Chapter 38 Wolfe
THIRTY-EIGHT
WOLFE
Itry to argue about getting off the ice. I want to finish the fucking game but suddenly get light-headed and fall over. Before I know what’s happening, medics engulf me, strap me to the backboard, and carry me off the ice.
Great.
“I’m not even bleeding. I do not have to be off the ice.” It hurts to talk, pain radiating from my jaw down my arm, but it’s not the worst I’ve felt.
“There’s a lot in there you could have messed up. You need to be checked out.” Chad, one of our trainers, puts a pulse ox on my finger, and someone else straps a blood pressure cuff around my arm. I’m completely surrounded by people when they set me back down.
“I’m not going to the hospital.”
Usually I like the guy, but I’m about to fight him. Medical people make me uneasy because I was always told if they find out anything, it will ruin our family, and that inclination isn’t easy to fight.
“Can you breathe okay?” Chad asks, ignoring my statement.
“I can obviously talk, which means I can breathe. Can I sit up?”
“No, you could have a spine injury.”
“I don’t have a spine injury.” I’m annoyed, and this is all an overreaction.
“Are you a doctor?” Chad asks with attitude.
“Are you?” I throw back, knowing he’s not.
Chad ignores me and returns to medical shit.
“Is he refusing?” one of the medics asks.
“Give me a minute,” Chad says before I can object again.
“Who’d they put in?” I ask.
“They put in Savage, your back up,” one of the trainers says like I have a head injury.
“I know who my backup is, but that’s not saying Hawke knows what to do when I’m out. I’m never out,” I snap, trying not to be too irritable.
“The game’s over,” Coach Hawke says, appearing in the doorway.
“Did Savage desecrate my goal?” I say, afraid of the answer.
“He protected your shut out. Calm the fuck down.” Hawke comes further into the room. “Fucking goalies.” He steps aside while a trainer fills him in.
“Where’s—” Archangel shoves past Coach, still in most of his gear, clearly having fought multiple people to get in here. “What happened?”
I point to my neck, sure it’s already bruised.
He winces, telling me all I need to know about how I look. “Fuck, can you breathe? Is that why you collapsed?”
“I didn’t collapse, and if I can talk, I can breathe.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Archangel looks at Chad.
“Don’t fucking ask him,” I growl. “He’s on time out.”
Hawke and Archangel inspect the bruise.
“How bad does it hurt?” Hawke asks.
I shrug, which earns me a dirty look from Chad. “It’s fine. I’m not going to the hospital.”
“Please keep still,” Chad says as he exchanges a look with the medics.
“I can’t keep still; it makes me itchy,” I mutter, knowing Chad isn’t really listening. “You can go change. I’m not going to die,” I tell Archangel who’s hovering.
“Are we transporting?” the medics asks again.
“No! Give me whatever I need to sign. I’m fine.” I’m so fucking annoyed.
“Babe, you should get it checked out.” Concern is etched in the lines around Archangel’s eyes.
“Then I won’t be able to go home with the team, and I’ll be stuck here.” I almost wince because talking is starting to get to me.
Archangel glares. “You need to go in.”
I’m about to argue when the medic cuts in, “If you don’t get checked out and it is a c-spine injury, you’re risking your dick not working anymore.”
I gasp. “You’re lying.”
He holds up his hands. “I’m being serious, and I figured you’d want to know the risk.”
“You have to go in,” Archangel demands, like that’s not completely giving away his motivation and our relationship.
“We need you checked out to travel and to get an idea if you can play,” Hawke steps in to add. “There’s no way you can play in the regional final day after tomorrow with a possible neck injury and without clearance. There is nothing I can do about it.”
“Fine,” I say through my teeth to limit my talking. It doesn’t help.
Things move fast when I get to the hospital.
I get an x-ray and then finally, they take the neck collar off and they allow me to move.
They thankfully let Archangel come in the ambulance with me, but maybe he shouldn’t have.
He’s an anxious wreck. He’s pulled off the rest of his gear and helped me with mine, then put his jersey back on.
It’s big without the padding, and he looks hot in it.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” He gets close for the first time.
“I promise I am.” I tug him closer.
A doctor interrupts us, but I don’t mind as long as it gets me out here faster.
“I’m Dr. Rose, and I’m going to be checking you out tonight. Can you tell me what happened?”
