Chapter 33
Gabe
No fucking clue where Blaise ran off to. Literally ran off down the street like a psycho. There’s a Jugs social thing this afternoon that Blaise bailed on to hang out with my crippled ass, and then he just ran off. And I’m losing my mind.
With boredom.
I adjust myself in bed, grunting when my knee bends the slightest amount and pain shimmers through me, pushing the outer bounds of my pain killers. Blaise was lying next to me like we were having a damn slumber party, watching one of his weirdo animes with subtitles. Focusing on them is giving me a headache. So I spend at least three minutes feeling around for the remote where Blaise was sitting before realizing that it’s on the opposite nightstand.
Joss’s nightstand.
Valentine’s Day sucks when there’s an actual person to spend it with but they’re across town and there’s no way they’re going to come over here.
I seriously consider making the trek across the bed, but laziness and malaise win out. I fish around my nightstand to get my glasses and start reading the screen.
It still hurts my brain. Not the reading, but what they’re actually saying. There are two characters on screen, except one is some sort of clunky office equipment, I’m thinking a printer, and I’m not sure if it’s sentient or if the other character, a supposedly teenaged boy, is psychotic and hallucinating the printer’s side of the conversation. And I say supposedly because he may look young, but he’s definitely a villain who’s already murdered a bunch of people and is discussing with the printer who he should murder next.
Or possibly not discussing because, again, it’s a printer.
Also, and this might be something that would make more sense if I hadn’t been tossed into the middle of this insanity, they appear to be in a fantasy setting. Like, they’re in an old castle and the boy has a sword and a cape and a magical amulet.
The stupidity sucks me right in, just trying to figure out what the hell is happening, and it’s two episodes later that I hear someone running down the hall. Not unusual in this house, but the guys all left together and I don’t hear the usual commotion of everyone walking in at the same time. Not Blaise, either. He’d be going way faster. His perma-zoomies.
It sounds more like Merrick jogging at a pace that could pass for normal human speeds, except the shoes sound all wrong. Light footfalls, but striking the ground sharply like the soles aren’t as flexible as his sneakers.
This is what my brain’s turned into in the last five days. In-depth analysis of footfalls.
“Gabe?” Joss yells in a panicked voice.
Oh fuck.
I haven’t even had the chance to get my legs off the side of the bed before Joss rushes through the doorway, her face red and tear-streaked. “Oh my god, what happened?” she sobs.
I’m so thrown by her clear distress that I get myself even more tangled with the stack of pillows and blankets that have been crafted to prop my leg and back up in the absence of one of those fancy beds that do it automatically. Joss bodily throws herself over my torso with a shriek to stop me.
I gently ease her up with a hand against her collarbone. “Gentle!” I warn, careful not to state my concern over the baby, having learned that lesson the hard way. “It’s my MCL. It’s fine.”
She’s still crying, though, and if tearing an MCL is what it takes to get her to throw her arms around my shoulders to hug me as fiercely as her scrawny little arms can hug, I’m happy. “What’s an MCL?”
“A knee ligament. There’s a bunch of them. ACL, LCL, PCL, you know, just knee stuff.”
She’s still crying as she lifts her head back up. “Are you ever going to walk again?”
“What?” I snort and then do my best to reign my laughter in. “Ma’am, I can walk now. The team doc wants me to use a crutch for the next couple of days, and I’m kinda stuck here because the guys hauled me up the stairs when we got back instead of setting me up on a sofa, but I’m fine. Ligament tears happen. It’s really not a big deal. I mean, it can be career ending, but it’s usually a couple weeks of recovering. I’m—hey, hey, hey,” I say quickly when her bottom lip starts to tremble again. “I’m fine, I swear!”
She smacks my chest, but I’m pretty sure it’s more of an irritated swat than anything meant to harm. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“How?”
She climbs off me but stays on the bed, sitting crisscross next to me with her arms over her chest and the sweetest pout on her lips, her cheeks bright red and her blond hair falling out of the clip it was pulled back in. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s nothing to worry about. They put me in PT to make sure it heals right, but I’m mostly just going to be in a brace for a few weeks.”
She chews on her bottom lip. I can see she’s still working on her mad, but she’s sitting here next to me, close enough that if I shimmy my good leg over a couple inches, I’ll feel the warmth of her knee. “So you’ve been lying to me all week? Every time I texted you and—”
“No! Fuck. No.” That’s the last thing I need, her thinking I’m lying about more stuff. “No, I promise. It was dumb and not a big deal, and honestly, I was embarrassed.” I give her my most sheepish cringe and admit, “We were dicking around on Super Bowl Sunday, and I tripped over my own foot in the front lawn.”
“You—!” Joss’s face scrunches up. Her hands ball into fists. Her nostrils flaring like a petite, adorable, raging bull. “You tripped over your own feet and tore your-your-your whatever ligament? Why do you drive me to violence? Never in my life have I ever wanted to hit another human being except you, and now here I am ready to punch you because you’re so stupid! Why am I like this with you?”
