Chapter 24 Bennett
Bennett
Somewhere in the back of mind, I knew that I was getting the sheets dirty.
It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
My chest felt hollowed out, like someone had reached in and scooped out everything that made breathing possible.
It was hard to say how long I had been lying here like this. In the dark, on my back, sweating beneath the comforter in the dirt-streaked uniform I still hadn’t found the energy to remove.
The sequence of events kept replaying in fragments, the way bad dreams did when you weren’t quite asleep.
One second, I’d been in the dugout, rising off the bench during the bottom of the seventh.
The crowd noise had been a low roar in my ears, the Arizona sun still brutal even as it had dipped toward the horizon.
I’d taken a step toward the on-deck circle, bat in hand, ready to swing.
And then, the world had folded in half.
Tight chest. Blurred vision. Knees giving out like someone had cut the strings holding me up.
I’d hit the gravel. Hard.
The noise of the stadium had warped into a blur—shouts from the bench, the team trainers yelling my name, Diaz’s voice cracking as he’d vaulted the railing, calling out my name.
I remembered trying to speak, to tell them that I was fine and that I just needed a minute or two, but my mouth wouldn’t move right. The trainers had been on me in seconds, rolling me onto my side, talking me through my breathing exercises. And still, I’d been falling.
A vision of someone pressing an oxygen mask over my face had washed over me. The cold plastic had shocked me more than anything else.
I’d tried reminding myself, to no avail, that the camera was on me. That fifteen thousand people, along with every sports app in the country, had their eyes on me. Fuck, I could only imagine what the social media trolls were saying by now.
They’d wheeled me off the field on a cart, yet another humiliating ritual, before bundling me into an ambulance. Next thing I remembered, I’d been in the emergency room, staring up at a nurse with kind eyes as she’d dried my tears and talked me down from the edge.
Slow breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, until the vise around my ribs had loosened enough that I could finally pull in a full lungful without choking on it.
The doctor had called it a severe anxiety episode.
My first in years.
“Follow up with your primary as soon as you can,” he’d told me. “And please, consult with the team medical staff, Mr. King. They’re there to help you hopefully avoid situations like this.”
He’d discharged me with a script for some low-dose benzos and instructions to rest.
Like that was possible.
Every muscle ached with that post-panic exhaustion, the kind that made your bones feel heavy. Even my eyes hurt. Not the eyelids, but the fucking eyeballs.
The door creaked open. Matty’s silhouette filled the frame, backlit by the hall light.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “You awake?”
I didn’t move. “Yeah.”
He stepped inside, closing the door most of the way behind him so the room stayed dim. “Coach said you’re off the next three days. No arguments. They’re also flying out the team psychologist tomorrow if you want to talk to them, but no pressure.”
I exhaled through my nose. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, man.” There was a sharpness to his tone, one that I didn’t typically hear from the sweet, Southern boy. “You scared the shit out of all of us.”
“I know,” I choked out. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just let us help. Even if that only means letting me sit here so you’re not alone in the dark like some tragic country song.”
I almost laughed. Almost.
“I appreciate it, Matty, but I want to be alone.”
Silence stretched between us for about five seconds, and then—
“Did you talk to Bella?”
My stomach twisted.
“No.”
“She’s probably losing her mind wondering what’s going on.”
“She doesn’t need to know.” The words came out sharper than I meant. “She’s got enough going on. Last thing she needs is me dragging her down with this.”
I didn’t tell him that I had been avoiding her texts for nearly forty-eight hours already.
That I had been straight-up spiraling since I’d realized how much she meant to me.
Bringing up a future together was scary enough, and now this?
It wasn’t fair to put all of that on her, not now.
Not when things were still light and new between us.
Matty shifted his weight. I could hear the patience fraying at the edges of his voice.
“You know that’s not how this works, man.
You don’t get to decide what she can and can’t handle.
That’s her call. And keeping her in the dark isn’t protecting her; it’s just isolating yourself.
You can’t just shut her out anytime it gets scary. ”
Something hot flared in my chest. Anger. Fear. With a shame cherry on top.
“And what would you know about scary?” I regretted the words the second they spilled out of me, but that didn’t matter.
I was hurting and Matty was in my direct line of fire.
“I don’t need relationship advice from the guy who’s too chickenshit to meet up with the guy he’s been crushing on for months. ”
The room went dead quiet.
Matty didn’t fight me. He just stood there for a long second, then said, very quietly, “Yeah, you’re right.”
He turned toward the door.
