CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Emery
“Two weeks?” Trish screeches. “Has it really been that long that you only have two weeks before your proposal is due, and they love it so much they make you sign a long-term contract to be their doctor forever and ever?”
“Funny. In my head, two weeks feels like seconds when I’m nowhere near ready,” I say and scroll through the proposal on my laptop screen like I do every day, sometimes several times a day, to try and find weak spots or search for something that’s most likely not missing.
“You say that, but I’ve never known you not to be prepared for anything.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I mutter.
“Why the negativity?” she asks. “I mean, besides the fact that your boyfriend’s shoulder is falling apart, you’re lying by omission to your bosses, oh, and you’re breaking ethical standards by sleeping with a patient who is also a player? I mean, what else could there be?”
“This is the part where I want to hang up on you,” I say but laugh. “Of course, only because you’re absolutely right, but I refuse to admit that.”
“But seriously, why are you so stressed over it? You’ve never half-assed anything in your life, so why would you be worried about this?”
“Because this job has come to mean everything to me,” I whisper, realizing how true the statement is.
The past couple months have been incredible.
The technology, the support, the challenge, the capital behind it.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
“And because you’re right in that I’m doing several things that would sabotage it if they were found out. ”
“I wouldn’t exactly say sabotage it, but . . .”
“Funny.”
“I have to get going, but I want to say two things before I do.”
“Uh-oh,” I murmur.
“When you’re ready to practice your presentation that goes with your proposal, I’m your girl. We’ll Zoom. I’ll critique. I’ll encourage.”
“Thank you.” I smile.
“And the second thing is . . . if your relationship with Lucas has legs and goes somewhere, you’ll have to address it with management at some point.”
I grunt.
And in the back of my head, I think, but if Lucas is no longer on the team, then that would be a moot point, wouldn’t it?
“Thanks for offering point number one. I’ll take you up on it. As for point number two? I’m just trying to get through point one first then I’ll address it,” I say.
“Noted.” I can see her nodding. “I’ve gotta run but remember I love you. I’m rooting for you. And I already know both points will turn out fabulously.”
“Thanks.”
“Always.”
Not thirty seconds after she hangs up the phone, there’s a knock on my door.
“Dr. Porter?”
“Tyler. Hi. What can I do for you?”
“Grant, Coach, and Peter wanted to know if they could have a minute of your time.”
Shit. This is it. They know about the scans. Another physician saw them, reviewed them, and brought it to their attention. They know I’m lying by omission, as Trish put it. That I’m not telling the whole truth.
“Not a problem,” I say with a little more forced cheer than necessary as I shut my laptop and follow him down the hall with my heart pounding every step of the way.
The small conference room is quiet when I walk in. Coach and Peter are seated while Grant stands behind them looking at something on Coach’s laptop.
They all look up but their smiles are reflexive manners more than anything. Lovely. Nothing like making me feel more on edge.
Well, if you weren’t hiding something, you wouldn’t feel on edge, now, would you?
“Good afternoon,” I say and take a seat across from them as motioned to do.
“We’ll get right to it,” Grant says, face grim and sigh frustrated. “Cole’s ankle isn’t going to hold up for this weekend’s game.”
“Or rather it could hold, but we don’t want to risk it since it’s iffy and take the chance of ruining his season.”
“Okay.” I draw the word out.
Coach leans forward. “Which means we need to prepare Lucas to start.”
There it is. Exactly what Lucas wants. Exactly what I fear.
Grant studies me, head tilted, eyes narrowed. He knows about the scans, doesn’t he? “He’s played a few sequences at a time, a few minutes on the clock at a time, but not an entire sixty minutes. In his current state of rehabilitation, do you think his shoulder is ready to handle a full game?”
Mirna’s advice wars against Coach’s words in my head.
My doctor brain knows exactly what to say.
My heart shuts it down.
“I think,” I begin slowly, choosing each word like it might detonate, “that Lucas understands his body better than most quarterbacks I’ve worked with.”
Coach’s eyes narrow. “That wasn’t the question.”
I swallow. “We all know his shoulder has been damaged.”
Grant nods once, encouraging and dangerous all at once.
“The question,” I continue, skirting around the issue, “isn’t if it’s damaged but rather if the damage and subsequent repair will hold under the load, the wear and tear, of a full game.”
Jesus, dance around the truth much, Em?
