I also got it in my mind that Hayden and Jackie wanted to have a boy and a girl and kept trying until they got the boy, which is something that I've heard straight couples discuss and women talk about when they got like 5 daughter and 1 son or something. And I mean in the USA among white collar professionals.
But here Hayden implies (in the previous page) that he maybe wasn't too crazy about baby #4 but Jackie was "bored". Which to me is fascinating. Lile this is coming from Hayden, not Jackie, but let's take him at face value and assume he talks to his wife and knows how the pregnancy happened (beyond the obvious lol).
So Jackie enjoys being pregnant? Not outside of the realm of posibility, though I personally struggle to conceptualize it. But Hayden said "bored".
Wait hold up this is the beginning of the combo:
It's more like he kinda asked *Shane* if Jackie might be bored???????
Friends, imagine yourself with even partial access to an NHL player's salary, finding yourself "bored", and then deciding to handle that boredom by getting *pregnant*.
Like if I had the opportunity to ask Reid to talk about one character right now. . . It would be Jackie Pike lmao.
This book is fairly fast-paced. It's practically speed running this story. I do not believe this is a case of Reid not knowing what she's doing (I guess that *could* be it, but I prefer to engage with the work in good faith). To my view, Reid had a limited word/page count and used it sparingly to at least attempt to put to paper the parts of the story she found most important/interesting. Which is why we get nearly nothing about the coaches and team managers and the agents, who realistically are extremely important and influential and *powerful* in these dudes' live.
But we do get this conversation between Shane and Hayden, which tell me several things despite how short it is:
1) Shane and Hayden talk about stuff outside of hockey, about their personal lives (at least Hayden talks to Shane about his personal life)
2) Shane will go out of his way to hang out with Hayden, will go to the aquarium with two little girls and a baby boy to hang out with his best bro, no I don't think he would do this for any rando. To me this is the clearest sign in canon that Shane just straight up loves Hayden as a friend.
3) Hayden thinks his wife keeps getting pregnant out of boredom???? Is he right? Is that just Reid showing that Hayden is your stereotypical straight married bro who thinks the issue of pregnancy is entirely up to the woman in the relationship.
Like the more I think about this, the more I wonder about it. Did Jackie talk to Hayden and tell him she wanted kid #4 and he was like "oh, okay, I guess". And then they went through with it.
Was it birth control failing and Jackie deciding she didnt want an abortion?
Hayden kinda sounds. . . Not suoer excited abkut this? Almost confused. These people are wealthy, so it doesn't make sense that he's worried about money, but being a parents is hard. Money makes it easier, but being a good, present father for four children is nothing to sneeze at.
But if he didn't want kid #4, did he say anything to his wife about it?
Also about Jackie, if she is "bored", then how would pregnancy #4 alleviate that? Is she not entertained by the children she already has?
So it's Hayden just full of shit? But then that means this couple doesn't effectively communicated about *the number of children they want to raise*??????
Lol this is the most I've been stumped on my reread.
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
