Page 135 of The Husband Game

Dustin froze, turning his head to stare at his teammate. “Skylar is pregnant?”

A vaguely annoyed expression crossed Nico’s face. “Yeah. I told you about it forever ago. At Matty’s party.”

“What? No way! I would have remembered …” But he’d been a little drunk and a lot distracted by Charlie.

With a roll of his eyes, Nico said, “You weren’t even listening to me, dude. You were thinking with your dick instead. Which, hey, I get it, but yeah, I definitely told you Skylar’s knocked up.”

“Shit, Nico. I’m sorry,” Dustin said earnestly. “I shouldn’t have been so distracted.”

“Ehh, whatever. It’s cool.” Nico gave him a vague wave.

Dustin wanted to argue with Nico that he should have pressed the matter and made sure he was actually paying attention but no, that was laying the blame in the wrong place.

It was on Dustin to be there for his team. Not for them to fight for his attention.

“So … are you excited about the baby?”

Nico shrugged. “Not really. I mean, what the fuck do I know about kids?”

“Are you two getting married?”

“What?” Nico laughed, turning in his seat to face Dustin. “God no. We’d kill each other. You know that.”

Dustin frowned.

Nico seemed awfully blasé about this situation. Even for Nico who was pretty much blasé about everything.

“Yeah, but you’re going to be tied to each other for at least eighteen years. And you can’t bail when you get bored with the idea. That’s your kid you’re talking about.”

“Dustin,” Nico said with a laugh. “I think you have it all wrong, man. It’s not my kid.”

“What?” Dustin looked over at him. “Wait, back up and start at the beginning.”

Nico snorted. “God, you really haven’t been listening. Okay, so this summer, like two days before I was supposed to show up at the NHL awards, Skylar came to me freaking out. She’d missed her period. And like … I’m not squeamish about women’s stuff or anything, I’ve bought her tampons and all that shit, but I couldn’t figure out why the fuck she was telling me this, you know?”

Dustin raised an eyebrow. “Your mind didn’t immediately leap to pregnancy?”

“Uh, no. Maybe I should have but I didn’t. And when I asked, she got even more worked up and I thought maybe it was some scary woman’s health thing. I don’t know!”

“You can’t possibly be this much of an idiot, Nico,” Dustin said, pained.

“Well, apparently I am.” Nico rolled his eyes. “So I was kind of staring stupidly like ‘uhh, what am I supposed to do about it?’ and she pulled this thing out of her purse and started waving it around. Turns out, it was a positive pregnancy test.”

“You must have panicked then.”

“No. We hadn’t hooked up in … God, six months at least. And I had a vasectomy a couple of years ago. I knew it wasn’t mine.”

“Huh. I didn’t even know they let single guys get them that young.”

A vaguely guilty look flashed across Nico’s face. “Turns out they do when you slip them a little extra money and make vague mentions of being in the NHL and not wanting someone to trap you into marriage with a pregnancy.”

“Nico!”

“I know.” He made a face. “Look, it’s not great but it got me what I wanted, didn’t it? Which is a good thing. Do you want there to be a shitload of little baby Nicos running around?”

“God no. One of you is enough.”

“I should be offended but you kinda make my point.”

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