Chapter Twenty-Four
Jason
* * *
I awoke to a buzzing. My phone? I checked to find a couple of messages from Franky.
I’m outside.
Are you awake?
Then another buzzing sound, but this time my intercom.
My phone said 7:15am, which meant I’d been asleep for three hours. The season was in full swing with five games behind us. The last eight days had been a killer road trip—won two, lost one—and I was looking forward to pizza on the sofa, catching up on my shows, and icing my knee, which was playing up after the last game in LA.
But Franky was here.
Was this bad news? If she was pregnant, she would probably have texted after my last game. Showing up in person seemed like an ominous sign.
I bounded down the stairs and opened the door. She had descended a couple of steps, evidently giving up on rousing my tired ass, but now she turned. In her brown blazer over a cream turtleneck and a green corduroy knee-length skirt with tobacco-colored boots, she was what you would see in Merriam’s beside “liberal arts professor, subspecies: New England.”
She pushed back her glasses. “You’re awake.”
“Wasn’t that the point of the messages and the loud buzzing?” I stepped outside. “Are you okay?”
Her gaze dipped over my body. Color pinked her cheeks, but it might have been the chill in the air. “It’s thirty-five degrees, Jason. You’re going to freeze.”
So I was in my underwear. She was lucky I was even wearing that. Or maybe unlucky she’d missed out on the main event: a naked Jason Isner.
“Are we okay?”
Her lips curved, her smile spreading like golden butter across her face.
“We are.”
That big, and getting bigger by the second, grin could mean only one thing.
“Doc, are you … pregnant?”
“Yes!”
I’d imagined this moment. I had thought that maybe there would be smug satisfaction at having made a woman, this woman, pregnant. But that didn’t even enter the picture.
Okay, perhaps a little.
Mostly, I felt an overwhelming abundance of joy.
I picked her up and spun her around. “We’re havin’ a baby!”
She gasped a laugh and thumped my shoulder. “Jason, put me down!”
“Nope.”
“You’re going to put your back out.”
“Not a chance. I’m as limber as they come.” I could barely feel the throb in my knee. “Plus, this might be the last chance I can lift you because you’re about to get heav-y.”
That made her laugh, and she was still laughing as I brought her inside and kicked the door shut. I placed her down gently but kept my hands on her hips.
