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One
Maverick was nervous about seeing Carole.
It would be his first leave after the one-year anniversary of Goose’s death, the first time he’d be seeing her in months. It was also his first leave since getting together with Ice, and while he would’ve liked for them to spend it together, Ice’s own request for leave hadn’t been approved.
And he did want to see Carole. He wanted to see Bradley, too, who’d been getting so big in the pictures Carole had been sending along that he could hardly believe it. But the thing with Ice—he was used to telling Goose everything, and Goose telling Carole everything in turn, so it was weird for there to be something big about him that she didn’t know. The trouble was, he didn’t know how Carole would feel about this.
Goose had been pretty religious. He’d worn that cross the same way he’d worn his dog tags, as if it marked out who he belonged to, one for the body, one for the soul. He’d gone to church on Sundays and prayed before they took off each flight. But he’d been quiet about it, too. Maverick had never heard him judge anyone who didn’t deserve it, had never heard him say anything hateful or ugly.
The night before his transport back to land was due, Maverick was so worked up about it that Ice dragged him into the bowels of the carrier, into an out-of-the-way storage closet where they could be alone.
“You don’t need to tell her if you don’t want to,” Ice said, once they were closeted away, his face thrown into shadow by the utility bulb above the door.
They’d talked about it a couple weeks before, the last time the boat had pulled into port. They’d had a full two days together, just the two of them. Slider knows about me, Ice had confessed, his arms tight around Maverick in the darkness of their hotel room, bare skin to bare skin.
But Ice hadn’t told his RIO about Maverick yet. An overabundance of caution, maybe. Or maybe Ice just didn’t know what Slider would do to Maverick if he found out about it while they were still serving on the same boat. It was a big risk they were taking, and that included Slider, too.
“I want to,” Maverick responded, crowding against Ice, leaning into the heat of his body. It was already warm enough, down here, but he didn’t care about that now. “I don’t have to tell her that it’s you if you don’t want me to.”
“I already told you,” Ice answered, wrapping his arms around Maverick. “I trust you.”
Ice allowed him one kiss, then another when he clung, and a handful of minutes pressed close, arms around each other, before he stepped back and started tidying his appearance. Ice wasn’t much for risk, but he’d take them for Maverick every now and then.
It only settled Maverick a little, and only until he was on the transport the next day, Ice’s I’ll miss you, ringing in his ears. In between trying to get some sleep and daydreaming about Ice, he worried. Would Carole hate him for this? Would she forbid him from seeing Bradley?
God, he loved that kid like anything. He’d never really thought about having any of his own, but from the moment he’d held Bradley in his arms, he’d been gone. Like Goose, like Carole, that little baby had become family. Maverick didn’t know what he’d do if he lost that.
By the time he landed in Knoxville, Maverick was a mess. He took a detour to the men’s room to lose his lunch on the way to baggage claim. When he got there, haggard and worse for wear, Carole was waiting, Bradley standing by her side. It settled something in him to see her, settled it a little more when she ran to meet him and threw herself into his arms.
Bradley hung back, a little shy after so long without seeing him, but accepted a hug easily enough. Maverick hoisted him up on his hip as he and Carole talked, idle chatter about his flight, about the trip back, what the weather was going to be like.
They didn’t really talk until the next day, after Maverick had had time to get some sleep and a couple meals in him and Bradley was over playing with a neighbor kid for a few hours. They sat out on the back porch with some wine and cheese, and she looked at him like she knew he had something going on in his head. He felt like he might be sick again.
“Pete,” she said softly. “What’s got you so upset? Are you going to tell me you’re dating someone else?"
He choked on his wine, a dry white, and set it aside. "Someone else?” he asked.
“I know how you and Goose liked to carry on. But it’s been over a year now, I don’t think he’d mind if you made other friends.” Her tone was somewhere between teasing and sincere, but her observation was all too accurate, on both counts.