I take a gamble. It’s a big one, but it’s the moment for it. Besides, since it’s the off-season and I have a good track record of not misbehaving while injured, they gave me opioids for the pain. I’m feeling pretty lucky right now. I take one of those fists and bring it to my mouth, kissing the knuckles knowing that there’s an outside chance I’m about to lose a tooth on them. “Because you love me?”
She snatches her hand away only after I say that, and I consider it progress. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t just forgive you, Gabe!”
“I fell in love with you that first moment I saw you in your studio, and not a single thing you’ve ever done has made me doubt that. But you’re so nice and smart and talented and beautiful that I thought once you met the rest of the team, you’d realize you were too good for me, so I did what I had to—”
I saw her softening up slightly somewhere in the middle, but she smacks me again at that. “Why do you always say stuff like that?”
“Because I mean it. You’re incredible.”
“Not that!” she huffs. “What do your teammates have to do with anything? What have I ever done to make you think I’m with you because you’re a football player?
“Because what else am I?” I sigh at the weight of my own words. “It’s the only thing that ever mattered to me. I threw away years working bullshit jobs instead of building a career because I didn’t want work to get in the way. But then my dream came true, and I had a couple good years, but now it’s over, and what am I?”
“You got cut?”
I shake my head. “Not officially, but no contract. Someone else might pick me up, but then I’d have to leave Wilmington and . . .” I shrug.
Joss thinks on that for a long time. She gets distracted momentarily by a thread on the quilt beneath her. I think having a place for her eyes to go is enough to get her to say, “Well, you’re definitely going to be a dad soon. And that’s something, right?”
“That’s a lot. That’s huge. I don’t want to lose a second of it that I don’t have to.”
She swallows. “That’s not fair.”
I rest back but grab her thigh, taking what I want, tired of this notion of fair. “I’m not going to say I’m sorry, because I’m not. I was sick with stress when I found out about your Aiden James and realized another pregnancy could be traumatic for you, but it isn’t, not for you, so I’m not sorry. Maybe that’s not right, but I don’t care.”
“You rewrote my life without my permission!”
I look her dead in the eye, claiming every ounce of her anger. “You keep saying you can’t forgive me, but what you’re doing, your actions? That’s not what they’re saying. I mean, you were having a whole meltdown because you thought I was hurt, and I’m pretty sure you’re mad I blew off a couple booty calls.”
Joss groans and pitches forward, faceplanting on the pillows next to me. “My body is dumb and makes bad decisions.”
“Then make a bad decision! You’re fucking right, I rewrote your life without your permission, but did I not give you exactly what you wanted, when you wanted it?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Your Christmas and Valentine’s Day presents are right there in the closet. Why don’t you see what else I’m giving you?”
She drags her ass off the bed dramatically and pulls the first package out of the closet. It’s wrapped all proper-like with a bow and everything, but the moment she picks up the giant gift, she says, “This is a bolt of fabric.”
“Yeah, obviously.”
She wants to tell me to piss off and die, I can see it clear as day. “I own every bolt of fabric on the planet,” she mutters as she tears through the paper. “Why would you think I need m—oh my god,” she gasps as she reveals the pattern of dense, intricately arranged orchids. “I’ve never seen this before. Where did you come across—?” She looks more closely at it and struggles so hard to stay irritated and not laugh that she nearly spits on it.
“Saw the chicken wings, did you? I commissioned it. Charged me a small fortune, but it was worth it. Now go on, your other present is behind it.”
I see the dampness in Joss’s eyes, the tremble as her emotions get jumbled. “This isn’t—”
“Fair. You keep saying that. Ma’am, the decisions I made for you, I didn’t make them because I thought you didn’t want them, I made them because I knew you did. Yeah, it was shitty of me to push my issues on you. I’m a coward, okay? I wasn’t even brave enough to fucking ask if I’ve got a spot on the team next year because I didn’t think I could handle being told I don’t. I promise I’m going to try to do better, but there it is. Open the other present.”
Joss swallows a lump in her throat before tearing the paper off the quartet of fabric that matches the first bolt. “Is this for the baby?”
She’s smiling, but now I’m grouchy. At myself, but it doesn’t matter. “Got charged a much larger fortune for raccoon themed baby prints.”
She traces the happy face of the gray and black bandit. “Crud,” she grumbles. “How am I supposed to not forgive you after this?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to forgive me after this.” I pat the bed next to me casually, but my heart is pounding with the need for her to just be here, right here. Holding me. “Come give me a Valentine’s Day kiss, and I’ll order us some Valentine’s Chinese.”
She’s not sold, not entirely. But she curls up in bed next to me and says, “Those glasses make you look smarter than you are.”
I don’t know why I ever worried about another guy stealing her from me.