Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
EMILY
After the hit, there’d been initial speculation as to the cause of his injury and, with a quick consult, Finn’s team decided it’d be best to just put it out there. Tell everyone what the official injury was so they wouldn’t make things up.
The Stallions’ head coach spoke on the screen from the cell phone held in Finn’s hand. The team was having the post-game press conference. And they were talking about Finn.
“Taylor took a deep pelvic injury,” coach explained.
Hit right where the two sides of the pelvic muscles meet.
Beside me in his wheelchair the nurses insisted he use, Finn flinched. The hospital was preparing for him to head home when the press conference started.
“Shouldn’t his protective cup have… protected him?” one of the reporters asked.
I scoffed. Dear goodness, here we go.
“Yes. In an average player, it would’ve, but Finn isn’t—” the coach cleared his throat, letting the implication sink in. “Average.”
“How long is he out?” another reporter asked.
Too long, apparently. According to the doc.
“Don’t know yet. Don’t have a return timeframe,” the coach continued.
Finn made a growling sound low in his chest.
Probably because getting benched wasn’t the worst part. The latest doctor had said that if Finn took another hit like that before he healed up? He risked permanent damage.
I couldn’t watch the interview any longer, and I sure as hell couldn’t look at Finn and his expression of total disappointment.
I glanced to the stack of papers I held, instead.
The hospital discharge papers were a masterclass in bureaucratic ass-covering. A dozen pages of liability waivers, follow-up instructions, and a detailed list that basically translated to: If his junk turns funny colors and falls off, it’s not our fault.
I scanned them the way I scan everything: looking for the clause nobody wants you to find.
“Fun reading?” Finn asked, turning off his phone. He held a bag of his belongings carefully on his lap.
He looked like a comedian who’d had all his jokes stripped away.
“According to section four, subsection B, you’re to apply ice for twenty minutes on, then take twenty minutes off,” I said.
“Does that mean I have to get a new bag of ice each time, or can I refreeze the same emotional-support-peas?” he asked, clearly trying for humor.
I couldn’t work up a laugh, but I did smile. “I’ll keep you in a whole rotation of peas. Don’t you worry.”
While Dallas—thank God for my favorite assistant—went to pull her car around, I made the mistake of unlocking my phone to send a quick note to Elliott.
My notifications were a total dumpster fire. Headlines screamed at me from every sports blog and gossip site.
“Show me how bad it is,” he said.
I didn’t want to, but I did.
Wide Receiver’s Extra-Wide Stats Go Viral.
Finn Taylor’s Package Deal Benches Him.
And my personal favorite, from a site that specialized in pure, unadulterated snark: Stallions Star Sidetracked by Size—Literally.
Below them, a cesspool of memes.
Finn’s face Photoshopped onto the statue of David with larger anatomy pasted between his thighs.
Teammates were already quoted in articles, making locker-room jokes that were not subtle.
“It’s a compliment, right?” Finn asked, trying for a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Like, a really, really painful compliment that might end my season?”
“It’s temporary insanity,” I said, tucking my phone back into my purse. “The internet will move on to a cat playing a tiny piano by tomorrow.”
God, I hope.
Getting him into the back of Dallas’s SUV was a slow, delicate operation that involved more grimacing and hissed-out curse words than I’d heard in my last three depositions combined.
Dallas earned full canonization for helping me maneuver him on the seat.
Finally settled and buckled in, he took up most of the back seat. I slid in beside him anyway.
He smelled like grass and antiseptic and, under all of it, the particular warm-cotton-and-cedar smell that was just his.
“Thanks for this, ladies,” he said, leaning his head back against the headrest. “You’re both lifesavers.”
“Any time,” Dallas said, checking the rearview mirror. “My boyfriend, Micah, will lose his mind when I tell him I was the official getaway driver for Finn Taylor’s balls.”
Finn laughed. Then he grimaced. “I like her. She’s funny.”
I shot her a grateful smile.
As we pulled out of the hospital parking lot, Dallas’s phone buzzed in its dashboard holder. Her expression softened as the car read the message out loud: “Hey babe.”
The smile on her face didn’t quite hold as it continued: “Going out with guys. Be home late.”
Her expression wavered, just for a moment, a tiny crack in a picture-perfect facade before she straightened up, all professional cheer again.
Then Finn’s phone started ringing, its generic ringtone slicing through the silent car. He fumbled for it, his face tightening when he saw the screen.
