Chapter 52
ELIJAH
Four more games.
My heart sinks to my feet as I sit in Coach’s office with PT Jordan and Doc going over the STATs from the two Biofeedback training sessions.
Coach gives me a narrow-eyed glance, concern tugging down at the corners of his lips. “You’re coming back, Sylkes. The team needs you at your best.”
“Another week, and we’ll be in a different place,” Jordan adds, like that’s meant to lessen the blow. “A few more sessions and I think we’ll have a better view of triggers and really work on the techniques to lower the stress peaks.”
This morning’s session was fucked the second I bumped into Ryker. As for stressors, this whole situation is one. A huge fucking boulder of anxiety. I just want to get back on the ice. All these schedules, lists, and plans that are meant to be helping me are doing nothing more than adding pressure.
Coach and Doc continue back and forth on what more we can do to make sure I’m ready. When Doc suggests introducing me back to training my heart jumps up in my chest. Only to wilt when Coach levels me with an uncertain frown.
Please, I need this.
“I want you at practice tomorrow morning,” Coach says, ignoring the loud ring of my phone.
Lex. I check before I send the call to voicemail.
“Nothing too strenuous,” Doc adds. “Especially with it being your first session off the meds.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I think we need to get an idea of where you are without the meds. I want to see you next to Morrow,” he says, his mention of Jayden clouding my head with reminders of last night.
Him and Finley.
Finley and me.
The way his eyes threatened to eat me up when I was kissing her. My whole body clenches and tingles with the heat thrumming through my veins.
Coach excuses me, and I practically leap out of my seat already unlocking my phone to message Jayden and Finley.
Opening up the message app, I pull up a new group chat and add Jayden and Finley to it.
I’m in a daze, typing out message after message and deleting it because I can’t seem to get the words right when Dylan walks straight into me.
His six-six brawn is shrunk with the way he’s curled in on himself.
He’s always the one that stands tall and strong.
It’s part of what makes him the daddy of the team.
“Shit,” he steps back with a muddled expression when his eyes meet mine. “Sorry, Eli.”
Something isn’t right.
The thought causes my insides to twist as he side-steps me and I turn on the spot, incapable of ignoring the worry that nags me as he walks away.
“Hey, Dylan,” I call after him, striding to catch up to him. The fact he doesn’t pause cements that something’s up. Stepping in his way when he turns to head down the corridor to Coach’s office I ask, “You okay, man?”
“Huh?” He sounds as glassy as his stare. “What was that?”
Man, he looks like he’s seen a ghost. I’ve never seen him so pale or disheveled. He looks like how I felt right before I collapsed. That recognition stirs a panicked frisson in my gut.
“Fuck, you don’t look so good.” I grip his arm, in case he collapses in on himself. “Do you need to take a seat… some water?”
Red-rimmed and puffy, his gaze meets mine, like he’s trying to decipher what I’m saying. He’s stuck in his head, something I know of all too well.
My heart hurts for him so bad.
I don’t know what comes over me, but I wrap my arm around him, pulling him to the side so that we’re not in the middle of the corridor and the wall is close by for support.
“You okay, bud?” I ask again, wincing at the ridiculous question because it’s more than obvious he’s not.
“I got a meeting with Coach,” he says, staring blankly in the direction of the office.
“Okay. Well, do you need a minute?”
“A minute…” His eyes blink back to mine, completely flooded.
When I wrap my arm tighter around him, a long, guttural sob rushes out of him.
Shit.
I stumble backwards when he collapses into the wall and he drops to his ass. For a long minute, I debate what to do. He’s the pillar of our team, and he’s crumbling in front of me. What do I do? What do I say?
Crouching beside him, I coax, “Dylan, talk to me, man…”
Pulling his legs into his chest, he looks at me. “Paige is sick,” he says, choking on the words that stutter with his sobs.
A lump forms in my throat, blocking all the air from leaving or entering my lungs.
From his defeated expression and the despair tracking down his face, I know it’s not the kind of sickness his baby momma is going to get better from.
The day Jayden found out his momma had cancer is burned into my memories.
The devastation and hopelessness... I’ll never forget it.
If I didn’t know what to say to Dylan before, I’m fucking useless now.
“I’m sorry.”
A scoff hisses between his teeth. “That’s what I told her.”
“What can I do?”
Gripping his sandy hair in his hands, he pulls and tugs at it as he rests his forehead on his knees.
When he shrugs, I sit back into the wall, keeping my arm around him so he knows that I’m not going anywhere and that I’m here for whatever he needs even if he doesn’t know what that is yet. He’s not alone.
The sound of Finley’s laughter dissipates some of the heaviness in my chest when I walk into the apartment. A warm sugary scent greets me along with the whisper of caffeine.
“You better not disappear on me next time,” she says into her phone with a playful huff.
I pause in the opening to the living area, watching her pour a couple cups of coffee before she dishes up some of the peach fritters I can smell.