“Carole,” he said. He picked up his glass again and took a large sip of the wine. “I wasn’t dating Goose.” But that wasn’t something she needed to be told. She’d known about the whole thing with Charlie. “But, uh. There is something I should—”
Her expression melted into one of seriousness. “Have you met someone, Maverick?” she asked gently.
She knew he’d been out at sea for months. Sure, there were some women serving, but none that he came into contact with regularly, and even then, it would still be fraternization and against the rules.
“I, uh—I never told Goose, this, but—” He touched the stem of the glass, then pulled his hand away. He picked up a napkin instead. There was no way around it now, he had to just get it out. It would be better to know, in the end. “I’m gay. I mean—bisexual, I guess.”
“Oh, Pete, honey. Goose knew.” He looked up sharply. Carole still looked as serious as before. "At least, he suspected as much."
"And he was okay with it?" Maverick asked, the hope beating in his chest almost painful. But if Goose had known and not minded, why wouldn’t he have said anything?
Carole pursed her lips and tilted her head a bit, half a denial. “You know how he was. He was troubled by it some, but he loved you enough to try and work through those troubles.”
Maverick nodded. That was better than he could have hoped for. And Goose had never acted differently towards him, so didn’t that say everything he needed to know? When Goose could’ve turned him in, or requested reassignment, or even just stopped being his friend, he’d stuck by him. And Goose had told Carole, who had kept on being his friend even after Goose was gone.
“And you’ve met someone, haven’t you?” she asked, her voice back to that soft, understanding tone. “You have a boyfriend?”
It was hard to admit, even though that’s what he was trying to work his way up to in the first place. “Yeah,” he said, looking into the distance as he tore at the napkin in his hands.
“And does he treat you right?” she asked, this time slightly teasing, more like her usual self.
He thought about going ashore with Ice, the two of them alone in a foreign city, exploring, eating food that he’d only dream of later. Laughing and holding hands when they thought nobody would see them. A hotel that was nicer than it needed to be and Ice’s tanned skin spread out over white sheets.
He thought about the week of the anniversary of Goose’s death, of looking at the flight roster and seeing Slider’s name beside his every time instead of whoever was up next in the rotation like he was used to, of Ice sitting next to him in the ready room while he did his paperwork, not trying to make him talk, but just being there, solid and steady at his side.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said softly, feeling the smile curve his lips.
“Do you love him?” she asked.
It was early for that. Far too early. “Yeah, I think I do,” he answered anyway. He could see himself spending his life with Ice, far more than he could’ve with Charlie. More than he’d ever seen himself spending his life with anyone who other than Goose.
“Then that’s all that matters.” She scooted closer on the wicker bench and bumped his shoulder with hers. “When do I get to meet him?”
“You, uh. You have met him. You remember Iceman? Tom Kazansky,” he added, when it didn’t seem like she did remember. “He was at Top Gun with us.”
At Goose’s funeral, he didn’t say. Straight backed in his dress whites, hat under his arm, expressing his sympathy in sincere, if stilted, terms, the same as he had in the locker room later.
But she didn’t seem to be thinking about that, or if she was, it didn’t bother her like it would have once. She slapped him on the shoulder and cackled in delight. “Oh, Pete Mitchell, you do have impeccable taste.”
Two
Maverick was nervous about seeing Carole.
He’d been granted a couple weeks’ leave after landing stateside before he had to report to Annapolis – maybe to make the punishment go down a bit easier, maybe because they didn’t want to have to figure out what to do with him before the start of Plebe Summer – and he’d gone down to Tennessee then, but that was before the whole thing with Ice and Sarah.
Ice was making a friend, that was fine. That wasn’t something Carole needed to know. But to the rest of the world, Ice and Sarah were dating, and they were doing it as publicly as possible. The whole point was to get Ice’s coworkers off his back, after all. That came with the chance that the news would get back to Carole somehow, because if there was anything Navy officers and Navy wives loved, it was gossip.
The problem was, he wasn’t sure how he’d describe it. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Sure, he’d told Ice it was fine, after they’d fought about it and made up again. He was glad that Ice was making friends, what with how he wasn’t really fitting in at Oceana.
