Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
FINN
Once she accepted the ‘official babysitter’ title, Emily stuck around last night.
She made me go to bed and then crashed in the spare bedroom. By six that morning she headed back to her place to grab clothes, her laptop, whatever she needed to actually function as a human being in my house.
Temporary.
She’d said it twice. I’d nodded like a person who definitely hadn’t noticed how fast the house went silent once the door clicked shut behind her.
Anyway. Life doesn’t pause for feelings, unfortunately.
The team wasn’t fucking around. Since I wasn’t in any condition to go to the facility, they sent their Director of Rehabilitation right to me.
While I wasn’t ready for physical therapy yet, for obvious reasons, my fancy, new rehab guy was dispatched to drop off a professional ice machine and deliver the team doctor’s orders.
Emily had barely taken off when Trent arrived with the specialized gear.
Naturally, since he’d already made the trip out here, he decided to take the opportunity to “get to know me and my injury.” I hadn’t even had any coffee, and suddenly there was a dude with a clipboard ready to talk about my pain levels.
He didn’t seem to care about my lack of caffeination as he unpacked a bulky, clinical-looking professional ice machine and a resistance band that looked like it belonged in an arts-and-crafts store but was more likely a tool for my future misery.
Trent caught me eyeing the stretchy band.
“Week three,” he said deadpan. “For now, it is inspiration.”
“Inspiring,” I muttered. “Truly inspiring.”
Trent didn’t even twitch at that. He just kept that resting expression indicating he had seen men in worse shape than me, and I better take this seriously.
He had zero idea how serious I took this.
Oh, and Trent? Trent was built like he ate offensive linemen for breakfast. That contributed to his whole vibe.
He had me on my back faster than that time I brought home the girl from the Razorbacks’ PR team. Glasses on, soft shorts, flat on my back in my own living room while my teammates were probably arriving at the facility.
This was my new life.
“You’re going to lay flat and keep the weight off the pelvic floor,” he grunted. “Rest neutral where it should feel fine.”
“Fine is not a word I’d use for any point in the last twenty-four hours,” I said, shifting on the floor.
Trent checked his tablet, delivering the imaging results: “Scans ruled out torsion and rupture; we’re looking at deep tissue contusion and pelvic floor strain.” He readied his pen. “Nothing strenuous today; we’re just mapping the baseline pain assessment.”
“Fun.”
“Press here and tell me when it catches,” Trent said. Two fingers, flat and clinical, finding a point just inside my right hip flexor. “Scale of one to ten.”
I breathed through my nose. A controlled exhale.
Being perfectly still, lying on my own rug like a broken piece of furniture while being asked to describe a number on a scale of one to ten wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“Four,” I said.
Trent logged it. He shifted his hand lower, toward the inner groin, the press lighter this time but somehow worse for it. “Here. Number.”
“Six.”
Map the pain. Log the pain. Repeat. That clipboard was the least comforting thing I’d seen since my initial radiology report.
By the time Trent called it, our session barely brushed the thirty-minute mark, but I’d sweated straight through my shirt.
It was an impressive feat for a man who had done essentially nothing, entirely earned through the sheer humiliation of having my pain levels methodically logged while flat on my ass.
Trent dropped a laminated protocol sheet onto the coffee table. The mandatory ice intervals were circled in heavy red marker. Then he went back to writing notes on his stupid clipboard.
I did not ask what they said. Some information was not for me.
He was packing up his bag when the key code beeped at the front door.
My head came up.
Emily walked in wearing her work clothes, her hair up, her purse over one shoulder, and a rolling bag, her laptop, and what I strongly suspected was a full week’s worth of clothes organized by color.
She took in the scene—me on the floor, damp, glasses on, the absolute picture of athletic vitality—and her expression didn’t change at all.
“You’re up,” she said. “Relative term, but still.”
“Inspiring myself,” I said, lying spread eagle.
“He was working on making a permanent indent in the couch, when I left,” Em said, eyeing Trent.
Hold up, was she checking him out?
And why did that, oddly, make me pissy?
Trent turned from his bag, looked at her, and apparently reached a verdict in about four seconds. “Are you the one staying with him?”
“I am.” She dropped her purse on the entryway table and shook his hand.
“The ice machine is best. But an ice pack works, too. Wrap it in cloth first. Direct cold does more damage than good at this stage. He’ll want to skip the off intervals.” He paused. “Don’t let him.”