Elliott.
“You can’t hide from him forever,” I said.
“Maybe just for tonight?” he asked.
I shook my head. “He’s your best friend and he’s worried.”
“No, he’s my agent right now.”
“You still have to answer.”
He sighed, hitting the green button. “Hey.”
My brother’s voice came through the speaker, sharp and agitated, even from a foot away. “I’m worried about you, man.”
“Just a bad hit, El. I’m fine.”
I could hear the disbelief in Elliott’s reply. “And I’m the fucking tooth fairy.”
“I’m probably going to be out for a while,” Finn cut in between gritting his teeth.
Then Elliott’s voice dropped, becoming lower, more serious. More dangerous. In the close confines of the car, the words were unavoidable.
“Listen to me. Your only job right now is to lay low and focus on rehab. Got it? No distractions.” A pause. “No women. And I mean it this time. No repeats of the Portland situation. No booze. Let’s get you back on the field.”
I hadn’t been briefed on the exact parameters of the Portland situation. I had, however, met the woman from the Portland situation at a team gala the year before. She’d been breathtakingly gorgeous and aggressively attached.
Finn dated the way he played football. All in. Full speed.
He collected beautiful women the way some players collected sports cars. Then Elliott swept in like a highly paid janitor, managing the fallout with the efficiency of a man who’d done it fifty times before.
I’d always thought that was the whole story.
But sitting next to him now, as he absorbed Elliott’s lecture with a tired grimace and a, “Your goal is my goal,” my lawyer brain caught what didn’t add up.
Finn wasn’t careless. He was exhausted.
The specific kind that accumulates in people who’ve spent too long moving fast enough to outrun something. And now he couldn’t move at all.
Stuck. Completely still.
“And for God’s sake, stick with Emily,” Elliott continued. “She’s the bulldog you need right now.”
“He’s not wrong,” I agreed. I’d been called that and much, much worse.
“Actually,” Elliott continued, his tone shifting from lecture to logistics, “you’re going to need someone around the clock for the first week or two. The team can find someone, but I’d feel better if it was a person we already trust. Em could be—”
“No,” I said, at the exact same time Finn did.
Finn lifted his head. “She has a job. She has a whole life. She’s not going to park herself at my place because I can’t carry my own groceries.”
“I’m not a babysitter,” I added, which was both true and came out slightly more defensive than I’d intended.
“I’m not saying babysitter. I’m saying someone who won’t sell his discharge summary to a sports blog.” Elliott’s voice had the patience of a man who had made this particular argument before. “I’m saying someone I don’t have to vet.”
“Elliott,” I said. “I have clients. I have a caseload. I cannot—”
“Just think about it,” he said, which was Elliott for you’re going to do it.
“Emily,” Finn said, lolling his head in my direction. “Looks like you’re my babysitter. Congrats.”
“At least with Emily, I know nothing would ever happen to cause further damage,” Elliott said with a chuckle.
I stiffened. What the hell did that mean? Nothing would ever happen.
Like to Finn’s penis?
Not that it would. But that was my call. Well, and Finn’s.
But that had zero to do with my brother.
The sting, while subtle, was still kinda sharp.
“Ask him why anything wouldn’t ever happen between us?” I asked, reaching for the phone. “Because Finn’s out of my league?”
Finn didn’t let it go, so I leaned in instead, saying, “I would like to point out that I’m totally pretty enough to land a guy like Finn, if I wanted to.”
“You touched a nerve, El,” Finn said, clearly enjoying this.
“Em, calm down,” Elliott mumbled.
“Don’t ever tell a woman to calm down. Did I teach you nothing?” I practically yelled toward the phone.
Dallas giggled from the front seat.
“You taught me everything,” Elliott said, exasperated. “Finn, can you take me off speaker now, please?”
“Nah, this is kinda fun.” Finn settled into his seat.
“Is it because I’m your sister so I’m off limits?” I asked. “Because this is not the eighteen hundreds. It’s not even the nineteen hundreds,” I continued, warming to the theme and really going for it.
Or because the idea of me and Finn together is so funny it doesn’t even register as a possibility?
“Is it because my idea of dirty talk is arguing about contract language? I mean I do have feelings about the word ‘hereinafter.’ Strong feelings. I once spent thirty minutes explaining why ‘whereas’ clauses are legally unnecessary and got genuinely heated about it.”
“I cannot imagine you getting heated about something so silly,” Elliott said, not laughing.
