“Wake you up in the middle of the night to say, I will never walk away again… You say, go it isn’t working. And I say, no it isn’t perfect. So I’ll stay instead…


Balboa Island was turning out to be everything they wanted it to be. On different levels, they both missed Sofia. For Marie, it was like a part of her was missing and she desperately wanted it back. For Marco, it was more like something he’d grown use to was suddenly no longer there. They talked about her incessantly; about what they wanted for her in the future, and what type of person they hoped she’d become. And then they’d mention giving her a sibling.

Now and then Bill would come up in conversation. As it got closer to the wedding date, Marie kept going back and forth on whether or not she wanted her dad there. On one hand, he was her father. There wasn’t anything she could do about that. On the other hand, being biologically related to someone didn’t give them a pass to treating you like shit. Even during the times when she felt like inviting her dad, she knew she couldn’t do that to Marco. Every time Bill had hurt her, it had hurt Marco in the process. She had to be selfless about this situation.

Their time in California was ending. Sleeping in and lounging around would be a thing of the past in a couple days, and while they still had the chance, they wanted to make the most of it. No more fancy dinners; just being able to curl up with each other and have no responsibilities.

They spent the afternoon walking through the island, checking out the little shops as they went. Marco was a pretty good shopper, and Marie thought it was one of her greatest talents, so together they were unstoppable. Several bags later, they shuffled back into the waterfront beach house.

“Wine! I need wine,” Marie dropped her shopping bags by the couch and flopped down on it, shaking her flip-flops off her feet. Moments later, she heard the familiar clink of a glass hitting the coffee table in front of her. And like magic, a glass of wine was there for her. With Marco serving as magician, he sat down beside her with his own glass, and the rest of the bottle. “My own personal Jesus,”

She sat up and reached forward, quick to take a sip. It was exactly what she needed to end the day. Marco stretched out his arm and Marie curled into his body.

Marco let out a long groan as he clicked on the TV, flipping through the channels before settling on something they were bound to ignore anyways. “I miss Sof,”

Marie tilted her head back to look up at him. She took another sip of wine and tucked her free hand on his stomach. “Is this what it’s going to be like when we take our honeymoon? Constantly missing her?”

“We’re gonna be having too much wild sex to miss her constantly,” he smirked and poured a little more wine in each of their glasses.

“Are we now?” She grinned and moved her hand down from his stomach to his crotch.

He set his hands over hers and held them still momentarily. Marie caught his glance and gave him a questioning look. He tried to play it off coolly but Marie knew him too well for that. After taking another sip of wine, he cleared his throat, “you know how we were going to fly back to St. Paul in a couple weeks so you could be at the café for a little bit before our New York trip?”

Marie nodded and sat up straighter, pulling her hands into her lap.

“I won’t be making that trip with you,”

“What’s going on?” Her breath caught in her throat as she struggled to make sense out of what Marco was saying.

“I have to have hernia surgery, so I’m staying in Montreal for a few extra weeks.”

Marie blinked rapidly, trying to process what she’d just been told. Hernia surgery? “What are you talking about? When did you get a hernia?”

Marco leaned forward to set down in wine in order to buy a little more time. That’s when Marie knew she wasn’t going to like the answer. “January,”

“What the fuck?! That was six months ago, and you didn’t get it fixed?” Marie didn’t know if she should be madder at Marco for keeping it a secret, or at the team of allowing him to keep playing.

“I didn’t want that to sideline me. We were struggling and I needed to help the guys get to playoffs,”

“So you just thought you’d keep playing hockey with your intestines falling out of your abdomen.”

Marco began to hold back giggles, “Marie. The trainers pushed everything back in and taped me up to play. I knew you’d worry, so I didn’t say anything.”

“Damn right I’m worried. What would’ve happened if it got so bad and you started hobbling around with a cane? What would you’ve told me then?”

