Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
FINN
Plays went sideways. Happened all the time in sports.
Even a play I’d run six hundred times. In the half-second between the snap and when the ball left Drake’s hand, my body understood what came next. The hole’s on the right. Cut up at the hash and drive through.
The sideways I’d prepared for? Taking the tackle I’d been tracking.
But the contact I got instead was so wrong that my first thought wasn’t pain. That first thought was: that’s not how that goes.
And now I couldn’t get my mind to stop running the damn play. Over and over and over again. Because what was happening here in this hospital was worse than reliving the worst moment of my life.
I’d been in enough training rooms and medical bays to know the difference between routine and this-is-going-to-be-a-longer-conversation-than-you-want-to-have.
This visit landed firmly in the second category.
I shifted again on the emergency room cot. Because sitting still while a stranger catalogued your injuries with the emotional range of a parking meter was, it turned out, not something I enjoyed.
I needed to talk. I always needed to talk.
“They’re saying I got nutmegged,” I said, trying to joke with the doctor. “Is that my official diagnosis?”
Dr. Not-Into-Humor’s eyes, however, didn’t lift from the tablet screen where he flipped through images of my dick and the surrounding areas.
His mouth tightened and he read slowly, like whatever was written there deserved a moment of silence.
“Minor problem?” I asked, not liking the way he frowned deeper.
“Actually…” he said. “It’s not so minor. We need to get a second scan to get a better look.”
Breathing got harder.
“How not-minor are we talking?” I asked, still trying to smile. Failing. But trying.
Dr. Not-Into-Humor didn’t answer right away.
Simply gave me that tight-lipped sympathy look that always came before someone said you needed surgery, or you couldn’t play, or you had a tear somewhere inside that wasn’t going to stitch itself back together no matter how much protein you added to your diet.
The kind of look you earned only if you were stupid enough to get your junk smashed on national television.
I swallowed hard.
Shit.
“We just don’t know yet,” he said finally, scribbling something in his notes like that might soften the blow.
Could I still have kids?
Did I want kids?
What if my kids were bullies because my sperm got all beat up?
I nodded as if I were okay with everything he said. Which, I wasn’t, but fake chill was kind of my brand. I rested back against the bed, knees wide.
I wanted to ask if I’d be out for the season, but I also didn’t want to ask. Because the answer might not be one I was going to be okay with.
Football wasn’t a job to me.
It was the language I’d spoken since I was nine years old, when my dad put a ball in my hands for the first time on a Saturday morning and I caught it clean. Clean enough that he’d whistled low and said, “Pay attention to that.”
I’d been paying attention ever since.
Twenty-three years of attention. Every practice, every film session, every fourth-down call committed to muscle memory. The crowd’s roar when a route broke open. The exact second I caught the ball in that singular split-second of perfect contact before everything exploded in noise and light.
Without the game?
I didn’t even know how to finish the thought, because I couldn’t imagine myself in grayscale like that.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled hard like that might help. “No chance I’m being a baby, and this is all drama?”
The doctor’s brows lifted. “You’re quite injured, Mr. Taylor. Not dramatic.”
My phone buzzed again on the tray next to me. I glanced to it.
Elliott.
Four missed calls. At this point, the man was climbing the charts of the Billboard Hot 100 “Most Annoying.”
I didn’t pick up.
Couldn’t pick up.
Because he was my best friend, and I needed him for that, but he was also my agent. And if I heard his agent voice, all updates and spin control? I might actually hurl.
Another buzz.
I pressed ignore.
Again.
And again.
This was the guy I spent every Saturday with shooting the shit and basically doing as much nothing as we could.
I cleared the wad of guilt that had settled in the back of my throat because he might be my best friend, but Elliott was also the guy who managed my career.
And right now, picking up his call meant having a conversation about football in the past tense, which… great, cool, not ready for that.
“I think all my ancestors winced when I took that hit today,” I tried again with Doc Not-So-Funny.
“I bet they did,” he replied.
The fluorescent bulb above the bed had a flicker it couldn’t quite commit to while the doctor continued scrolling through my radiology report as though he searched for the precise coordinates of my future children.
Emily would know what to do here. I should call her. I got as far as unlocking my phone. But then she’d know I really broke my junk and I didn’t want that, either.