Unlike Maverick, Ice was normally good at that. The other guys respected his competence and, if nothing else, they respected his pedigree, something which Maverick didn’t have. But Ice had been different since the injury. In public, his normal affable mask was gone, leaving him all hard edges, and in private, he’d been withdrawn and unhappy.
Sarah made him smile. And if that was something Maverick couldn’t do, then he was happy that someone could. He just wished that he could be the one to do it, that he could be in Ice’s life every day, not just for the handful of hours they managed to steal here and there.
At the start of it, it had been easy to say that he’d be able to deal with the hardship. He’d only been in a couple serious relationships in his life. Only one other, if he was being honest, because the thing with Penny had been more of a fling, a brief madness of youth shared between them. Charlie, though—he’d fought for that, until he didn’t know how anymore, then she’d come back to him until something else had meant more to her. Neither of them had tried to keep it together in the end.
With Ice, it had been different. They’d become friends after the Layton rescue, and then they’d slowly become more than that. Wingmen. Everything short of lovers, over the months they were deployed together. He’d never wanted anything more in his life, so he’d convinced himself that he could make it work, like he’d made everything else he’d really wanted in his life work.
After he hadn’t been accepted to the Academy, he’d joined the Navy anyway. He’d become a fighter pilot against the odds. He’d made it to Top Gun. He’d snagged the Iceman, somehow. And even after two years, he still wanted Ice, and he still thought they could make it work, even if it wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d once thought.
Even if Sarah Miller was going to be the thing that made it work, at least for now.
Maverick picked up Carole and Bradley from the airport on Friday, the day before the three-year anniversary of Goose’s death, in Ice’s piece-of-shit rental—the Corvette might be better than the bike, but it still only had two seats.
Carole ran at him like she always did, and he caught her around the waist and pulled her close. He was less of a stranger to Bradley now than he was sometimes, and Brad came up and hugged him too, and Maverick ruffled his hair. He’d gotten too big for Maverick to pick him up easily, and he missed it a little, missed the weight of a kid on his hip.
He took them back to Ice’s place, where Ice was cooking dinner, a ragu they’d once had in Italy that Maverick had eaten so much of he’d almost gotten sick in the hotel that night. They’d gone back the next day, and Ice had listened closely and taken notes as the chef had described how to make it in heavily accented English, charmed by Ice’s willingness to learn.
They caught up over dinner, Ice cutting Maverick off before he overdid it and took thirds, but they didn’t talk seriously until the next day. They went to the park, the four of them, and Ice watched Bradley on the playground while Maverick and Carole took a long walk along one of the paths.
She knew he had something to say, and she waited patiently as they circled away from the playground and through the trees, arms linked together.
“There’s something I should probably tell you,” he said, his eyes fixed on the path in front of them. “Ice is, ah… Ice is seeing someone.”
“Like a doctor?” she asked, her voice ripe with confusion. When he glanced at her, her brow was wrinkled. “Is he doing okay? He seems a bit down.”
He realized after a moment that she meant a therapist, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have a point. Ice had been holding up well enough, but Maverick knew he was staring down the barrel of never being able to fly again, and he didn’t think he’d be dealing with that quite as well himself. But Ice had refused, and Maverick hadn’t pressed, given how that conversation would probably go if the situation were reversed.
He shook his head. “He’s managing. No, uh, he’s been seeing this girl, Sarah.”
Now she really looked confused. “Pete, honey, I know you can’t be telling me you two broke up. We’re staying at his place, and you slept in his bed last night.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that man is cheating on you?” She twisted her head, trying to see the playground where they’d left Ice and Bradley, as if this revelation would mean he was untrustworthy with her son.
Maverick couldn’t help but laugh, even though he didn’t really find it funny. “No, no, I said that wrong. The guys on base, they’ve been after him about not having a girlfriend. He met Sarah, and she offered to go out with him to get them off his back.”
“And just what is she getting out of it?” she asked, her eyes narrow with suspicion.