“Matty,” I started, sitting up so quickly my head spun. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I get it.” His hand paused on the knob. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less. Get some rest. I’ll be in the living room if you change your mind.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
I sat there in the dark, heart hammering again. But it wasn’t panic this time; it was guilt.
I’d taken the sharpest thing I could find and aimed it at the one guy who’d had my back since day one. The one who had literally helped carry me off the field when my legs wouldn’t work.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. When my fingers brushed the edge of my speech processors, I removed them both and gently tossed them on the bedside table.
Finally, quiet. No more hallway noise or guilt echoing in stereo. Just the rush of my own pulse in my ears and the faint vibration of my heartbeat against the mattress.
The dark felt bigger without sound. Safer, somehow.
No one could knock and expect me to answer. No one could ask me how I was feeling when I didn’t have the first clue myself.
I stared at nothing.
Bella’s face kept surfacing in the black. I wanted to call her. Really, I did. I wanted to hear her say my name and tell her all of my worries, so the weight wasn’t just mine anymore.
But the thought of her seeing me differently, of disrupting her life in any way made my throat close up all over again.
I rolled onto my side and let the silence swallow me whole.
Tomorrow, I’d figure it out. For now, the dark was enough.
Sometime later, the door opened again. I didn’t hear it, but I did see the thin strip of light slicing across the ceiling.
I rolled over, already bracing to snap at whoever had come to check on me this time.
But then, I saw her.
In the doorway, backlit by the hallway glow like the fucking angel she was.
Her curls were messy, like she’d run her hands through them the entire flight here. Her face was pale, eyes wide and shiny with something between worry and relief.
Her mouth moved faster than I could follow. It was too dark to accurately read her lips, and from the look of it, she was talking a mile a minute.
I sat up straight and held out my hands. Hang on, I signed quickly. I don’t have my processors on and you’re going way too fast.
My fingers fumbled and clicked them back into place behind my ears. She waited patiently for them to turn on.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said definitively.
She cocked her hip. “Oh, that’s rich, Bennett King. I haven’t heard from you in two days. The only reason I am here is because your friend thought I should know you were taken to the hospital.”
I looked away, jaw tight. “I didn’t ask him to do that.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t, you stubborn asshole.”
She crossed the room and planted herself on the edge of the bed. When she flicked on the bedside lamp, I squinted against the sudden burst of light.
“The question is why? Especially after you made me promise to be so open with you. ‘If you want something, say it. If I do something that scares you or pisses you off or turns you on, please tell me.’ You said that.”
Well, shit. I had said that.
I’d already known she had one hell of a memory, but damn.
“And right now, you’re pissing me off by shutting me out.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Guilt hit harder than the panic had. “Baby, look at me. I’m a mess—”
“You’re human.”
“I am not going to be the thing that pulls you under.”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “You think you’re pulling me under? Bennett, you can’t pull me under when you’re the one who holds me up.”
The words landed softly, like a hand on my chest right where the ache still lingered. She reached out slowly, threading her fingers through mine.
“You are always there for me—when I start to spiral, when everything seems like too much, when I need a little pick-me-up at one a.m. You make me feel like I can fall apart and still be wanted. That’s what holding someone up looks like.”
Her thumb brushed over my knuckles.
“And now you’re the one falling apart, and you think I’m going to run? Stop trying to protect me from you. I’m not some fragile little girl, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
I swallowed hard and tugged her closer until she was sprawled half in my lap, her arms wrapping around my shoulders like she could shield me from the mess I’d made of myself.
I buried my face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. Honey, airplane. Home.
“I’m sorry.” My voice came out muffled against her skin. “I shouldn’t have disappeared on you like that. I just— I’m scared I’m going to lose you.”
She pressed a gentle kiss to my temple.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. “And just so you know, we’re going to fight about this more when you’re feeling better, but for now, I just want to hold you.”
I nodded once jerkily. “Please.”
The mattress dipped under her weight, and she settled beside me, tugging the comforter up and over both of us even though I was still in my dusty uniform and probably smelled like a locker room.
She opened her arms, and I went willingly, letting her guide me until my head rested against her chest, right over the soft rise of her tits. One hand combed through my sweat-damp hair, while the other stroked a slow, soothing path along the tense muscles of my neck and shoulders.
I closed my eyes and let myself sink into it.
My free hand came up to rest on her waist, fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt like I needed the anchor.
“Thank you,” I whispered against her shirt. “For coming. For staying.”
“Always.”
For the first time in two days, the emptiness in my chest didn’t feel quite so vast. Sleep came slow, but it did come.
And Bella was still stroking my hair when it did.