Chapter 26
ELIJAH
The water is tepid when I get out. The guys are all still chilling in their tubs, barring Andersen. He’s almost dressed when I rush into the showers and make the most of the scalding spray.
I’m hoping that if it doesn’t ease the tension from my prevailing migraine, then it will at least take away some of the guilt from the whir in my head.
I let myself get too close to Jayden.
I allowed myself to feel things I can’t.
Now I’m too lost in the haze of his touch, and the security it gives me even when it feels like life might be slipping from my hands. Or my brain is about to explode.
It still feels that way. The relentless pounding echoes endlessly through my neurons. An overload of electric current that threatens to fry the motherboard any second. But the more it hurts, the tighter I cling on to the ghost of Jayden’s hold. To the promise that I made Finley this morning.
“You need to go home and sleep this off,” Jayden speaks in a low tone from behind me, as though he lives in my head.
I’m so out of it with pain that my usual panic doesn’t register the surprise. Keeping my head glued to the tile I roll onto my back, my eyes closed so that the bright lights don’t scramble what’s left of my brain.
“Jesus, Eli, what happened to your leg?”
Fuck.
“Fuck,” I mutter the instant I open my eyes and the white light slits through my eyes.
Spinning back to the wall, I do my best to push past the fresh onslaught of agony that’s got my marrow curdling in my bones.
“It’s nothing. I just—” Shit, my head can’t take the sound of my own voice. “—cut myself.”
“What?” When he steps into the shower beside mine, I chance a glimpse at his concerned face. “How?”
Shrugging, I brace my forearms on the tiles so that I’m under the scorching water when I lie, “Stick snapped and… yeah…”
The falsity twists in my gut with another silent retch.
“When?” Obviously, he noticed that the self-inflicted cut is scabbed over angrily from all the times I’ve picked at it since.
“A while back.”
Matheo and Auguste barrel into the showers behind us, making more noise than I can bear. At least it cuts the interrogation from Jayden short so that I can get myself out of here as quickly as possible.
It takes me longer than usual to throw my clothes on. Every time I move, my neck screams in agony while my head gets one jerk closer to blowing. One loud laugh nearer to overload.
“Hey, Elijah,” one of the interns for the PR team meets me as I leave the locker room.
From the pinched expression on her face, I’d say news of my incident on the ice has reached the administration offices.
“Reception handed this to me,” she offers me an A4 manilla envelope with nothing other than my full name stamped across it in block capitals.
“Thanks, umm…” When I glance at her as a way of apology for not knowing her name, I find her watching me as though she’s afraid I’ll drop dead in front of her.
“You can call me Cecilia, or my friends call me Cece.” After a silent beat, she adds, “Not that we’re friends. God, no… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” I stop her rambling before it’s the reason I do die in front of her.
Her saving grace right now is that the tunnel like corridor leading out of the changing room is dark, and about the only place where I’m not being assaulted by light or overstimulated by the racket of the other guys talking about their Thanksgiving plans.
“My boss calls me Intern Four,” she whispers, taking a step back when I tear the envelope open. “You can call me that, too.”
“Thank you, Cecilia.” I hold up the envelope like a token of my thanks.
“You’re welcome.” Backing away, she gives me a top to toe inspection before she tells me, “I hope you get better soon.”
“Thanks.”
I lean into the wall, pulling the contents of the envelope out as she walks away with a wave. “Happy Thanksgiving, Elijah.”
As I look down at my hands, my heart stops dead in its tracks. The world tips on its axis, turning everything on its head.
Bile burns up my throat as a sickening retch pulls from deep in my gut.
“Fuck, Eli,” Jayden’s frantic voice pounds my ear drums. “You can’t leave like this.”
The fussing spurs the retching as I attempt to tell him to stop. To leave me be. But his panic is so wild, it’s smothering me.
“Jayden,” I murmur, trying to get him to pause. He doesn’t, though, instead he’s trying to lead me back into the locker room. “Stop!”
My voice echoes through the tunnel, ricocheting from the wall, back to me as he freezes.