That was a question he’d asked himself, even with Ice’s explanation. It was obvious enough after meeting her that she was attracted to Ice, but if that was it, wouldn’t she be trying to date him for real? “A friend, I guess,” he said with a shrug.
She narrowed her eyes at him even more.
“Ice wouldn’t cheat on me!” he protested. “Not with a woman.”
He didn’t believe that Ice would cheat on him at all, for all that he got jealous of the attention Ice got sometimes. He knew that Ice liked to flirt, liked to see how far he could push things, but he also knew that it was just a game to him, that he preferred going home with Maverick.
They reached the end of the path, back near the playground again, and watched Ice with Bradley for a moment. Ice was crouched in front of Bradley, helping him tie his shoes. Maverick could almost hear him carefully explaining the steps, his patience never running out no matter how many times he repeated it.
Ice noticed them standing there as he stood, and raised his hand in a wave, half his attention still on Bradley as he ran off to the slide. Carole waved back, but Maverick felt a wave of something rush over him, seeing that little tableaux, and he steered her back onto the path as he blushed violently.
He got the feeling Carole was laughing at him, but he refused to look at her. Bit by bit, she relaxed, and whatever that had been back there faded from Maverick’s mind.
“So, what’s she like, this Sarah?” Carole asked finally, just as they were turning to head back.
Maverick groaned and buried his face in her shoulder, making her stumble a bit before they regained their balance. “Carole,” he groaned. “He has no idea how hot she is.”
She did laugh, then, bright and happy, and he couldn’t mind it, not today of all days. “You have all the bad luck, don’t you, Pete? I don’t know if it’s too bad he got to her first or if it’s too bad he got to you first.”
Three
Maverick was nervous about talking to Carole.
He’d left the call until the last minute, but now it was the night before, and there was no more time to put it off. Sarah’s dress was purchased, hanging in a garment bag in the guest room closet. Maverick had pressed Ice’s dress blues himself. The flowers were ready to pick up from the florist in the morning, and they had an appointment at the courthouse at noon.
The decisions had all been made. It was too late to turn back now, for any of them. Ice had his orders, and Sarah still had a bruise high on her cheekbone, faded to a faint smear of yellow after a week. Maverick was stuck at Annapolis until the end of the fall semester, but he’d put in for a transfer to Lemoore already. The only thing left to do was say the words.
Ice had sent a letter to Slider, their next call not scheduled until after the event. Maverick had read part of it, leaning against Ice’s shoulder as he wrote it out. He could only hope that Slider, who’d become an ally to him and a friend, would be able to read between the lines. Ice had told some of the pilots on base, too, when he’d brought Sarah in to fill out some paperwork. With the way gossip spread, Carole would find out eventually; it was better to get it out in the open now.
That evening, while Sarah was curled up on the sofa reading and Ice was in the kitchen making dinner, Maverick sat on Ice’s bed – he couldn’t quite think of it as theirs, though Ice had promised him they’d have a home together in Lemoore when he got there – back against the headboard, the phone in his lap.
He dialed the number from memory, the rotary phone making the process almost unbearably slow. Carole picked up on the second ring. She was happy to hear from him; he’d missed their last call in all the excitement over Ice and Sarah.
After asking after Bradley and catching up with her news for a few minutes, he took a breath and steeled himself. It was a long-distance call. He couldn’t afford to be wasting time, not even on Ice’s dime.
“Carole,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Well, what is it? Not bad news, I hope.” He could picture her leaning against her kitchen counter, twisting the phone cord around her finger as she bit her lip. She was used to bad news from Maverick coming this way. A new deployment, canceled leave. His banishment to Annapolis, Ice’s injury and return to Oceana.
“No, uh.” Belatedly, he thought he should have rehearsed this, come up with a script or something. “Ice is getting married.”
She blew out a breath of air that wasn’t quite a laugh. “To that girl he isn’t cheating on you with?”
