Page 56 of Out of Bounds

“You flinched when I told you about the pregnancy announcement.”

“That’s not a question,” she responded, her expression unreadable. He let out a sigh—she did have a point. But he was curious if there was something more to her reaction from earlier, or if it had been just because she’d been upset that they weren’t alone.

“Why? Is there something I should know?” he asked carefully, not wanting to imply anything. The last thing he wanted was for her to assume that he was accusing her of anything.

“Oh my God, Gunnar, no! I’m not…”

“No!” he said. Shit, shit… This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted her to think. “Not saying you are. I just didn’t know if it was a…sensitive topic or something.”

“No, I, ummmm…” she stumbled. She looked down into her lap again for a moment, inhaling sharply, before looking up at him. Her eyes were soft, like they had been that night on the couch. This was his Felicity. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course.”

“It feels weird to be having this discussion here,” she laughed nervously. “It just hit me weird, I guess. I think it’s an odd way to tell the world you're expecting, but what do I know? People do weird things when it comes to that stuff. I’m at an age I see a lot of pregnancy announcements from people I know, and it’s just…I dunno…weird. After losing my mother so young, and then all the drama with my stepmother, I’ve never seen myself as all that maternal. I’ve just assumed maybe it wasn’t in me. But lately, part of me has wondered if I’m missing out on something. My career has always been my baby. It's what I've put all my focus on since graduating college. And I’ve never second-guessed it until now. Because…” she trailed off.

“Because it can’t let you down the way people have,” he offered up.

“Yeah,” she sighed, smiling at him. “Did you and Anya want kids?”

“We did. We never ‘tried,’ as people put it, but we weren’t doing anything to stop it either. Just figured it would happen when it was supposed to. Which, apparently, it wasn’t.” He shrugged, thinking back to how laid-back his wife had been on the subject. He'd heard his teammates talk about how their wives were obsessive over the process, but Anya never was. Her easygoing spirit was just one of the many things he missed about her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. I know you think I’m crazy for still talking to her, but she answers. It’s not always in the way I expect, but she does. She brought me Liam, and now Talia.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. The opposite actually. I understand it completely. I write my mom letters.”

“You do?” he asked, surprised. She’d never given even the slightest impression that she did such a thing. His heart squeezed as he pictured her sitting there, writing out the notes.

“Yeah, I have entire notebooks full of letters to her, telling her all about what’s going on, how much I miss her and wish she was still here, and asking for her advice. She never answers though.”

“I bet she does, you probably just don’t realize that it’s her.”

Felicity opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by the sound of Cowboy’s voice.

“Sorry ‘bout that. But you don’t skip Mama’s calls,” he said, sliding back into his seat.

Gunnar looked over at Felicity and watched as she morphed from the beautiful, relaxed creature he was getting to know to the uber professional businesswoman she let everyone else see. He liked knowing that he was in on the secret and that she trusted him enough to let her guard down.

“No problem,” Felicity said, her voice determined. “But you didn’t answer my question. Are we getting you up on that stage?”

Chapter Twenty

Sitting next to Gunnar on the team plane felt a lot more scandalous than it probably looked to anyone else on the flight to San Antonio for the team’s last preseason game. Of course, to the casual observer, it simply looked like the two were focused on the work in front of them—Gunnar watching video of the opposing team, Felicity reviewing the numbers Becky had given her regarding the first round of pub partner agreements. What they didn’t see was that Gunnar’s hand was strategically placed on the inside of her thigh, his pinky finger resting right at the seam of the crotch on her pants, or that she had her calf wrapped around his.

They were also completely in the dark about just how much time the two of them had spent together. After their oddly productive dinner with Cowboy the other night, they’d ended up back at her place where they’d spent the rest of the evening alternating between lighting her sheets on fire and sharing secrets. She was pretty sure they had covered every topic under the sun—stories from their childhoods, first kisses and lost virginities, favorite colors, food, music, and movies. She’d told him more about missing her mother and how much she had hurt at the betrayal of the woman who would become her stepmother. About what a terror she’d become because she didn’t know how else to harness those feelings, and that it had been the only way she’d gotten any attention from her father.

He’d opened up about having been raised by his grandparents, how he’d wanted nothing more than to make them proud, and how he missed them more than he ever had his parents. Hearing about how he’d thrown himself into work after Anya’s death and that he’d made a promise to Cowboy when he’d taken the job with the Rising that he wouldn’t be as much of a workaholic had tugged at her heart—she liked knowing that she wasn’t the only person who hid from the world that way. Then came stories from his time in Ireland, some of which had made her laugh so hard that she couldn’t breathe, which had only egged him on even more.

Since then they’d spent every night together. Gunnar had made her watch some of his favorite movies—the ones he’d watched over and over again to help perfect his English—while she had forced him in return to sit through the entire first season of How I Met Your Mother. He’d fought her at first, but now he was sucked in, already asking when they finally got to meet the woman in question. Felicity didn’t have the heart to tell him that the name of the show was misleading, and that if he were anything like her, he’d be very disappointed in the ending.

“Who are you chatting with?” he whispered into her ear, nodding toward her screen.

“Talia,” she answered him, typing away at her laptop. She could feel the heat radiating off of him, and it was comforting to have him this close to her.

“Whatcha talking about?”

“Link,” she answered nonchalantly. Peering out of the corner of her eye, she could see his expression morph, and she bit her lips to try and hold back a laugh. His brows furrowed and his face went stone still, as he waited for her to continue.