Emily produced a small notebook from her purse and wrote this down. An actual notebook. With an actual pen. Like she’d come prepared for the briefing.
I studied the ceiling.
This is my life now.
“If he tries to add any exercise, call me.” Trent handed her a card. “It’ll feel fine until it doesn’t, and ‘until it doesn’t’ sets the timeline back significantly.”
“What does ‘adding exercise’ look like?” she asked, pen still out. “Precisely.”
“Anything that gets his heart rate up. Make him stop. Then text me.” Trent glanced at me. It was not an unkind glance. It was, however, accurately accusatory.
“Got it.” She clicked the pen once. “I’ll text you.”
Trent picked up his bag and left me on the floor with Emily standing in my entryway. The door clicked shut behind him.
“Up,” Emily said. “Couch.”
“I can—”
“Up,” she said again, already moving toward the kitchen.
“You’ve got ice?” she asked.
“I’ve got a machine.” I jabbed at the professional ice machine Trent had left. It whirred, flashed an error code, and promptly died. Perfect. My groin was mashed meat and I was being outsmarted by a cooler.
Emily took one look at the useless machine and marched to the kitchen. She came back with a dish towel and a bag of peas from the freezer. She wrapped them without commentary. Cloth first, consistent pressure, exactly what Trent had said. She positioned it and sat back on her heels.
I shifted on the leather sectional, a low groan escaping my throat as I tried to reposition the damn ice. I didn’t take the stronger pills they gave me because I didn’t want to be loopy, but I regretted that decision.
Emily’s ice pack was too cold, then not cold enough, and the little green peas inside kept migrating away from ground zero like they were avoiding a blitz. Which, considering the helmet-to-groin situation, wasn’t a totally unfair assessment.
“This is, without a doubt, the single most pathetic moment of my life.”
“I brought you a Gatorade.” She handed it over.
“Second most pathetic?” I asked.
Her lips pressed together, fighting a smile.
“Living the dream,” I grumbled, twisting off the cap and taking a swig.
She was studying me with a look like she’d found twelve things wrong and was mentally alphabetizing them.
“You’re holding that wrong,” she said, staring at the ice pack.
I let out a short laugh. “Is there a right way to ice your balls, Em? Because I’d love to see the instructional video.”
“You want me to help you or not?” she asked, sweetly.
“Okay, this is weird. This is officially the weirdest our friendship has ever gotten,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said, her voice clinical. “Now, lie back. I’ll place it.”
I braced every muscle in my body like I was about to take a hit. “You’re… you’re not going to…”
Her eyes met mine. Amused. Or maybe sympathetic? Hard to tell.
“Relax, Taylor. I’m not copping a feel. I’m just deploying the frozen peas where they’ll do the most good.”
My face was on fire. C’mon though, I was a professional athlete, so I’d been through loads of humbling situations.
I’d played through cracked ribs and a separated shoulder. But seeing my best friend’s super-hot sister, who knew all my embarrassing secrets from when I was a teenager, patch up my bruised bits? That was a whole new one.
I lay back, trying to pretend this was completely normal. Her fingers brushed the fabric of my sweatpants as she positioned the towel-wrapped ice pack. The contact was brief, professional even, and yet it sent a sizzle through me that the ice couldn’t touch.
She was so close I could smell the watermelon scent of her shampoo, and my dick twitched under the ice pack. I winced as an immediate spasm of pain stabbed through my bruised pelvis to punish the reflex.
Dammit. No erections. I was not medically allowed to have an erection.
“There,” she said, sitting back on her heels. “Better?”
The cold was still intense, but it was a dull, steady pressure now instead of a sharp, biting sting.
“Yeah,” I conceded. “Actually. A lot better.”
She nodded, satisfied. “And I ordered groceries for delivery. You’re welcome. But I didn’t get to eat my wings last night, so I’m gonna put in a lunch delivery order from Mike’s, too.”
Before I could say anything, she had her phone out, thumbs flying across the screen. “You want hot or are you feeling like barbecue?”
I was supposed to be the one who looked out for her, the one who dragged her out of her work-obsessed funks. But here she was, taking charge and ordering wings like it was the most obvious solution in the world.
Maybe it was.
“Both,” I said, a small, genuine smile finally breaking through. “And blue cheese. The chunky kind.”
By the time lunch arrived, she’d convinced me to shove painkillers down my gullet, and the smell of Buffalo sauce and chicken filled the room.
The remnants of my pity party were almost totally gone.