“To Sarah, yes,” Maverick confirmed, as if there might be some question about it. “And he isn’t cheating on me,” he protested belatedly. “It isn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what it is like, Pete,” she said, not unkindly. “Because it sounds to me like you’re letting her take your man.”
Maverick gripped the phone cradle, his hand getting perilously close to pressing down the plunger and hanging up. He forced himself to ease off and grabbed a handful of the sheets instead. It had been his choice; he’d told Ice to do it. He still couldn’t help the knot of worry in his gut.
He still didn’t think Ice was cheating on him. He still didn’t think that he would. But Sarah would be Ice’s wife. That was permanent, no matter what noises they’d made about annulments and divorce once they got to California, once she got settled in. Marriage was something Ice would want to do right.
Maverick took a breath and let it out slowly. “I should’ve—I should’ve started somewhere else. They’re sending Ice back to Lemoore. His follow up with the doctor didn’t go well.”
It made sense. Ice’s squadron was based out of Lemoore. He’d only been at Oceana for the past couple months because of the eye specialist he’d been seeing, and the specialist had decided there was nothing left to do anymore but wait. From the Navy’s perspective, they were sending Ice home.
“Oh, Pete,” she said, her voice full of sympathy. She knew what that meant, not just for Ice but for Maverick, too, that they’d be separated yet again. “Will he never fly again?”
It spoke to how well she knew him that she’d asked that question first. Maverick swallowed around the lump in his throat. “He might someday, but chances don’t look that good.”
Ice was handling it as well as could be expected. Maverick was probably handling it worse, all things considered. He knew what losing his flight status would do to him. He knew how frustrated he’d gotten, not being able to get up in the air while at the Academy.
After that first day, when Ice had gotten the news and called Maverick, halfway to a breakdown, and Maverick had called Sarah to keep Ice company while he made the four-hour drive down, after they’d both done their best to comfort Ice, Ice had become practical. He’d gotten all his work in order on base. He’d gone through the house and catalogued what he’d need to take with him and what could be left. He’d done everything short of packing.
And then, when the orders had come through—that’s when everything with Sarah had happened. Maybe it had been waiting to happen the whole time. Her old man was a real piece of work; Maverick had nosed around enough to know that after Ice had shared his concerns. He’d never hit her before, and she hadn’t believed that he would, but that was before she’d brought home a man who outranked him.
Taking care of Sarah, that was something he and Ice both agreed on. And it would be good for him to have someone there with him at Lemoore. Slider and the rest of the squadron wouldn’t be back on land for another couple months yet, and Maverick himself had another three at Annapolis.
He blew out another breath. Carole was waiting patiently on the other end of the line. “Anyway, Sarah, she can’t really stay here. Her father—”
He didn’t say anymore, but from the sympathetic sound Carole made, he knew she got the picture. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Of course you can’t abandon her. But why do they need to get married?”
It was a fair question. It was practically the ‘90s; women weren’t property anymore. “The bastard is Navy. He’d find a way to make her life hell if she just left, even if she went as far as California, but as Lieutenant Commander Kazansky’s wife—”
“You didn’t tell me Tom was getting promoted!” she exclaimed, cutting him off.
The promotion had come with the transfer. A consolation prize, Ice had said, though if you asked Mav, he more than deserved it, and it was probably a year or two overdue, if anything. A downside to being associated with Maverick, even on a casual level.
“Sorry, it’s just, with everything…” He sighed and tilted his head back against the wall. Getting enough time off to come down for the wedding preparations and the wedding, dealing with the logistics of the move, making sure Sarah got everything she wanted to bring with her out of her house—it was a lot.
“Pete, be honest with me,” she said, voice suddenly soft in a way that made tears prick at his eyes. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s fine, you know? I knew he wouldn’t be here forever.” He let himself sink down against the headboard, brought his knees up. “It’s fine, it’s not like I could marry him anyway.”
“But you want to,” she said, with that same soft note. It made him think of Goose, all those late night heart to hearts, all the plans they’d made for the future. It made him think of Goose, standing next to him at the altar as his best man.
