Chapter 19 Thea #2
My eyes fly to the clock, and sure enough, we only have five minutes left. “Crap.” I look at Josh. “I heard you. We’ll figure it out.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“But right now? We need to go try to score some points.”
“Let’s go, partner.”
Yeah, yeah, I get his meaning. And I want that too.
We skate quickly to where the white puck is resting, and I shoot it over to him. He uses it to hit one of the red pucks into the closest net.
I go after it, fishing it out of the net and shooting it to him again.
He sends the white puck sliding into another red one, but it goes careening far left of the net.
I skate after it, assuming he’ll position himself in front of the net so that I can shoot it out to him.
I glance to where I expect him to be, but he’s not, which pulls my attention even further to the right.
My skate catches against the edge of the net, and suddenly I’m falling.
I’m more surprised than anything and I whip my arm out, trying to grab onto the net to keep myself up.
The net simply tips over with me.
I hit the ice hard on my right hip, and the net crashes down on top of me, whacking me in the head.
“Thea!” I hear Josh yell.
“Holy shit!” one of the twins shouts.
I just lay still for a second with my eyes squeezed shut. My head hurts, but my hip hurts worse. And then of course there’s my ego. A bunch of people just saw that happen.
Suddenly, the net shifts off of me, and I take a deep breath.
I feel Josh kneeling next to me. He slides one big hand under my head, cradling it gently. “Thea, sweetheart, are you okay?”
“Did she get knocked out?” one of the twins asks.
“Did she break anything?” the other asks.
I open my eyes to show the boys that I’m alive.
“I’m in one piece,” I tell them.
“Wow, that was…” one of them starts.
“Not graceful,” the other fills in.
I laugh and close my eyes again because that makes my head twinge.
“Thea, keep your eyes open for me,” Josh urges.
“No,” I say. Mostly because I really like his hand on my head and him leaning over me like this. He smells really good and his body is warm.
“Danger, come on now, open your eyes,” he coaxes. “Let me see those pretty blues.”
I moan because I love that nickname and how his voice sounds right now. Turns out his reassuring, paramedic sweet-talk sounds a little like his bedroom sweet-talk. I open my eyes for him.
He’s leaning over me, and our gazes lock.
God, I love his eyes. And his mouth.
All of him. I love all of him.
I really don’t want to give up looking into his eyes. Or his mouth. I don’t want to give up the right to be this close to him, to have his hands on me, to hear this low, rough voice.
“There you go. Are you hurt?”
“Yes. Ice is very hard.”
He huffs out a laugh. “Yes, it is. Which is why you shouldn’t fall down on it.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” I say, letting my eyes slide shut again.
“Hey,” he says, rubbing his hand over the back of my head. “We can’t have two Chabert girls with concussions.”
“It’s not a concussion. I’m okay. But if I open my eyes, you might stop.”
“Stop what?” he asks. I can hear the amusement in his tone, though he still sounds concerned.
“Touching me and being sexy Mr. paramedic,” I say.
He’s quiet for a second, then he says, “I think I’ll keep being a paramedic for a little bit if that’s okay with you. I wanna be sure you’re all right. Can we get you up off the ice?”
“If you keep your hands on me. And if we can role-play paramedic and patient later.”
He gives a cough-choke sound. I open my eyes and look up at him. And realize there are about a dozen people gathered around us.
Oh. Crap.
“Oops,” I say, meeting his gaze again.
“And to think, I was going to use a confetti canon to tell everyone how I feel about you.”
I’m not sure what to say to that, and I’m saved from having to reply by Josh, Max, and Mitchell lifting me and helping me to skate over to one of the benches the hockey teams occupy during games.
We sit, and Brewser comes over. Between the retired doctor and the current paramedic, they decide I’m going to be fine.
Someone hands me an ice pack, someone else hands me two ibuprofen and a bottle of water, and Nora wants to know if she can go ahead with the final team for Peppermint Puck-A-Palooza.
I am very happy just to sit on the bench next to Josh and watch Jesse and Brad knock their pucks around the ice for fifteen minutes.
We don’t talk, but Josh does link his pinky with mine on the bench between our thighs.
And I know, then and there, that I need to talk to my sister as soon as possible.
“Are you sure you feel okay?” Josh asks as we skate over to exit the ice fifteen minutes later.
I look up at him. “My head and my hip are fine. But my heart is a little achy.”
His eyes flare with emotion, and his lips part as if he’s about to respond.
But just then I hear, “It’s Thea?”
We turn to find Violet blocking our exit.
Her hands are on her hips, and she’s looking at us with an expectant expression.
“Hi. I was just going to come find you,” I say.
“I’ve been here the whole time,” she says, looking from me to Josh and then back. “I saw you two down on the ice.” She looks at Josh. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re in love with my sister?”
I suck in a little breath and feel Josh stiffen next to me.
Violet rolls her eyes. “Really? Everyone here could tell. I mean, I know you’re a great paramedic and all, but I’m guessing you didn’t look at me like that when you were pulling me out of the car.”
“Pulling you out of a car in a ditch is a whole different situation than checking Thea out on the ice after she fell,” Josh says.
Violet laughs. “Yes. And you have your heart in your throat because the woman you’re in love with fell over and bumped her head. It looks a whole lot different than you, being a professional and helping a patient out of a car accident.”
He opens his mouth to respond again, then shuts it and turns to look at me. “I guess we could just tell her now.”
I look at my sister. “We didn’t mean for this to happen.”
She steps forward and takes my face in her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That I stole your boyfriend while you were in a coma?” I ask her. I reach up and grip her wrists. “Because what the hell kind of sister am I?”
She shakes her head. “God, Thea. Josh and I just met. You weren’t stealing anything.”
“But…”
“But you have always taken care of me, so you couldn’t think of yourself for even a second,” she fills in when I trail off. She gives me a soft smile. “You take care of everyone. It’s probably why you and Josh clicked so quickly. You’re both caretakers.”
That hits me harder than I think Violet even intended. She’s right.
Josh and I have also both made big mistakes in the past that affected the people we love, and we both feel a constant urge to make up for those. But that doesn’t change the fact that we love taking care of people and are really fucking good at it.
“That’s one of the things I love most about him,” I admit.
“I wish you had told me,” Violet says, almost sadly.
I take her hands from my face, but link our fingers. “I knew how important it was for you to have him while you were facing Sam. I don’t want this to be hard on you with Sam here.”
She rolls her eyes. “You being happy is so much more important to me than looking good in front of Sam. Sure, Sam hurt me and broke my heart. I will get over that. You and Josh not being together is not something either of you will get over. You being in love and loved by a guy like Josh?” She looks up at him and smiles.
“This is exactly what I want for you, Thea. You deserve this.”
Tears prick at the back of my eyes. “You’re really okay, even with Sam here?”
“I’m better than okay. In fact, I’ve decided that facing Sam as a happy, independent, confident single woman is even better than facing him with a new boyfriend.”
I squeeze her hands. “You are a strong, independent, confident woman.”
She nods. “Yeah, it was just the happy part I wasn’t sure about. But I am that. My car accident really showed me that I have so much to be grateful for and happy about. And now I can be happy about my big sister falling in love with an amazing guy.”
The tears finally slip over my lower lashes, and I lean in, pulling Violet close. She wraps her arms around me, and I squeeze her tightly.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” she asks. “I’d be a real asshole to stand in the way of you and Josh.”
“Just for being an awesome sister.”
“Yeah, well, I learned from the best.”