The sight of her in my kitchen eases the heaviness that’s been holding on to my chest since I woke up this morning and realized she wasn’t here. Not a single part of me begrudged that she was with Jayden. I just missed her.
Everything felt emptier without her. Coming fresh off Dylan’s emotional breakdown, having her back here is sweeter than ever.
Inhaling a deep breath, I hold in the sweet peach-tinged air, relishing the gentle burn in my lungs when the woodsy citrus undertone of Jayden’s cologne percolates through the dessert.
Finley… Jayden…
They’re home. They’re everything that grounds me. My personal tethers to the wider world.
Leaning into the wall, I suck in a deeper breath while I continue watching Finley. I could bask in her happiness forever. Just like this. Even without touching her, it warms through my bloodstream with the electric current it sparks in the air.
“I looked for you everywhere before we left… everywhere in the bar, Christina. How was I supposed to know that you were giving the birthday boy your gift in the team’s locker room?
” she chuckles, spinning to place the coffees on the kitchen island.
Her eyes lock on mine, and she beams at me with a radiant smile that makes my heart skip a beat or two. “I gotta go, but I’ll text you later.”
When she ends the call, she rounds the counter, crooking her finger at me. She’s beckoning me to her, and I don’t waste a second overthinking. I drop my gym bag on the floor and beeline for her with my pulse pitter-pattering in my chest.
God, she’s a sight for sore eyes in her loose, turned-up jeans and cropped sweatshirt with bright yellow stars embroidered all over. Her joy is so damn contagious that a smile stretches across my face the instant my hands anchor on her waist and pull her to me.
“Good afternoon, love.” When I kiss her forehead, she hums, “Hello to me, too.”
“Do you want to go out for the afternoon?”
“I’d love that!” The excitement in her voice sends a warm thrill through me. “Jayden is going to take me to Christina’s place to drop off her boots and then we’re going to hike the Mount Hollywood trail. Do you want to come?”
There’s an edge of trepidation to her question that puts a knot in my chest. All this time I’ve been holding back, stuck in my head, feels wasted. I don’t know how to fully get over the past, but after seeing Dylan’s devastation, I can’t stop thinking...
What if that was us?
What if Finley was being taken away from me forever?
My biggest regret would be not showing her how deeply I care for her.
“Hey, man,” Jayden greets me coming in from the balcony with his phone in his hand as though he’s coming off an important call. “How did today’s session go?”
With Finley still glued to me, the sight of him in his dark jeans and black t-shirt with a big fluorescent purple smiley face on it to match the expression on his flushed face makes my chest hurt.
The realization that the anxiety I feel about wasting time with Finley is echoed in how I feel about him hits me square in the chest. All over.
Like that consuming feeling that overwhelmed me when I woke up to the sight of them together at the hospital.
If I lost either of them…
Fuck, I can’t breathe past the wrecking ball that slammed through me.
“You good?” Jayden asks, rushing to my side. “Your head okay?”
“Umm, I don’t know, I’ve just accepted Finley’s invitation to go hiking with you,” I reply, trying get my emotions in check before they get out of hand.
Jayden’s laugh, much like Finley’s, clears away some of the dark fog. I’ve always known I’m blessed to have them in my life, but today—maybe for the first time ever—I feel lucky to be me. That I might never know how it feels to be truly without the two people that I love in this whole damn world.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Preacher,” he says, reaching across me to twirl the baby curl at Finley’s temple. “I’m a great hiking buddy.”
“Ugh, you two need to come up with a new nickname instead of Preacher. I hate it,” Finley yucks away, pulling a sour face that makes me laugh.
Jayden gives me a head-to-toe glance, a smirk hitching up one side of his mouth so that the dimple by his freckle pops. “How about Bombshell?”
“Bombshell?” I groan as Finley gives me a similar assessing glance and beams, “I can see that. Mr. Blond Bombshell.”
“The guys are going to love it.”
“No,” I tell him, snatching his phone from his hand before he has a chance to message the group chat with the ridiculous moniker.
“Party pooper,” Jayden sulks, spinning on his heels and heading to the same stool he always sits in at the kitchen island.
“It’s better than Preacher,” Finley says when she links her arm with mine and tugs me to the stool beside Jayden’s. “Sit, I’ll make you tea. I made your favorite fritters, and this time I used your plant milk and worked a way around the no egg situation. So they’re fully vegan.”
“And you’re eating them?” I drop into the stool, watching Jayden demolish two fritters before Finley’s made it to the electric kettle.
“So good,” he says, reaching for another before I snatch the plate away. Giving me a sad frown, he asks, “How did it go with Coach?”
“I’m not back on the ice for another four games. Jordan isn’t budging on the timeline, but at least Doc and Coach agreed to bring me back to practice tomorrow.”
The smile on his face is so big, I’m sure it hurts. Just like that, he earns back the plate of fried goodies without having to lift a finger or utter a single word.
Needless to say, he’s damn lucky he’s got such a pretty smile.