He couldn’t answer; he wouldn’t have been able to speak through the lump in his throat. He’d never really let himself think about where all this was going, what building a life together might mean. He’d talked Ice into his bed and let him into his heart and—
And he’d never even gotten to tell Goose, and he’d never have that wedding, not as long as he loved Ice, and he thought he’d love Ice his whole life, he really did. She murmured words of comfort into the phone as he cried and he wished she could be there to hold him in her arms.
“Sarah—Sarah will be a good wife,” he said raggedly, rubbing at his eyes with his sleeve.
God knew that wasn’t him, so it had better be her. And he thought she would be good to Ice, whether he wanted that job for himself or not. She’d taken care of Ice when he was sick and Maverick couldn’t be there. She’d been there when Ice was reeling from the results of his doctor’s appointment and Maverick had been hundreds of miles away.
She’d always be able to be there when Maverick couldn’t, because Maverick would never give up the Navy for Ice, would never give up flying, not even for love, and Ice would never ask him to, because he wouldn’t do the same, either.
“You’d be a good husband,” she told him. “Don’t you think otherwise, Pete Mitchell.”
+1
Maverick was nervous about seeing Carole.
More nervous than he’d been in a long time. They saw her regularly, now that she and Bradley were living in San Diego. He’d seen her since they’d made the decision, but he hadn’t told her then. He’d told himself that it was because it hadn’t seemed real yet, that he hadn’t known when or even if it would work.
But Sarah had taken the test, then confirmed it with another one, and had even been to the doctor since that night. It was still early, but it was done. They’d done it.
Every time he looked at her he felt a flush of accomplishment that he could see echoed in Ice’s eyes, and he had to admit that maybe he hadn’t told Carole because he hadn’t known how she would react. The accomplishment was too tied up in what they’d done to achieve it, and she’d know that immediately.
Things were undeniably awkward between the three of them, now that Sarah was pregnant and they weren’t trying anymore. Maverick had gotten too used to them going to bed together over the past few months. What had started as awkward and halting had become casual; pressing against each other in the kitchen, long drawn-out kisses, laughing on the way to the bedroom, Ice trailing behind them, forbearing but willing.
Maverick had to work to keep his hands to himself now, when it came to Sarah, because they weren’t together, not really. He worried that Ice would catch on to it, worried about what Ice would think of it. He worried about it when he and Ice were alone in bed together, when it felt like there was something missing. When Ice was fucking him, he worried because they were supposed to be saving that for Sarah, to make the baby, before he remembered.
It was somehow worse when they did talk about it, when they talked about what they’d done, how they’d gotten her pregnant; Maverick got off on it, and he swore that Ice did too, that it hadn’t all just been in service to a cause for him, that there’d been some attraction there, too.
There was tension between Ice and Sarah, too, though Maverick couldn’t quite pin it down, and Ice wasn’t being particularly forthcoming, either. She didn’t tuck herself under his arm when they watched TV in the evenings anymore, and she’d done that even before they’d gone to bed together. Ice was walking a fine line between cold and overly solicitous, self-conscious in a way he hadn’t been since Maverick first moved in.
It had only been a week, though. Some of that stuff was bound to come out in the wash, and they’d have to work through the rest of it eventually, because while he and Ice could crow all they wanted to about putting a baby in her, there actually was going to be a baby at the end of it. This was going to change their lives, for the rest of their lives.
He was excited and he was terrified and he wanted to tell someone, and Carole was one of his oldest friends. She’d supported him through every step of his relationship with Ice. He wanted her to know, even if it was too early to know if it would pan out this time.
The doctor had warned them about that. Sarah didn’t want to anyone else to know until she was farther along, until they could be sure, but she’d agreed that he could tell Carole now. The two of them had become friendly over the months that Carole had been in San Diego, and it only made sense to have her as a support system, since she’d been through it herself.
He waited until Carole and Bradley had settled in. They'd been sharing the guest room when they visited, but Bradley was getting older and they’d need a room for the baby when it arrived. They’d been talking about redoing the room as a nursery, but with the house full, Maverick thought maybe they should consider a bigger house instead.
