Chapter 35
JAYDEN
My hand is burning to hold Finley’s again. The longer I try to ignore it, the hotter the urge becomes. Then she looks at me, a mix of apprehension, excitement, and uncertainty painting her gentle features, and all I can think is fuck it.
Brushing the back of my fingers along hers, I allow her to make the choice for herself and link her fingers with mine. They’re dainty in length and girth, perfectly easy to knot with mine as we head across the underground garage to the elevator.
Pulling her closer, I press the button to open the doors and hold her to my side as we get in.
Finley burrows into me, both of her hands wrapped around mine when the doors close in front of us and we head up to our floor.
“Eli’s home.” Her voice pitches with excitement.
“Thank fuck,” I tell her, looping my arm over her head and around her shoulders without releasing her hand. “I feel like maybe when I see him here, I’ll be able to breathe again.”
“Yeah,” Finley says with a sigh, her hands tightening around mine.
“I need to see him so bad.”
“Like so, so bad.” Finley turns into me, resting her chin on my bicep so that I can see the weight of the world in her eyes when she goes on, “I keep thinking that a migraine doesn’t take a person out like that. What if the neurologist missed something? What if—”
“Hush now, Lucky.” I tighten my arm around her so that she’s got no choice but to lift onto her tiptoes and bring her face closer.
Any other time, any other person, I would silence them with a kiss so I wouldn’t have to deal with their troubles and insecurities.
But not Finley. If I could take all the shit that’s bringing her down from her, I would listen to her until she was blue in the face.
“Yesterday was fucking scary, but Eli’s fine. ”
Even though she nods, her eyes are still muddled with all the worries going round her head.
“Go on, repeat after me,” I tell her, sweeping her hair from her face. The feel of the thick strands tangled around my fingers has me dying to pull her so close that she might just become a part of me.
“Repeat after you,” Finley murmurs.
“Eli is perfect.” I manage to center myself enough to get the words out even though I can’t hear them for shit over my frenetic pulse.
She swallows, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth before she says, “Elijah is perfect.”
“He’s a strong-ass motherfucker.”
A throaty chuckle bubbles past her pressed lips, tugging them into a smile. The longer I hold her stare, the deeper the chortle becomes until it’s a belly-deep laugh that vibrates all the way through her and into me. Almost settling the apprehension in my gut.
“Say it,” I tell her.
The light is slowly sifting back into her eyes. It’s an achievement I’m proud of when the doors ping open and she says, “He is strong. He is perfect.”
Keeping Finley glued to my side, I head straight for Elijah’s door which she opens in record time.
“Eli?” I call out to be met with Lex’s exasperated command, “Sit down, before I tie you to that chair!”
He appears in front of us with a scrunched expression that brings out the tight lines around his eyes.
“Remember, he needs rest,” Lex tells Finley and I as we enter the open plan living space.
It’s not as bright as usual, but it’s also not dark. When I look around, I notice the translucent, veil-like grey curtains pulled across all the windows and balcony doors.
“Rest, hydration, no stress,” he keeps going while I guide Finley past him to the sitting area where Eli is standing.
If looks could kill, Lex might be finding his way to an early grave right now with the daggers Eli’s shooting him.
“He’s killing me,” Eli whispers when we reach him. “Ever since the doctor said I could leave the hospital, he’s been incessant.”
“You look so much better,” Finley coos, wrapping one of her arms around him while she continues holding my hand.
Maybe I should pull away, but I don’t. I keep holding on to her while she squeezes him in a one-armed hug, pulling me closer so that his side presses into my front.
I almost lose every natural ability I possess at the feel of his hard body.
Fuck, nothing has ever felt this good. Or this perfect as holding her and touching him at the same time does. When Finley peppers light kisses over his cheeks, damn if I don’t want to chase them up, too.
“Seeing you back here…” She’s on the verge of tears. Relieved, overwhelmed, touching-on-happy tears. Her emotions are so ripe that I can smell their petrichor as I breathe their raspy breaths deep into my lungs. “God, Elijah, I just… Lex is right.”
“He’s not—”
“He is,” both Finley and I double down.
There’s no way he gets to come home and brush what happened off like it was a small blip, and everything is good now.
That first time I walked Finley back in here yesterday, I felt so damn sick I had to swallow down my vomit at the memory of how he collapsed on himself without warning. He fell so fucking heavy that I was certain he was never getting back up.
Just because he’s standing again, it doesn’t erase what happened.
“You have to take it easy,” I tell him when he steps back from me.
The loss of his proximity sends a mournful chill through me that has me clinging tighter to Finley’s hand and looping her into me again. Her back into my front so that her body buffers the distance he put between ours. Something he studies with a marveled uptick of his lips.
Does he like it?
Can he feel the way my heart is pounding into her back?
Is this as perfect for him as it is for me?
Well, almost perfect. I’d give anything to put my hands on him and feel that he is okay for myself. To hold him until all my worries and doubts and the trauma of the last twenty-four hours ebbed away.
As though he can hear my thoughts, Elijah murmurs across Finley’s hair, “I’m fine. I’m good.”
I nod.
He smiles.
