Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,76

hug fortify any part of me that felt ill-equipped for ... well ... any of it, really. I sniffed. "And Jude?"

She exhaled a laugh. "Well ... I think Jude needs two things."

"What?"

"An excellent therapist and a kick to the balls. He should’ve warned you."

It felt good to laugh, even if it was through my tears. I sank onto the bed, wiping my cheeks. “I think parents need the kicking even more than their son.”

She nodded. “I can’t imagine saying those kinds of things to your son.”

I buried my face in my hands and took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have stormed out like that.”

“No, probably not.” Isabel was quiet for a second. “Why did you?”

My cheeks puffed out on a hard exhale. “I swear, my body moved before my brain knew what I was doing. I just wanted … out. I didn’t want to face how little I knew about him, and them, and the kind of family this baby is being born into.”

She hummed, rubbing a hand down my back as she sat next to me.

"The stuff that was good between us, Isabel, it's so good. The parts that are just me and him. I was falling in love with him before I even knew it was happening." She sat next to me, and I lowered my head to her shoulder. "I think that's what made it so easy to ignore all the things that were ... I don't know, separate from us. It sounds so immature when I say it like that. A hot guy made my head spin, so I forgot to talk about what would happen when our child was born."

"You didn't forget, Lia. You're barely into your second trimester." She nudged me with her shoulder. "Go easy on yourself. You're in a different country, away from family, and he made you happy. Right?"

I nodded.

"Did he ever mention the future?" she asked.

"Not really. I mean, he mentioned the fact that he'd be done with the season and could travel to Seattle for the birth, so we both knew that I'd be home. But I think he counted on my understanding the demands of his career, you know? It's not like he can just ... press pause on the season and come hang out in America and watch me get puffy ankles."

"No," she said cautiously, "he can't. He must have thought about it, though."

"I think he did." I stood, snagging my water bottle off the nightstand to take a long sip. Emotional outbursts made my throat all scratchy. "I remember he asked me something odd, when we were watching the Wolves game a couple of weeks ago. He asked me what it was like to see my family doing what they did."

Isabel hummed. "That was it?"

"It's like ... it's like he never had true support, so he doesn't understand the family as a unit, you know? And aren't we our own little team? The Wards?"

She snorted. "The Wards are like their own gang. We'll defend each other to the death, and once you're in," she said ominously, "you can never get out."

I missed them. Our team. With the exhaustion of the day settling in like an iron cloak around my shoulders, all I wished for was the power to blink and find myself back home. Find myself surrounded by all the people who knew me best. Normally, I lived life wanting to see and do and go. But all of this, the newness and novelty, it made me crave home.

For the first time in my life, I craved the routine I had there and the sameness that I'd left.

Even though whenever I went back home, whether it was with Isabel or a couple of weeks later, I wasn't returning to the same life.

Everything, my entire life, would be different. And I couldn't ignore the parts that were hard, the parts that scared me anymore.

"What's that look on your face?" Isabel asked quietly.

"I think it's what Claire would call self-realization, or whatever the counselor speak is." I sighed heavily. "I have to talk to Jude."

She rubbed my back. "What are you going to say?"

I shrugged one shoulder. "I figure it'll, I don't know, magically appear in my head when I see him."

Reaching for my purse, I dug out my phone, and there was his name, in a series of texts.

Jude: I'm sorry about my parents. They're raging arseholes.

Jude: Your sister asked me to give you tonight, and I'll respect that.

Jude: But I didn't want to be across London