He had a bit of a crisis about it while he was putting together lunch, sandwiches and a pasta salad that he’d made earlier in the day while Ice had been making up the bed with fresh sheets and Sarah had been at work leading the Saturday morning story hour. He’d never lived anywhere he’d picked out himself. As a child, after he’d lost his parents, he’d been shunted between various relatives, never quite managing to settle in, and as an adult, he’d always gone where the Navy had told him to, lived in whatever housing he was assigned.
Ice and Sarah had found the house they were renting now when they’d first come to Lemoore, before Mav had arrived, but they’d done it with him in mind, to give him the home that Ice had promised. It had been the first place that had really felt like a home to him since his mother had died, but now he found himself wanting more, wanting some place permanent, somewhere they could raise their family together.
The thought carried him through lunch, Carole shooting him curious looks the entire time, until they were cleaning up and Sarah and Ice were taking Bradley out to the park down the block to run around. They were giving him privacy, he knew that, and the way Carole settled on the sofa and looked at him expectantly, she knew it too.
Ice had wrapped him up in his arms in the kitchen before they left and just held on for a moment. Risky, with Bradley in the house—they’d agreed not to tell him about their relationship years ago, because it would be a hard secret for a kid to keep, especially when he had no idea why it had to be kept. That would be his whole life, soon.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Maverick said, his hands twisted together in his lap as he sat next to Carole.
“Lord, it is never a good thing when those words come out of your mouth, Pete Mitchell,” she said, shaking her head, a bit bemused.
“No, it’s, uh—Sarah’s pregnant,” he blurted out. He’d planned to build up to it a little more than that, or he would’ve planned to if his mind hadn’t gone completely blank whenever he’d tried to think about it.
“Oh, Pete.” Her expression melted into sympathy in a way he didn’t quite understand, not at first. “Is he really cheating on you? Or are you cheating on him?”
The assumption was understandable. They’d been stilted with each other at lunch, Bradley and Carole’s presence adding a new dimension to it, and then Maverick had let himself get in his head about things. Maverick was just surprised Carole hadn’t asked if Sarah was cheating on both of them.
“Neither!” he exclaimed, shaking his head vigorously. “The kid is Ice’s, but we were all involved.” He blushed when he realized what image that information conveyed but forced himself to maintain eye contact with Carole. “This is good news.”
She was quiet as she absorbed what he was telling her. He could almost see it as she realized all the implications. And he knew that she wanted to ask him about them, but finally she just shook her head a bit. “I didn’t know you wanted kids,” she said.
Maverick shrugged. “Ice wanted kids. And he never thought he could have them before, you know? And Sarah really wanted kids. I…” It was complicated to explain how he felt about it, even now that he’d been swept up in the challenge of doing it. “I didn’t not want kids. I want them if they’re his.”
“Oh, Maverick,” she squealed in excitement as she dove in and hugged him. “You’re going to be a father. Nick would’ve been so proud.”
He was beginning to realize that the sentiment didn’t only apply to Ice. He wanted kids if they were Sarah’s, too. And the baby would be Ice’s and Sarah’s, no matter what they’d agreed to between themselves. He shrugged again. “Not really. Ice—”
“Hush,” she said. “You just told me you did this together.” She squeezed him and smacked a kiss to his cheek. “And you’ll be so good at it. Just look how good you are with Brad.”
He slowly let himself relax, let a smile take shape on his lips and then bloom. “You really think so?” he asked.
“I know it, Pete Mitchell. You’re going to be a great dad.” She was smiling, but there was something sad about it, too.
He understood that. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close and thought about Goose, and how he hadn’t had the chance to see his son grow up. About his own father, gone from his life too soon.
He thought about Ice’s father, who Maverick had never met, always distant and looming in Ice’s stories of his childhood, cold and hard to please. Sarah’s father, who’d controlled her and hit her when she’d tried to break free.
“Yeah, I hope so,” he said softly.