CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Emery
Lucas is asleep in my bed.
Not the restless, pain-fractured sleep he’s had the last few nights, but the heavy kind. Deep sleep that only comes when the body finally gives in after fighting too long.
His breathing is slow and even. His lashes rest against his still too-pale cheeks.
I stand in the doorway of my bedroom and just watch him.
The last few days feel like they’ve been held together with Scotch tape and Elmer’s glue. Temporary fixes. Desperate solutions. Things meant to last just long enough to get through the next moment without everything collapsing.
I don’t know what that makes or says about me.
Tired doesn’t begin to cover it. Exhaustion has seeped into my bones and doubt has become a second skin. Every decision I’ve made replays in my head like a movie on repeat.
Did I cause this? Did I do this to him by withholding the scan results? Was it because of how he landed when he was sacked? Or was it inevitable, and his decision simply sped up the timeline?
I know the answer. I do. His shoulder was already failing. The damage was there long before he chose to keep playing. Long before I bent my own personal rules because yes, bent is so much easier than admitting I broke them. Long before my feelings for Lucas complicated my professional choices.
And still . . .
You let me choose.
His words echo in my head. Gratitude wrapped around devastation. Trust offered in the middle of free fall.
I press my fingers to my eyes and draw in a deep breath before my gaze lands back on him again.
He’s taking this too well.
His quiet calm scares me more than if he were raging.
Either he believes that he’s going to beat this and find his way back onto the field, or he’s in denial so deep it hasn’t hit yet.
Both roads lead to the same place—a breaking point.
And I don’t know how to protect him from it.
I check the clock. He’s due for another dose of antibiotics and pain meds soon, and my instincts tell me to wake him, so he stays on schedule, but I don’t.
I let him sleep.
Maybe I need the break just as much. Maybe I need a few minutes where I’m not a doctor or a girlfriend or the woman who stood in the middle of an impossible choice and came out fractured.
I move back to the couch and open my laptop.
The blinking cursor of my proposal stares back at me, just like it has every minute of the last four days since his injury. Graphs, protocols, projections—the future I’ve been working toward for months stares back at me.
I felt so certain about everything within the document but now question it all.
That’s only because you’re questioning yourself and what you did.
I scroll through the text slowly. Adjust a sentence. Reword a slide. Stare at it until my eyes blur before I pull out my phone to text Trish: I’ll be ready for critiques in the next few days. That work for you?
That self-imposed deadline will force me to focus. Will refuse to let me fail at this.
For now though, I take a deep breath and begin whispering my presentation to the empty room. Quietly. Carefully. Like if I say the words softly enough, they won’t collapse under the weight of everything else.
The knock on the door across the hall—Lucas’s door—catches my attention.
Who’s looking for him? And are they going to wonder why he’s not there just after having surgery?
Christ. We’ve come too far to get caught now.
I stand, cross to the door, and peer through the peephole.
The man standing there has broad shoulders and brown, wavy hair. He could be anybody, but when he turns around to look down the hall, he’s a total reflection of Lucas. Brendan.
I open the door without thinking.
He turns, eyes flicking over me, and smiles softly. “Hello?”
“Are you . . . Brendan?” I ask cautiously.
His smile deepens. “Yes. Do you know where he is? He just had surgery and isn’t answering, so now I’m worrying that he’s in there, took too many pain pills and is—”
“He’s in here,” I say, hooking my thumb over my shoulder toward my apartment.
That gives Brendan pause, his eyes darting over my shoulder before narrowing at me. “You must be Emery.” Plain. Matter-of-fact. Zero judgment. There’s relief in his expression, which eases the knot in my chest.
“He’s resting,” I say.
“And how is he doing?” Concern is etched in the lines of his face.
“Handling things better than I expected, which means there’s probably a crash coming and soon.”
“That tracks.” Brendan nods and purses his lips. “It’s rare for Lucas to let someone see him like this. That says a lot. About him. And about you.”
I glance down the hallway and lower my voice. “He means”—my voice breaks—“a lot to me.”
“I think that feeling is mutual.”
I step aside. “You’re welcome to come in. I can wake him—”
He shakes his head. “I can wait for him in his apartment. Last thing I want is to invade your space.” He hesitates, then smiles. “I’ll hang there until he wakes up.”
“Sure. Yes. Um . . . let me get his key for you,” I say and then shut my door to go find it. When I look up, Lucas is standing in the doorway to the bedroom, hair mussed and eyes heavy with sleep.
“Who is it?” he asks.
“Your brother’s here.”
“My brother?” Confusion flickers, then irritation, and even though I can see there’s a sense of relief, he covers it up as soon as he speaks. “Everyone needs to stop worrying. I’m fine.”
But his eyes give him away. He’s confused and angry, trying to hide it behind a mask of indifference.
“He knows you’re fine. I know you’re fine. But that’s what family does, right? Come when you’re in need—or when they think you are.”
He grunts in response.
“He’s waiting for me to get him the key so he can see you when you’re up,” I say.
“I’ll go over. I’m—”
“Fine. Yes. I know.” I draw in a breath. “There’s going to come a time when you’re not, Lucas.”
Instead of responding, he pulls me into him and presses his lips to mine. The kiss is tender and desperate, almost like he’s searching for something steady to keep him propped up.
“I need you, Em,” he murmurs. “I’ve never needed anyone so . . . I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re scared,” I say, voice steady even as my chest cracks. “And that’s okay. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I love you.”
He nods once, like that’s all he can manage.
Then he turns and heads across the hall to his brother. To the one person who has known this dream of his longer than anybody. The dream he just lost.
I stand there long after he closes the door, heart aching and the weight of his vulnerability, his loneliness, owning me.
Because I know more than anything that the hardest part hasn’t come yet for Lucas.
And when it does, I’ll be here for him, but I don’t know if that will be enough to keep him afloat.