I ignored him.
“Oh, and let’s not forget,” I was on a roll now, “Finn dates women who do body shots and I do… billable hours. So many billable hours. My number one kink is thinking about billing.”
Finn was seriously trying not to laugh now.
“Point taken,” Elliott said, finally chuckling.
Finn was already shaking his head, rubbing a hand over his face. “No cleat chasers, got it. Just Emily, for all the reasons she stated.”
Finn and I glanced at each other and our gazes caught for a beat too long. I wasn’t proud that I was the one who looked away first.
I kept my expression perfectly neutral; my hands folded calmly in my lap. I was a lawyer. I was an expert at masking my reactions, at presenting a cool, unaffected front while my insides churned.
Finn finally turned to me with a weak, apologetic smile on his face. “Sorry about that. He’s in full agent mode and he doesn’t think before he speaks.”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice even. Way too even.
Liar.
“Uh-huh,” he said, clearly not buying it.
We rode the rest of the way in silence.
And when we arrived at his townhouse, I didn’t wait to be asked for help. I got around to his side and put his arm over my shoulders before Dallas could even exit the vehicle. We made it up the stairs mostly on my stubbornness.
I punched the code into the keypad and pushed the door open.
His place was exactly as I remembered it: clean, minimalist, and it smelled like his cologne.
A sprawling gray sectional dominated the living room, facing a TV the size of a small car. Yes, that tracked.
“Okay, I’m gonna run,” Dallas said, setting his bag down by the door. “Emily? Do you want me to get your car back here or leave it at the bar?”
“I’ll pick it up later. No worries.” I took Dallas in for a beat. “And thank you. For being my friend tonight.”
“You’re the best,” Finn said, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “I wanna be friends, too.”
“He’s clearly on drugs,” Dallas said, pursing her lips, but she was totally eating this up.
“He’ll be fine,” I heard myself say, hoping it was the truth.
Dallas gave me a quick, searching look, then nodded and left.
And then it was just the two of us.
Finn limped over to the couch and collapsed onto it with a pained groan, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Can you get my glasses? I h-a-a-ate my contacts.”
I found his contact case, ran a washcloth under the tap, and handed both over.
“You okay there, stud?” I asked, once he was settled, his brown hair pushed back, black-rimmed glasses in place, and his long legs propped on the ottoman.
“This is officially the most humiliating day of my life.”
“You don’t really need a babysitter,” I said. “You need a bag of frozen vegetables for your junk and some sleep.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
My lawyer brain filed an objection and my feet refused to move. I was the woman who had known him since he was a kid. The woman who watched him turn into a lanky teenager with a goofy grin couldn’t move. He was the Finn to my Emily.
“Do you have any food in this place?” I asked, heading toward his kitchen instead of the door.
“I think there’s a jar of pickles and some protein powder,” he mumbled. “The cornerstones of any healthy diet.”
I opened his fridge. He wasn’t lying. It was a wasteland of bottled water, hot sauce, and something that might have once been a lime.
He can’t even stand up straight. How is he going to feed himself?
The question popped into my head, uninvited and unwelcome. And with it came the inevitable conclusion. I would take care of him.
I mean, he’d do it for me.
I turned back to find him still flat on the couch, and stood in his kitchen holding a fridge door open like the inventory of his condiments was going to tell me what to do next.
“Elliott’s right. I could…actually… stay with you.” The words came out before I could stop them. They surprised me as much as they probably surprised him. “Just until you’re back on your feet.”
He moved his arm, peering at me with one eye. “You don’t have to do that, Em. You can’t just park yourself here because my fridge is sad.”
“I know.” And I did.
I had a mountain of casework, clients to impress, a life built on billable hours and strategic distance.
This was the opposite of strategic. This was feeling.
But the image of him trying to navigate his kitchen, trying to ice himself while juggling the fallout of his career, was too much.
The thought of him being alone in this sat sideways.
“But I’m going to stick around,” I said, the words feeling more certain than anything I’d said all day. “Someone needs to make sure you don’t accidentally subsist on pickle juice and expired Gatorade.”
“I have Gatorade?” he asked, perking up.
“No.” I shook my head. “But I’ll buy you some that’s not expired.”
He smirked. “My hero.”
He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and closed his eyes. Just for a second. As though he was checking to ensure this was really his reality.
And, unfortunately, it was. There was nothing either of us could do about that.