“You’re making it worse,” I finally tell him.
I hate the helpless expression on his face. More than that, I hate that I put it there.
“What can I do to make it better?” He whispers.
I clumsily slip the photos back into the envelope and roll it up like that’ll make them go away.
Maybe for now it does, until my head isn’t screaming and I can think straight.
Because The Fellowship wouldn’t be so stupid to pull this off again after last night.
I don’t trust them, but I know how they work.
The Elders, my father wouldn’t risk everything they’ve built. Finley and I aren’t that important.
“Take me home. I need to go home.”
“But you’re not well, Eli.”
My vision is threading at the edges as I nod at him, “It’s a migraine, Jayden. The sooner I rest, the sooner I’ll be better.”
“Okay.” Taking my gym bag from my shoulder, he focuses on the envelope clutched in my hand. “What’s that?”
“Photos.” I swallow down the churn that burns up my sternum, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other while we head out to his iX.
“Oh, is it the photos for the new fan packs?” I’m debating how to tell him that they’re photos of us—of me and Ryker in the car park and of us at the restaurant—when he tells me, “Last week they had me sign almost two-hundred photos and then some merch.”
I’m beyond grateful when we get in his car. The tinted windows together with my sunglasses, knockout the bright rays of the sun.
“Here.” Jayden offers me his baseball cap, when I don’t take it, he gets in and leans across the center console to gently put it on my head, pulling the bill low, over my eyes. “Better?”
I part my lips to reply, but my mouth is so dry at his closeness that all I manage is a gravelly whisper. “Yeah.”
“Good. Close your eyes, take a nap.”
If I wasn’t on the verge of vomiting again, I’d pull him up on his bossiness.
However, I don’t have the energy to tease him, and I don’t know, I like this side of him.
That he finds it so easy to care for others and show it.
That he doesn’t give a shit about the world or what it preconceives of his actions when it comes to taking care of the people he loves. Of me.
He is in love with you.
The conversation with Finley after the dinner comes back again. Whispering over the relentless pulse in my head, my chest…
Closing my eyes, I focus on the faint rustle of Jayden’s movements. I can tell he’s driving as carefully as he can because I barely feel him slow and accelerate at the stoplights. When his phone rings, he quickly declines the call only for it to ring again a few seconds later.
After he declines it a second time, I tell him, “You can answer it.”
“It’s Kailey, she can wait until I get home.”
Clearly, she can’t because she rings again and this time, I answer the call on the screen before he sends it to voicemail.
“Dude, why are you declining my calls?” She instantly asks, her voice echoing around the cab so loudly that I shrink back into my seat.
“Fuck, Kiki, take it down a notch,” he tells her with a stern tone that makes her pause when she’s about to talk over him.
Jayden turns the volume for the call down to a murmur while Kailey asks, “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he replies.
“For real? I saw the game last night and it didn’t look that way. Sylkes was distracted and you were a mess. The two of you kept looking at each other like it was the first time you met or something and—”
“Keeks, it was one bad game. We’re exhausted from the hard start.”
“Guess you’re not ready to be invaded for the next few days…”
He chuckles lightly, and the sound has me peering at him, over the top of my sunglasses.
It’s no wonder he tops The Comets’ heartthrob poll year in and year out.
The dimples that bracket his smile soften the chiseled lines of his profile so that even in his perfect good looks, there’s a grounding of warmth and approachability.
“It’s going to be a crazy couple of days,” Kailey snickers as their diatribe of Thanksgiving traditions and plans wraps up. “I can't believe you’ve invited Eli and his girl.”
“Kailey—”
“What? I know you said it’s nothing, but you can’t stop talking about them, and I mean I know you’re loyal to Eli and well… the two of you... I don’t know... What if his girl is into you too, an—”
“Kailey…” Jayden interrupts her brusquely with his wild eyes flashing to me.
I could pretend I’m asleep. Maybe I should so that things don’t get awkward again, but I don’t.
“I’ve got to go,” Jayden tells her, ending the call abruptly with an, “I’ll call you later.”