I give him a recap.
“Can I take a look at that?”
“Go for it.”
“Pretty good bruise you got going there already.” He touches it and then checks my head movement and runs me through an exam. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s not a big deal. I’ve had worse.”
Dr. Rose blinks and exchanges a look with the nurse, but I’m used to it. At least they aren’t commenting on all my scars, which gets embarrassing and is one of the reasons I hate going to the hospital.
“Do you want something for the pain?”
“No. The pain doesn’t bother me, and I don’t want to play with banned substances.”
“Surely you’d get an exemption?”
“I’m not going to risk it in the middle of the playoffs.”
“Fair.” He sits back and takes off his gloves. “We’re going to run a few more tests, but what I’m assuming happened is the puck hit your vagus nerve and caused your blood pressure to tank, which explains the delayed reaction and why you got light-headed. I’m not seeing much else here.”
“When can I leave?”
“Give us a few hours to monitor you, and if all the tests come back clean, I’ll let you go. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say then ask the more important question, “Can I play?”
“When’s the next game?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
He thinks it over for a minute. “I’d take it easy tomorrow if possible. Then as long as you check out okay and aren’t having any complications, I’m okay with it. Your team doctor will probably want to check you out, too.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Archangel and I are left alone.
I reach a hand out for him. “Come lay with me.”
“You’re too big for the bed by yourself. Where do you think I’m going to fit?”
“I can’t believe you’d make fun of my size in my weakest moment!” I fight a smile because I want the guilt trip to work.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He comes closer but doesn’t get into bed.
“You won’t.” I scoot over as much as I can, creating a little space without wincing.
He studies me before slipping into the bed beside me. He has to lay on his side to fit into the few inches of room. “I’m never getting my dick sucked, am I?”
I laugh, but it hurts, and my hand goes to my neck. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh.”
“I’m not trying to make you laugh!” But he laughs, too.
I lean into him a little, taking the physical comfort he’s always provided on my worst days. “Are you honestly worried I won’t suck your dick?”
He side-eyes me but doesn’t answer right away.
“It’s okay if you are worried,” I add after a few moments.
“I’m not worried about it in reciprocation—it’s okay not to be into something. But I am worried about the greater implications of it.”
I try to turn to look at him, but it hurts to turn like that. “What are the greater implications of it?”
“Stop trying to move.”
“I want to look at you.”
“The only way you’re going to be able to look at me is if I straddle you, and I’m not doing that in a hospital.”
“I mean, I’m not saying no.”
He picks up his head so I can see him rolling his eyes. “Not here.”
“Are you going to tell me these great implications?” I ask again.
“That you don’t actually like dick,” he laughs. His head is on my shoulder, and I can’t make out his expression, but his body language tells me enough.
“I’m into your dick.”
“Are you sure?” He has no idea how into him I am, and I’m going to make it my life’s mission to show him just what he does to me every single day.
“I’m into your everything. Every single part of you does it for me.
From your crop tops to those fucking holes in your jeans to the little smile with dimples you get when you’re happy but don’t want anyone to know.
The way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.
How you’ve always taken care of me even when I had nothing to offer in return—”
“Hey. No. I don’t accept that. You’ve always returned what I do for you.”
“You let me move in when I had nowhere to go.” Let alone living with him for all of college. He doesn’t charge Seaborn or me. We’re both in better places for having that.
He laughs. “For someone so observant, you’re completely missing the mark on this one.”
“What am I missing?”
“You gave me a safe space to be myself before I even knew what that meant. You stood up for me to every team we played on together. You never let anyone treat me different or call me a slur, and you made them see me for the player I was, not some ignorant definition of masculinity. You gave me a home before I ever gave you one.” He wipes his face on my Under Armor.
I slip a hand into his hair. “You’re my home, too. You always have been.”
“I can’t believe I’m crying. Fuck being emotional, and you’re never allowed to get hurt again.” He’s laughing now, too.
“I’ll do my best not to.”
“Good.”
“And as surprising as it is to everyone involved, I’m very much into your dick.”
He turns his face up to kiss me. “I believe you.”
We wait ages until the curtain is pulled back again.
“Finally,” Archangel says, but it’s not the doctor.
My father stands there, taking in Archangel laying on me.
Fucking great.