Even so, I’m still fucking choking on everything. If I don’t find another focus point, I might fall apart because the relief of being told that he is perfectly healthy by the neurologist, has nothing on this staggering feeling of having him home.
This is where he belongs.
This is where he’s safe and close to me.
Still, the memory of catching him clenches my muscles, causing my arm to close around Finley’s shoulders tighter.
“What now?” I ask, clearing the over emotional frog from my throat.
“Rest,” Lex doubles down.
The reminder of his presence has me taking a step back that is quickly reversed when Finley wraps her arm around Elijah’s waist.
“And what else?” Finley asks, adjusting herself between Eli and I so that we’re sandwiched together side to side.
With an awkward shuffle, Eli lowers himself onto the coffee table, nodding for Finley and me to sit on the couch opposite him.
Lex sits on the armchair to the side with a deep-set frown on his face while he watches the three of us closely.
“I’m on strict sleep and hydration routines,” Eli says, leaning over his thighs while he focuses on his intertwined hands. “I need to reduce screen time and finding different ways of managing stress like therapy.”
“Is this why Coach keeps telling you to see Dr. Armstrong?” The question is clipped and ground out between my clenched teeth. “Did you know how sick you were? Why didn’t you do something earlier, say something? I told you to go back to Doc.”
“I thought I could sleep it off like I usually do. It didn’t feel different to the other migraines I’ve had before.”
“Fuck, what does this mean for you and your career?” The question may sound stupid, but I need to know if I’m about to lose him.
Not because of the game. Not because of the team.
Because I can’t fathom not being around him every day.
I can’t imagine not being a part of his life or him being a constant in mine.
“If you had it under control before what’s changed?” Finley asks, watching him closely for an answer that takes too long to come. “Eli…?”
“Stress. There is so much going on lately and—”
“So, it’s me. Me being here. You bringing me here,” she whispers, dropping her teary stare down to her lap as her hands shake out her curls around her face.
I tear my eyes from her, finding Eli’s devastated frown.
Fuck.
No. It’s not true.
I know I thought a lot of shit about who Finley is at first. I believed she would be trouble, but I was wrong.
Finley is everything I didn’t know I needed.
Everything we need. And I know Elijah feels that too because why else would he be so grief-stricken about his words and what they imply?
I shake my head at him, hoping he can read my thoughts as I pull her into my side, short of all the way onto my lap so she knows that she’s more than wanted here. She’s needed.
“Fin,” he murmurs, slowly easing himself onto his knees in front of her so he can peer beneath the curtain of hair hiding her from us. “Finley…”
She attempts to ball tighter, but I squeeze my arm around her harder, making it impossible for her to curl into herself and hide away.
“Finley-James, look at me, dammit!” He snaps at her, still holding on to his gentility so that she knows he’s not upset with her.
When she peers at him, he moves closer, enveloping himself behind her hair.
“You are not the fucking problem. You’ve never been a problem… not to me, sweet girl. Not ever.”
“Bullshit,” she sobs back.
It’s the first time I’ve heard her curse, and that only makes it sound harsher from her lips.
His hands push up from her face into her hair, bringing it back into view.
All I can do not to wrap myself around her and shield her from the world is tuck my face into her sweet peach scented hair and press a kiss to her head.
Above where his hand is still tangled and fisting the light bronze strands.
“None of this is your doing,” he assures her, glancing up at me with a grateful smile when I press another kiss to the top of her head and tell her, “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
When Elijah leans closer, I carefully guide her forehead to his. I can feel him resisting the need to be closer to her, and after everything that’s happened, why should he?
He needs her and she needs him. It’s obvious, and I feel their need for one another pull at my insides, knotting them so tight that if they don’t give in, I might die.
Dramatic? Maybe.
And yet, it’s the visceral truth.
“I want you here. With me,” Elijah says, his thumbs kneading her temples as his eyes flicker to mine and he whispers, “We need you here with us.”
Every syllable hits that place that’s been aching for him. For years.
“The migraine is gone, and I have meds to prevent an episode like this again. I have to be more mindful of my limits.”
Eli focuses back on Fin before slowly peeling himself away from her with the softest kiss to her forehead. Then he carefully lifts himself back onto the coffee table.
“Aside from rest and meds, what happens now? With you?” I ask, knowing the answer isn’t going to be easy for him to give me.
“I spoke with Coach and Doc after I left the hospital. We’re going to try Biofeedback training.
Doc and PT Jordan think I can work on mind-body techniques to help me control stress and what it does to me.
” He sighs. “Coach is taking my neurologist’s advice and benching me for the next two weeks.
Instead of training with the team he wants me to work with Jordan on breathing techniques. ”
The dejection in his voice sinks like a rock to the pit of my stomach.
“What can I do? To help?”
He sighs, “I don’t know… kill it on the ice for the both of us?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He nods. “I guess I still need a gym partner, even if I have to slow things down.”
“I can take it as slow as you need.”
Eli gives me a faint lopsided grin as he leans forward and reassures Finley, “This is not on you. It’s biological chemistry and probably the result of the stupid number of times I’ve hit my head.”
“I don’t want to be the reason you hurt or get sick.”
“Angel, you’re the reason I’m here.” One of his hands brushes mine on her shoulder as he glances at me. “You both are.”