The Rematch (Ziall Horlik)AU M-Preg

Chapter 25

Zayn's POV

Each hit seemed to echo through the gym as I watched Harry do the exercise Mark had just told him to do. I just stood to the side and watched him as my mind zoned out for the hundredth time in the past three weeks since Niall's miscarriage. Nothing could seem to take my mind off of it, even my own kids couldn't. They were running around the gym with all of Ezra's friends here while Niall was doing grocery shopping. Nothing could make me stop thinking about it. Not even the fact Harry had his fight with Liam coming up next week. With each hit, I felt it ring through my ears. Nothing could take away the emptiness I had been feeling. Even our house seemed too quiet and Niall's waist seemed too thin when I held him.

Niall was handling this beautifully. He would talk to me when he felt like his mind was heading somewhere it shouldn't and he would always keep a positive attitude about everything. We both believe this happened for a reason, to strengthen our marriage or to love our kids even more, we can only guess why. For him, he had his parents to help him the first days before they left and it was just us dealing with it. Louis and Harry helped a lot by coming over and cooking for the boys because Niall and I seemed to be stuck in a state of shock. Niall just seemed to grow from this everyday. His smile even returned after a week. I remember seeing him out in the backyard just laying in the grass and looking up at the clouds with a smile. He's at peace with this while the fighter in me wants to find a way to fix this that involves my fists.

"Zayn, can I talk to you in the office?" Mark asked me quietly, but his voice made me jump from the trace I had been in. I nodded and followed him to the office we both shared. He closed the door and we both sat down. He pulled out some pictures from his wallet and gave them to me. One of them was a very pretty pregnant lady that had light brown hair and tan skin. She looked young, but the joy radiating off of her. The next picture was a small little sonogram and in the top it said that it was a boy. I looked up at Mark and saw him looking at me with a sad smile.

"That was my wife Sandra when she was pregnant with our son. We both were so excited about having a baby that we wanted to know right away if it was a boy or a girl. We named him Erik right away. The whole pregnancy was fine, it was the delivery that went up in flames. Sandra was anemic, so she was loosing a lot of blood during the delivery. Little Erik had a defect that made made his skin not fully develop where his skull and spine met. Air hitting him was all it took for his little heart to stop beating. The doctors tried everything they could, but he wasn't strong enough. My wife died just before they told her our son was dead. Her last words were take care of him, but she didn't know that both of them left me that day. For months after I went through life in a blur. Nothing made sense to me because I didn't understand how the best day of my life could turn out to be the worst. I never wanted to get married again or try having kids. I just focused on making the boxing gym my wife told me to open be as successful as it could have been. Years of depression and feeling angry went by until one night I decided to give a hole in the wall club a chance. There was this flirtatious bar tender that made me, not only smile, but laugh for the first time in years. It had been such a hard task for everyone that they all left me, so I decided to pay him for it." Mark stopped and smiled at me, I was crying so he rolled his chair over to me and took the pictures from me and took both my hands in his.

"If you ever wonder why I love you and think of you as my own son, it's not because you're an amazing boxer. It's because you were the person that turned my life around from something I thought was so unfair and so cruel. My son would have been just a few years older than you. Some days I look at you and think that my son Erik is the one that pushed us together so we both could live our lives with something neither of us had; a father and a son. I know what you're going through right now and I want to be the person that helps you through this." I nodded to Mark and let out a soft sob. I leaned forward so my head was on his strong shoulder and he could hold me.