Free Delay of Game by Catherine Gayle

was always going out on dates with some dickwad or another. None of them were good enough for her, at least the way I saw it. This son of a bitch, whoever he was, definitely wasn’t good enough for her if he hadn’t even bothered to be with her last night. My right fist itched to teach him a thing or two about how to treat a woman.
    “Fuck,” she muttered, fresh tears in her eyes. She clambered off the barstool and rushed out of my kitchen.
    “Sara, wait,” I said, but she didn’t stop.
    She slammed the door to the downstairs bathroom and locked it. By the time I got there, it was too late.
    “I didn’t know.”
    “ Nobody fucking knew,” she said. She was full-out crying now—I could hear her sniffling and hiccupping through the door.
    Twice in less than twelve hours, I’d made her cry. God, I was the biggest fucking ass in the world.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Not as sorry as I am.”
    Maybe she realized the asshole who’d knocked her up didn’t deserve her. I still wanted to rearrange his face, though.
    “Is he—”
    She ripped the door open so fast I almost fell through onto her. “I don’t want to talk about this.” Her eyes were still filled with tears and her face was splotchy, but a fierce resolve had returned to the set of her jaw and the hardened line of her lips.
    “Okay.”
    “And you don’t know a fucking thing. I swear to God, Jonny, if anyone finds out without me telling them—”
    “I won’t say anything.”
    Her glare never wavered. After what felt like an eternity, she nodded.
    “Come on,” I said. “You should try to eat.”
    Sara sniffled again, but she walked past me and returned to her barstool in the kitchen. Buster was hanging out by her stool, hoping for more crumbs. I followed her in with a thousand questions I couldn’t ask racing through my head. She was right, though. It was none of my fucking business. I kept my questions to myself. Well, most of them.
    “Do you think you can eat anything other than toast?”
    “I don’t want to try right now.”
    I nodded and took another sip of my coffee. “Will the smell make you sick if I fix my breakfast?” I didn’t know the first thing about morning sickness.
    She shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”
    I took out some eggs and fruit, trying to put together a reasonable breakfast for myself. I might not be able to play for a while, but I still had to keep my body ready. That meant I had to keep fueling myself like I would if I was playing, and I had to get in enough workouts to mimic the physical output of being in games. It wasn’t going to be easy. Ten games in the playoffs could be two or three weeks, maybe more. If the Storm got eliminated before those games were up, I’d have to finish serving my suspension next season, but if the guys kept us in the playoffs for a while, I could be called on to play again sooner rather than later.
    Sara was still picking at her toast and sipping her tea, not really making much of a dent in either. She wouldn’t look at me.
    “I thought I’d take you to the hospital and then see if I can track down your purse before my call with the League,” I said. “I can come back to get you after.”
    Her eyes flickered up to me for a moment. Just long enough to pierce me. “You don’t have to do all that, Jonny. I’m sure Dana can come get me to take me to the hospital. Or Laura—”
    “I’m sure they could, too. But I want to.” There were a lot of things I needed to make right. Being sure Sara was looked after was only the tip of the iceberg. Especially now that I knew she was pregnant.
    She sighed, a huge, heaving breath. “You really have to stop trying to make up for last night, you know? It wasn’t your fault.”
    She was still wrong about that.
    In the end, she let me take her to the hospital. I stayed with her until they took her back to see Scotty, and I stuck around a little longer—until Dana showed up to wait with her. Then I headed to the Moda Center. Jim wasn’t