Page 77 of Fighting For Light
”Iknowwe were,“ she says, grabbing my face, kissing me so deeply it makes my heart do backflips. It feels like I’m floating in the air right before I get back on my bike in the middle of a jump.
“I was thinking something really classy like Theodore because then we can call him Theo for short. Or maybe Thomas or Finn.”
I hum, thinking. “I like Theodore, but what about Henry or Hayes? Maybe Jackson or Noah.”
“Oh, those are good ones. I like Hayes,” she says. “Hayes Coldwell, I like the sound of that.”
I freeze for a moment. “You want him to have our last name?”
“Of course I do. It’s my last name, so it will be his.”
I smile to myself. “In that case, Theodore Coldwell sounds like a really good name.”
“So Theodore or Hayes,” she says.
“Yeah, I like those.” I close my eyes, and she nudges her face into my chest.
“Okay, we can decide later. At least we narrowed it down,” she sighs, and as I hold her to me, I can only hope that I’ll be around to see his little face and give him his name.
36
Cordelia
Kai woke me upearly and packed us up all before seven. Yesterday got to him. He couldn’t even smile at his win. He performed to perfection and didn’t even blink an eye.
I’ve been doing my best to be calm and collected, but this doesn’t make it easy. I trust him implicitly. But there is that little voice in the back of my head telling me we, my son and I, just made his life infinitely more volatile. Is it possible to regret something and not regret it at the same time? I don’t regret marrying Kai, but I do regret making myself and my pregnancy his problem.
I look out the window as we make our way to Kai’s house in Cali. It’s quite a drive from Texas, and he’s been silent for most of it. Dad called earlier, saying he’d meet us at the next competition in Cali since it’s only a couple hours from Kai’s house. Two weeks later, the championship is back in Vegas. Until then, Kai and I can work on getting the house ready for the baby. Guilt stabs my stomach again. He has to change his entire lifestyle for me. Everything feels so… backward.
Shaking off the feeling, I refocus on my computer and finish working on the marketing materials for a handmade clothing company. After I send that, I edit my photos from the other night and send them to the sponsors. The few I caught of Kai have me staring. He looks so graceful and effortless up in the air, yet it makes my heart pound looking at it. This sport is so compelling for that reason. Part of it is guts, and the other part is finesse and skill.
This is the first time I’ve seen Kai’s house. He sent me pictures when he first bought it, but I never had the chance to visit. If it was during the off-season, he was with his family while I was with Mom or hanging out with Dad most of the time.
I’ve grown my portfolio quite a bit doing freelance work. It didn’t start out that way, so I didn’t have two pennies to rub together to visit him. He did come to me a few times, though. At that point, I was nineteen, and Kai was twenty. We camped in Yosemite National Park, went hiking and swimming, and even tried horseback riding. Those were good memories with him.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Kai asks. We’re getting close to Arizona, and I’m getting antsy despite the other two stops we made. Kai didn’t complain once.
“I’m wondering what we’re going to do at your house,” I tell him.
“Oh, okay. You’re not thinking about what happened last night?” he asks.
I sigh and look at him. “Yes, I’m worried, but I’m also thinking about that one time you came to visit me when I was with Dad during the off-season.” I giggle a little at the memory. “We were staying in Montana, and we tried to learn how to ride horses.”
He laughs. “I really didn’t think it would be that hard, seeing as I flip bikes over my head in the air for a living.”
I start laughing because it was ridiculous. “You got onto that horse thinking you knew exactly what you were doing before hetook off, and you landed right on your butt. You were madder than a hornet’s nest.” Tears well in my eyes. He leapt up off the ground, cursing and trying to run after the horse. I was already on mine at that point. We hadn’t even moved, but Kai got overconfident.
“That horse didn’t like me,” he grumbles.
“Yeah, because you didn’t respect him.”
“That’s not fair! I didn’t do anything, and he…took off, and I wasn’t ready,” he grumbles.
I laugh again. “I just think you’re not meant to be a cowboy, daredevil.”
“You rode that horse like you’d done it your whole life, though.” He glances at me and winks.
“Are you trying to say you like the cowgirl look?”