“You know, humor’s a pretty common coping mechanism,” the doc said, the words wrapped in that half-distracted, half-condescending tone I’d come to expect from anyone with a lab coat and initials following their name.
The doctor glanced up only long enough to aim a look at me that felt suspiciously like a diagnostic tool in itself.
“People use it when they haven’t fully processed the seriousness of their situation,” he added, thumbing one more time across the screen like maybe it’d give him a punchline better than mine.
Ah. Fantastic. I shifted under the blanket that wasn’t even warm anymore.
My humor was failing me. That was the worst part. Without it? I didn’t know how else to be.
I opened my mouth to try again. But would joking buy me breathing room or bury me in it?
I’d sent the Stallions’ staff out fifteen minutes ago with a simple, “Need a minute, I’m good, seriously.”
Which, thank fuck, everyone took to heart.
Then the curtain snapped open.
And just like that, everything in my chest stuttered.
Emily.
She was in a black coat with her hair twisted in a way that made her look terrifyingly competent.
Goddamn. The whole room recalibrated. I sat up straighter.
We were friends because of the Elliott connection. Popcorn-and-horror-flick buddies, not hospital scene partners with my dick front and center.
“Mr. Taylor isn’t seeing guests,” Dr. Park said, staring Emily down.
It didn’t work. She stepped closer, ignoring him as she scanned over me with that laser-focus lawyer gaze that could eviscerate a hostile witness or make a grown man feel like a kid who’d skinned his knee.
“Ms—”
“You okay?” she asked, brushing past the doc.
I tried to go casual. Easy. Nothing-to-see-here. “Only slightly crushed in the man-zone. Otherwise, I’m golden.”
She didn’t react.
“Dammit, could somebody please laugh?” I said under my breath.
“You’re not okay.” Emily answered her own question from before. Her voice was soft but threaded with that subtle kind of steel she used in depositions. “What exactly are we looking at here?”
A flush started at the base of my neck. “I don’t know. Nobody will say anything yet.”
She didn’t flinch. Not even a blink toward the chart or the fact that my entire existence was exposed—anatomically and in ultra-high-def.
Dr. Not-So-Funny cleared his throat in a very unfortunate this-is-going-to-suck way. His fingers tightened slightly around the tablet.
“It’s cool. She can stay,” I said. “You can talk around her. She’s my… Emily.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Are you comfortable, Finn?” she asked me as though she was a medical professional and not a high-powered attorney.
I didn’t say anything, but my gaze trailed to the doctor-with-no-information and Emily must’ve caught the vibe.
She took one quick look around the room as if she was doing a crowd control scan, then stepped forward toward the doctor.
“Dr. Park?” She read his name from his badge, her tone warm but firm. “You are the head of Urology here?”
The doctor blinked. “Yes.”
“I’m Ms. Sinclair.” Emily angled her body slightly between him and the bed like she’d been briefed on how to shield celebrities in a crisis.
“Ms… who?” the doctor asked.
“I’m a good friend of Mr. Taylor, but no one asked me that at all on the way in.
I waltzed right on in.” She glanced from the doctor to me, then back to him.
“That appears to be either a serious security issue for your more prominent guests or a simple procedural oversight that warrants immediate correction.”
Emily stepped closer to the bed, almost imperceptibly. Not crowding. Anchoring. The kind of presence that made everything feel slightly less medical crisis and more super weird Tuesday.
“You should’ve had to stop at the desk,” he said. “They had to let you through.”
“Nope. I followed a group right on in. Perhaps it may be prudent to give the patient a moment to recalibrate while you deal with your security lapse. You can circle back once you have a more definitive understanding of the full context of what we’re dealing with.
Yes?” She waited while the words settled into place.
Dr. Park’s reluctance held a beat too long. But then he nodded with the kind of mini-bow usually reserved for people who invoice in six-minute increments. “All right. I’ll check in once the radiology reads are back.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, already turning because we were officially closed for business.
The doctor left, which was probably for the best, because my brain had turned to soup and the ice pack was finally doing its thing.
“Please don’t leave,” I said to Emily before I could stop myself. I flinched internally at the stupid request.
She paused and reached for my hand, giving it a squeeze. “I won’t.”
“Good,” I said, my voice way more gravelly than it needed to be.
She didn’t ask permission. She just sat in the chair to my right and turned it slightly toward me.