He grabbed her hands and brought them up to his mouth, kissing them over and over again. “I’m not sure hernia’s can get that out of hand. It’s not that I was going to keep it from you forever… You would’ve wanted me to get surgery right away,”

“Excuse me for caring so deeply about your well-being,” she whispered, catching his glance.

He grinned and tugged her closer to his body, trying to get her to simmer down a little. And Marco knew he deserved to get his ass chewed a little bit; he had hid the truth from her.

Marie feigned a certain level of annoyance, “if you can’t even tell me about this, what else are you hiding? No more lying. And if this isn’t lying, no more choosing to not disclose the truth,”

“I’m not hiding anything else, baby. Just try to see it my way. This year… more than any year… I needed to get to playoffs,”

She brushed his hair away from his face and nodded. This year was the year he needed to win it all. It would’ve been one last thank you to his dad, who had sacrificed so much in his life so Marco could live out his dream.

Marie licked her lips and leaned in, planting an innocent kiss on his mouth. Marco let out a soft sigh and tangled his fingers in her hair, cradling her head in his hand. “I’m gonna get ready for bed,” she whispered, running a finger along the vein in his forearm.

He released his hold on her and picked up his wine glass. As Marie tiptoed into the other room, Marco watched her carefully as though she held everything that was good in his life. Once in the other room, Marie moved leisurely. She could pretend like she was over Marco’s injury. A hernia was not nearly the worst injury she could think of, but it proved a point she always believed to be true.

In sports, but hockey in particular, she watched the guys take heavy blows to their bodies and continue on. Their heads could be spinning, in a state of half consciousness and half dizziness, and they still put themselves back in the position to play. Particularly, Marie watched Marco come home from a game or road trip, and she’d see the bruises and cuts on his body grow bigger and more painful. The calluses on his hands hardened and his knuckles bled. A knocked out tooth here, and a torn muscle there wouldn’t keep him from playing if he could help it. He sacrificed so much of himself just for the opportunity to play; like the sport was doing him a favor. Physically, he looked like a healthy young adult. With peak cardiac health and stamina, and impressive strength and agility, he was the poster child of any gym or athletic club. But the wear and tear his body endured since childhood had also made him the equivalent of a middle-aged man who’d spent his life doing blue-collar work. His joints ached on a regular basis, switching off between intense shoulder pain and tear-inducing hip discomfort. Marie had witnessed him limping around as his hips fought against every step. Usually it was when he was coming home after a game, or early in the morning after having just woken up from a night’s rest.

Marco never complained though. He soldiered on without a grumble, and iced himself up when he needed to. On more than one occasion, he had come home with drugs prescribed by the team’s physician. A dangerous mix of pain medication and sleeping pills, it was the sport’s idea of a quick fix to an everlasting problem. And each time, Marie would watch Marco flush them down the toilet, not even allowing himself to see it as a viable option.

In the end, it wasn’t the hernia that had propelled her towards an angry and frustrated response. It was the fact that no matter how much Marco sacrificed for the league and for the sport, it had the ability to take so much more. Not so long ago, the Wild were mourning the loss of one of their own. And sure Marco’s job wasn’t to go out and look for a fight, but Derek Boogaard had made the ultimate sacrifice, and Marie would be damned if the same happened to Marco.

Marie remained preoccupied with her thoughts, nearly oblivious to the fact that Marco came in to get ready for bed too. He cleaned up for the night and crawled beneath the blankets before Marie reemerged from the bathroom, ready to do the same. He was staring at her, waiting for the right moment to pull her out of her daydream. But she did that herself, and the moment she laid down beside Marco, she pulled herself into him and wrapped her arm over his waist.

“I don’t think,” her voice was hoarse as she tried to sort out her mangled thoughts, “I would survive if something happened to you. If you went to work and never came home, if you fell into the boards and never reopened your eyes… I don’t know how I’d ever move on.” Marie furrowed her eyebrows, “I’d never be able to look at Sofia because she’d just be a painful reminder of you."

