Home Ice.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Avery

It's getting easier.

That doesn't make the days easy, but everyday I feel a little bit more like myself.

These babies are truly the universe's gift to us, I'm not sure how I'd live my life with the trauma I have if I didn't have the excitement of being a mom fueling me.

As hard as it was for both of us, telling Finn a little bit about what happened to me broke down a wall that was between us. It's not a wall neither of us wanted up or even thought we put up, but I felt it melt away with my anxieties.

I'm still on the high of finding out that we're having twins and I really hope it lasts a little longer. The fear of what my body is going to go through is creeping up the back of my neck and at moments my heart falls at the thought of it. But I know throughout all of those days that will make me feel like a whale, Finn will be by my side making me feel like the most beautiful whale there is.

Plus the fact that my body can even withhold growing two people at the same time is kinda badass. Women are fucking incredible.

The plans today are to go get a small breakfast, because Finn is now really making sure I'm eating enough, and then go to Finn's family's house to tell Dana and Morgan about the twins this afternoon. They ended up getting very, very intoxicated at brunch together yesterday so we wanted to make sure they actually remembered our good news.

Besides them and Finn's coaching staff, I think we're going to keep the babies a secret for the time being. Not because we're afraid of what could happen to them, though. I'm honestly in the mindset where if a woman is to get pregnant and then have a miscarriage, why does she have to spare the people around her when she's lost her babies?

We're not telling anyone because our life has been broadcasted for the world to see over the last month. The world knows about the man who's stalked me and a police report was leaked that he was killed right in front of me, that there were reports of me leaving the house covered in his blood and covered in bruises. People theorize online about how I was raped. The chatter around my trauma is enough to make me keep our precious babies out of the limelight for as long as we can.

And because of all of this, people have done their digging and recovered the police report that came out back in LA all those years ago, as well as the trial. It's known that Finn sent Mason into the hospital now, it's been in all the top news stories. "Hockey star Finn Wilder's dark past and how he sent a man to the brink of death."

It wasn't a secret to his team or the management of the Kraken, or even the League itself, so his career isn't in any jeopardy, but Finn beating a man senseless is still not something we wanted everyone and their mothers to know about.

And speaking of mothers.

I've thought a lot about how I'm going to talk to mine about this. I genuinely just do not have the energy to deal with her right now. She had to go back to New York but not before she stood outside our door reading into Finn over her not even being able to see me. She yelled and called him a slew of names that made me sick to my stomach, but it was one of those days where I felt like a prisoner in my own mind and skin and I couldn't even get myself up to defend him. I still feel guilty about it.

I can't imagine me not telling her working out. She is my mother, she deserves to know about her grandchildren right? She deserves to see her daughter after everything she's been through?

Whenever those thoughts cross my mind, I'm taken back to all the mean and dismissive words she's ever said to me. I think about how the only thing stopping her hand from striking my cheek was my husband. It makes me not want to tell her a single thing about my babies.