Hard Checked (Ice Kings #4) - Stacey Lynn Page 0,31
my car to get to work.”
He turns and hurries down his driveway, hands shoved into his suit coat, head down and shoulders hunched to block the biting chill of the wind.
“You going to let me in?” I ask, turning back to Madison.
She shivers from a quick burst of arctic wind and good Lord, as much as I love Minnesota, I do not miss the miserable winters.
“There’s nothing to say I haven’t already said,” she says, but she still steps back farther into their split-level entry. It’s so similar to my own home with a smaller landing and my thigh hits the door handle to the door leading to the garage. I flinch from it but brush it off.
“I think there’s a lot to say, Mads.”
She shrugs and curls the sweater tightly around her, nodding toward the downstairs. “Let’s go down there. Emma’s here and she and Archer are still sleeping upstairs.”
“Archer’s here?” For a moment, I’m thrilled at the idea of seeing my eight-month-old nephew. Then I realize I’m not exactly welcome. Wanted. Desired. Hell, I’m not even sure I can still consider the little guy my nephew anymore.
Madison’s face scrunches and I grind my teeth together, but I wait until we’re down the short flight of stairs and she closes the door behind me.
“Have you told them? Does your sister know how much it hurts you to see him?”
“She’s trying to help me and be there for me.” Her voice is monotone and I hate it.
There was a time, over a decade ago, when Madison was one of the liveliest people I’ve ever met. She’d stand on her feet and shout so loud during my games her voice would be almost this hoarse by the time I was done.
She was always studious, had a serious introspective side, but when she was ready to play, she did it hard, without remorse or regret.
Until infertility happened.
“So you haven’t told them?” I’m aghast. “How can you… Madison… why do you do this to yourself? She has to know she’s not helping you by shoving her baby in your face. Hell, she’s staying here?”
Goddamn it. The need to defend her is so damn strong and this is what I’ve always hated. Madison the martyr. She doesn’t want to upset anyone, doesn’t want to make anyone else feel bad so she internalizes all of it until she can’t handle it. Then she turns inward.
“This was a mistake,” she says. “You shouldn’t be here and there’s nothing left to say. I said everything I needed to.”
“In a letter—” I grind out. “And with divorce papers without talking to me. Did you really think I would just walk away?”
“And I did all that because you’re not listening. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t want this and fail to give you what you want and now we know it’ll never be possible.”
“There are options—”
“I don’t want those!” She cringes at her raised voice and squeezes her eyes closed. “Damn it, Sebastian. It’s over.”
“We’re married,” I stress. “Committed. Better or worse. Or have you forgotten that?”
“Well maybe I’m tired of living the worse all the time.”
She snaps the words out and they lash at me like a whip. Painfully slicing open my skin and ripping open my heart.
“The worse?”
Her chin trembles and her gorgeous blue eyes have no more beauty in them. Only dullness and pain. I’ve spent fifteen years being there for her. Fifteen years where I’ve comforted her and encouraged her and tried to support her in following her own dreams so she wasn’t all tangled in my demanding career. I’ve done everything, damn it. Not perfectly, I admit. But this? It was the worst?
Logically, I get it. The last few years have been the worst. But things could always be worse than not being able to have our own child.
“What about… we talked once… a while ago, about having one of your sisters carry the baby.”
We’d hated the idea. What if Grace or Sarah, her older two sisters who both have their own children as well grew too attached? How would that complicate things? I didn’t like thinking of possibly having to fertilize her sister’s egg.
Madison blinks. “And whose sperm would we use?”
She says it with a drawl heavy with sarcasm, almost disgust.
And damn her. I’ve never thrown this in her face. Ever. I’ve never intentionally made her feel less like a woman because she can’t do this.
I know this side of Madison though and as much as it hurts, I know when I’ve