The silence stretches as all three men stare at me with varying degrees of perplexity in their expressions.
Coach exhales. “That’s a hell of a non-answer.”
“It’s the reality,” I say. “If Lucas tells you and me both that it feels good and that he’s ready to go, then we have no other choice but to believe him.”
“But we have scans that could back his opinion up, correct?” Peter asks.
Fight or flight time, Em.
“Soft tissue isn’t an exact science. We have to consider all factors when evaluating. Scans. Athlete’s performance. What he says. How he reacts during PT.”
Grant pulls out a chair and takes a seat next to Coach. “And your medical opinion after taking in and weighing all those factors?”
I meet his eyes. Hold them. Pretend that I’m okay with bending rules even with Mirna’s advice.
“My medical opinion is that he can play—for now,” I state carefully.
Not a lie.
Not the truth.
I open my mouth to say more, to justify my reasons, but then slowly close it. Less is more—especially when I’m the one in the wrong.
“For now?” Grant lifts his eyebrows. “Isn’t everyone a for now in this league?” he asks.
“Valid point,” I say with a fleeting smile. And while it shouldn’t, somehow his comment makes me feel somewhat better about my decision.
“All right,” Grant finally says. “That’s what we needed to know.”
“Anything else?” I ask, although I’m itching to get the hell out of here.
“I think that’ll about do it,” Grant says. “Thanks for your input.”
I nod, stand, and as I’m walking out on legs that barely feel like mine, hear them discussing Lucas’s insight on reading the defense and calling plays.
That’s all fine, I already knew he had a good instinct, but it’s the conversation before that, that I replay the whole way home. Even as I sit in my car outside the apartment building long after I should have gone inside.
But I haven’t heard from Lucas, so that means he hasn’t been told he has the start yet. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse that I know before him.
Then again, would he call me and tell me? Especially when he knows how worried I am about this?
I stare at my reflection in my windshield and see a version of myself I don’t quite recognize.
I crossed a line.
I can’t assess exactly how far I crossed, but I did.
And everything about it is conflicting.
Knock. Knock.
I jump at the knuckles on my driver’s side window.
Lucas.
Relief and confusion and just about every emotion in between hits me. And in the middle of all of that is the one I can’t deny—love.
He’s standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets, head tipped to the side like he caught me doing something I shouldn’t be doing.
I roll the window down.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I say by way of greeting.
He smiles. “You’re acting more and more like me these days.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugs. “Staring at nothing as if you’re trying to figure out the cost of every decision before you make it.”
That’s cryptic as hell. I twist my lips and look back toward the apartments. “Are you referring to football or about us?”
He’s quiet for a beat. “Probably both.”
His words hit hard, but I’m the one who asked the question.
“What is it?” I ask.
“We haven’t really talked about where this is going,” he says.
My chest constricts. “This?”
“Us. You. Me. Together. I mean, there are so many goddamn uncertainties in my life right now, I’d rather this not be one.”
I nod, chewing my words in my head. “I wasn’t under the impression that there was any uncertainty when it came to us.”
His eyes light up and then dim. “I know there’s none when it comes to me, but I also know I asked something of you that you weren’t—aren’t—comfortable with. I don’t want that request to turn into resentment or you feeling like you sacrificed your values for me.”
“You think I could resent you?”
He drops his head for a moment, and when he looks back up, his eyes are glassy. Vulnerable in a way that he hates. “It would be a valid reaction, all things considered.”
“I don’t resent you for fighting to play a game you love.
I don’t resent you for asking me. Just like you deciding to play and face the consequences is your decision.
My allowing you to do that is my decision too.
” I open the door and he steps closer, his forehead resting against mine, hands framing my face like I might disappear if he’s not touching me.
“No, Lucas. I might worry about you, but I don’t resent you. ”
“In a sense, Jared asked you to give up who you were for him. I don’t want you to think I’m asking the same thing for me.”
I lean back and meet his eyes. “No. It never crossed my mind. You are nothing like Jared. He never once came close to being the man that you are. And for that, I’m exceedingly grateful or I might not be here.”
Lucas brushes a kiss to my lips. It’s tender and reverent—almost as if the kiss alone could quiet all the noise and discord outside of us away.
“I love you, Emery.” He nods, his head moving against mine. “There’s a lot that feels out of control for me right now, but not this. Not you.”