Marco seemed taken aback by her confession, thinking about the right way to respond. It must’ve been something she’d been mulling over and pushing to the back of her mind because it came out like she’d been rehearsing it for a while. His arms enveloped her, fingers running up and down her spine. “I know,” it was the only thing he thought to say, and it came out choked. Marie tilted her head back to look at him, unconvinced. He wanted to tell her that if he knew he was in a truly dangerous position, he’d sit out. But even he couldn’t convince himself of that.

---

Minnesota was pretty lonely without Marco. That’s when Marie was convinced that if it hadn’t been for him, she’d have never moved. The shop was continuing to do well, and thankfully between that and being the sole source of entertainment for Sofia, there wasn’t much time to feel pity for herself.

The only saving grace was that Charlie had flown back from Massachusetts to help her out while Marco was out of commission. Sofia’s normal babysitter was off on a European vacation, and now with her being a terror on functional legs, there was no way she could hang out at Scandy’s and stay out of trouble. So Marie had called in a favor, one that Charlie was inclined to accept.

He’d become Sof’s favorite honorary uncle. She loved the Suter’s and Parise’s too, and never minded getting the chance to be with them. But ‘Uncle Car’ was different. He always wanted to take Sofia on an adventure, which in all honestly could’ve just been the zoo, but he made it exceptionally fun for her. To Marie, the fact that he was essentially a bigger version of a child was the real appeal for Sof. Charlie wasn’t too old to roll around on the floor, looking like a complete goofball, and seeing as though she was still an only child, having someone get on her level, literally, was an added bonus.

For everything that he was: a best friend, an uncle, a playmate, Charlie had no trouble stepping in as a father figure when Marie needed him too. It wasn’t often, because Marco was usually present, but now with him still being in Montreal, and going to be there for a few more weeks, Charlie was stepping up.

“When’s Scandy’s surgery?” Charlie picked a french fry and off his plate and pushed it into his mouth. Sofia watched him steadily, and reached out, trying to take it from him. He looked down at her and chomped at her fingers playfully, only taking an extra moment to tear off a little piece of the soft steak fry, and held it to her mouth.

Marie smiled at the way Charlie was so at ease with Sofia. It was like she really was his child. “Tomorrow morning. Sandra’s keeping me in the loop. He comes home a week after, and then I have to keep him down for three to four weeks.”

“Ma!” Sofia said, holding out another piece of french fry. She wiggled her hand and then stuffed it into her mouth.

“I see, darling. You like french fries,”

Charlie bounced his knee up and down, leaning in to kiss the top of Sofia’s head. “How’s wedding planning going?”

“Jess has been helping me out, which has been a relief. The last thing I really coordinated was the dates of the stag and hen parties. Nino’s taking care of assembling the evening for the boys.”

“That’s scary,” Charlie smiled and reached up to take a sip of his beer. Sofia reached for that too, but he held the bottle out of reach. “This is papa juice. It’s not for you, silly,”

Marie smiled, “Jess is assembling mine… which is even scarier,”

“I suppose we should both be expecting strippers.”

“Can you do me a favor, Charlie?” Marie folded her arms along the table, “Don’t let him do anything foolish. A lap dance, the normal provocative stuff is fine, but… I know any girl, stripper or not, is going to the pounce at the chance to sleep with an NHLer.”

He flicked his eyes to hers, “I never took you as one to be unconfident in any respect. Especially in terms of anything relating to intercourse… are you actually nervous?”

“It’s his one last shot at anyone else, in a setting where I could potentially be swayed into thinking it’s okay. I trust him, but I can’t speak for the girls that might be around.”

Charlie nodded and pushed his plate away from him, readjusting Sof in his lap, “I’ll keep an eye on him. You’ve got nothing to be nervous about though, seriously. The dude’s crazy obsessed with you. The last thing he would want to do is jeopardize his future with you.”

Notes

"Never Gonna Leave This Bed" by Maroon 5.

Believe it or not, this story is starting to wind down! Only about 15 chapters left, which should leave me done updating by the New Year. Unless I spark more inspiration with this.