With the pounding in my head still going strong, I don’t make the first move. Which might be callous on my part because it panics Jayden as he continues turning into the underground car park of our apartment.
When he’s parked, he finally says, “About what Kailey said… it’s… I’m not…”
I nod, peeling the sunglasses from my face when he slumps in his seat. Sometimes reality is best left unspoken. This is one of those times. For all of us.
“They’re not from PR,” I tell him, holding out the rolled envelope to him. “Cecilia said reception handed it to her.”
With curious hesitation, Jayden takes the envelope from me and opens it quickly to pull out the photos. I can’t read his face through my fuzzy vision, but his dimple is gone, and the shadow of his brows darkens his eyes as he studies them.
“I thought you said this shit was done?” Bringing one of the photos right up to his face, he examines it closely. Before I can answer his question, he asks, “Who is he?”
“His name is Ryker Hallman,” I manage.
His jaw ticks in a way that has my hand burning to settle him down. “Who is he?”
“We played junior league together. He’s the new coach at the community rink.”
“You’re friends, then?”
“No.” I close my eyes, regretting the instinctual shake of my head with all the blood throttling my braincells.
“So why’s he standing so close?” The terseness gravels to a growl that wrenches at my stomach.
Maybe if I wasn’t so desperate to sleep, I’d drag the conversation out just to get a measure of what his reaction means. However, the more I talk, my brain pounds harder. Every second that I’m awake feels like I’m risking permanent damage.
“We used to be friends. Now we’re not.”
“Why?” Jayden moves the photo of Ryker and I behind the one of us. “Did he hurt you?”
Yes.
The truth squeezes around my chest like a vice. I almost tell him that Ryker Hallman did hurt me. He took advantage of me, and then he threw me to the wolves. And because that wasn’t enough, afterward he disappeared without a trace.
Poof. Into thin air.
“No,” I lie again, hoping to avoid more talk. “He’s nobody.”
“Okay.” Jayden chuffs, stuffing the photos back in the envelope after he’s taken a closer look at the one of him, me, and Finley.
“There was no note. Just the photos.” Dragging in a deep breath, I take the curled envelope from him before I conclude, “Maybe they delivered this before last night? Something doesn't add up. The Fellowship isn’t stupid or reckless enough to…”
God, when will the pounding stop?
Jayden swivels toward me. “Are you sure? What does it even mean?”
“I don’t know, JJ. What it means, what to do… This is why I’ve tried to protect Finley. Why I thought keeping her safe in the apartment was the best thing. It’s—”
“You can’t keep her locked away forever, and the answer is not to shrink back now.
If at the first sign of trouble you retreat, you will never win, Eli.
” He pinches the edge of the envelope I’m holding, like it’s the equivalent of him touching me.
And it might be because a shiver rolls through me in a way that has the roots of my hair crackling.
“I told you before, my dad will help you with any legal jargon and—”
“Jayden,” I cut him off with a sigh. “My head is killing me. I can’t think straight right now. So please, can we talk about it later?”
“Okay. But I’m right, you need to stand your ground. Stick to your word. You know this. The best defense is a relentless offense.”
He is right. Even though it’s hard to capitulate, I tell him, “I can’t take Fin out, but I don’t want to let her down. If she’s around me now, she’ll fuss, and I won’t be able to rest.”
“How about I take her to pick up a phone while you sleep off the migraine?”
“Thanks,” I tell him, getting out of the car slowly.
By the time I’ve made it to his side, Jayden’s already got our gym bags hoisted over his shoulder and he’s waiting for me.
“Don’t take your eyes off her, okay?” I say while we wait for the elevator. “I don’t know what the photos mean. Or what The Fellowship is thinking… so be careful. If you have to hold her hand, keep her glued to your side...”
“I got her, Eli. Cross my heart, I won’t take my eyes off her one second.” We trudge into the lift side by side. Him walking slow to keep up with me. As the doors close, he inches closer, so that his arm is touching mine as he tells me, “I got you, Eli. I’ll always have your back.”