, the one where Nick and I were together, and it felt like it would last forever.
“I’m so tired,” I moan, dragging myself up the stairs. “I have to work at like six tomorrow morning, and I’m pretty sure this baby is sucking the life out of me.”
“You want me to go in for you?” Nick asks, and there’s a seriousness to his question. He knows the job as well as I do, but there are things he can’t do, things that went into place when the renovation happened, but it is hard to turn down his offer.
“No, I’m fine. Pregnant people work all the time and don’t complain. I can do this,” I respond, getting ready to wash my face and brush my teeth.
“Have you made an appointment to see the doctor?” Nick asks, standing with his back against the counter, his feet crossed at the ankles.
“I haven’t. I plan to call tomorrow. Is it weird that I’m nervous?” I ask, drying my face off, wrinkling up my nose when I look over at Nick.
“Nervous about what?”
“Nervous to tell the doctor’s office I’m pregnant. The last time I was in I told them I wasn’t sexually active. That shit changed really fast.”
Nick laughs. “I’m just glad to know you weren’t sleeping with anyone on the regular while I was gone. I know we broke up and all, but shit, I hate the thought of you with another guy.”
“Seriously, Nick? You sound so…I don’t know, alpha male and that is not you. And by the way, you think I like thinking about you with all those ski bunnies throwing themselves at you?”
“Just for your reference, I didn’t have any ski bunnies throwing themselves at me. I barely had time to breathe. Training for the Olympics is full-on, babe.”
“I’m sure it is,” I pause, my mind wandering to our unfinished conversation, the one that we keep coming back to but are never able to fully make a decision on. “Nick, are we really going to do this?”
“Do what, Lis? This?” he stops, motioning between us. “I think we already are and yes, we are going to do this.”
I feel my eyes well up with tears, pushing them away with a swipe of my hand, I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I’m just really emotional. I’m sure it’s the pregnancy.”
“You don’t have to apologize. This is a lot. I don’t think either of us ever thought we’d be here,” Nick says, stopping to pull me to him, wrapping his arms around me.
“I wished for it for so long,” I admit, sniffing back the tears. “But in my dream, it was completely without complications. We just lived happily ever after and that was it.”
“We can do that,” Nick says, dropping a kiss to the top of my head.
“And what, Nick, live in your parents’ house while I work at Badger Creek, and you teach lessons to rich assholes when you have so much more talent than that.”
I can hear the anger in my voice. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to get the happily ever after and I was supposed to be here thinking about how amazing it is that he got out, that he made it. And I certainly wasn’t supposed to end up pregnant.
I hate that I go back and forth, cycling through being happy and then being sad and then angry. It’s such a mess, and it’s a mess that I wish had an easy solution.
“Lis, it’s going to be okay and if I have to teach lessons to support us, then I’ll do that. I don’t care as long as I’m with you.” I want to believe him, but I also worry he’ll look back on all this one day and have massive regrets, regrets that he takes out on me or worse, the baby.
I shake my head, clearing my thoughts because that isn’t Nick. He would never hold it against me, and I need to keep telling myself that. But I also know he wouldn’t be happy teaching lessons, not that it’s below him or anything; it’s just his caliber of expertise is not in teaching tourists to hit the bunny slopes without falling.
“I want you to go back to the team and try to make it work,” I finally say out loud. “I want you to live your dream. I want you to be happy.”
Nick lets out a hard sigh, his chest rising and falling as my body moves with him. “Elissa, you are my dream, this little family we have created, it’s my dream. I’m not happy when I’m not with you.”
“Then what are you going to tell your coach?”
“I’m going to tell him that I’m not coming back,” Nick says with finality. “It’s not what’s best for us, for our family.”
I’m shocked at Nick’s immediate response, not even giving it a second thought, but rather doing what he thinks is best for the family. We haven’t even discussed him staying here, even if that’s exactly what I want.
I take in what he’s just said, wondering if it’s as easy as him just saying he’s done. He has to be under contract with the team and all his sponsorships. The money he was bringing in was insane and now we’re just supposed to go to my manager’s salary at Badger Creek and living in the house I own with my mom?
“Do you think they’ll just let you go that easily?” I ask, letting the question out instead of allowing it to fester in my mind.
“What can they say?” he asks, sounding far more casual than I expect. “They’ll replace me before I can even finish telling them. Don’t you think there are millions of talented jumpers out there looking to make the US team and possibly train for the Olympics?”
“I’m sure there are, but you’re under contract, right?”
“Lis, you’re worrying about this way too much. I’m just a business transaction to them, and I’m not making them any money right now. They can’t wait to unload me,” Nick says, trying to reassure me, but all it does is make me feel bad that he’s going to have to have this conversation with them.
But he’s right, he is just a business transaction to them. It’s about money. It’s always about money. Just like raising a baby costs money.
Money neither of us are going to have if Nick doesn’t keep skiing or at least get a job here. I’m sure Ethan would hire him for something. We have to make this work.