Page 56 of Player Misconduct
I shut the preview so fast my thumb hurts.
He texted me the next day, after we had dinner together, asking if I’d taken a test yet. I remember the stupid little flutter of relief when I saw his message because he was someone I could tell, and I needed to tell someone, and I remember, with a clarity that now makes my heart ache, what I did: I sent him a photo of the positive test. A bright, stupid smear of white and two perfect pink lines. I told myself it was safe then, that we were past the ugliness. Maybe I was trying to be generous. Maybe I just wanted him to know—someone to know.
Now the gif of his smiling face is tucked at the corner of my vision. The idea that he can spin this into a narrative—spin me like he did last time when his team made me the gold digger soon-to-be ex-wife—makes bile rise and fall in my throat.
The nurse opens the door and calls my name for real this time. I stand, jaw working, and walk down the hall. My hands areshaking, but only because there’s so much I can’t control. The click of my shoes on linoleum is loud in my ears.
In the exam room, I sit on the edge of the paper-covered table and try to breathe around the panic that wants to swallow me whole. The doctor asks routine questions: meds, family history, allergies, and I answer in a voice that belongs to someone watching from a distance.
Then the Doppler warms under the silver strip in the technician’s hand. The room narrows to the steady hush of machine noise. I’ve heard a thousand heartbeats in my life, but none of them wrap themselves around me like this.
Then the sound: a tiny, rapid whomp–whomp–whomp. It’s absurdly loud and impossibly small. Every thread of fear in my body unravels into this sound. Tears sting the corners of my eyes before I can hold them back. The nurse smiles like she’s sharing a secret I’ve only just learned.
“That’s the baby’s heartbeat,” the tech says softly. “About one hundred forty-five beats per minute. That’s great—a strong little heart this baby has.”
You’ll have to have a strong heart, baby.
Because your mom’s heart feels like it’s in a million pieces. Pieces I hope I can mend into something whole before you get here.
For a ridiculous second, I feel guilty for letting myself be found by something so tender. And now the truth settles heavy and real–this little life exists. And I carried it into all this chaos.
I’m sorry sweet baby. Mommy will get it all fixed. I promise. You won’t grow up like I did.
My phone buzzes again in my bag. I don’t check it. I don’t want to invite the world into this room.
I press my palm to my abdomen, feeling the hollow where a future is hidden. My heart is both breaking and mending in the same motion.
When I stand to leave, the group thread explodes again with plan-making fury and half-jokey rage. But I walk out of the clinic with an ultrasound photo in my hand, a paper rectangle that is both a promise and a verdict.
In the elevator, I finally open my phone.
Vivi:SOS. We're assembling plan evil.
Isla:Call us when you’re done being heroic.
Cammy:We’ll kill a man for you.
Peyton: PR spin doctors on speed dial.
I stare at the messages, thumb hovering over the keyboard. The nausea is still there, but under it is something else: the faint, steady echo of that tiny heartbeat that will not be negotiated with headlines.
I type nothing. Instead I snap a photo of the ultrasound and send it to them before I talk myself out of it. Then I tuck the phone back into my bag and walk into the rain-streaked world, the city suddenly both too loud and too small for the fact that my world is now wrapped around a tiny little thing that my body has kept from me like a secret for so long.
By the time I get to my car, the rain has picked up again. I sit there, the ultrasound photo balanced on my thigh.
Then my phone rings.
Tarron.
For a few seconds, I just stare at the screen. The part of me that still wants to believe the best in people—the part that’s too tired to fight—answers.
“Hey,” I say flatly.
He exhales. “Kendall. I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes. “For what, exactly? The photo? Or implying on national media that we’re getting back together and expecting a child?”
“I didn’t plan that,” he says quickly. “The paparazzi were there for a movie couple who never showed at the restaurant. They used us instead, and at the charity event… I got cornered. I didn’t know what to say.”
