28. Solomon
TWENTY-EIGHT
SOLOMON
“Are you seriously trying to get out of bed right now?”
Cecelia looks up at me, expression guilty, like a kid who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I left my tablet over there,” she says, nodding to the desk a few feet from her bed.
“Then you wait for me to come back or call me to come get it for you.”
She pouts. “This is getting old.”
I grab her tablet and bring it back to the bed, trying not to laugh at her put-out expression. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours.”
Forced immobility and Cecelia Ransome do not go together well.
“Well, I’m sick of this room.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Would you like to go back to your parents’ house?”
Her pout turns to a scowl. “Yeah, that would be better. I really want both of them fussing over me, plus all of my aunts and uncles and my brothers.”
“See.” I climb onto the bed next to her, leaning back against the pillows before pulling her into my side. “Here you just have to deal with me.”
“You’re pretty bossy, though,” she mutters, and I laugh.
Her parents had put up a big fight about her staying at the house off-campus last night, but Cecelia insisted.
She argued that her bedroom at home was on the second floor, which she could not access with crutches, and she didn’t want to spend the night on the couch downstairs.
Her dad’s suggestion that he or her brothers or her uncles would be happy to physically carry her around for the next forty-eight hours hadn’t been well-received.
In the end, I pulled her mom aside and told her that I thought Cecelia might have an easier time dealing with everything if she had more privacy.
Anyone who knows her could see how difficult it is for her to be vulnerable in front of other people.
To my surprise, Sam agreed, on the condition that I stay with her daughter at all times until we knew what we were dealing with.
As if I was going to be anywhere else.
Cash and Sam are supposed to come back in an hour or so to take her to the hospital for the MRI.
She keeps saying that she’s eager to get answers to anyone who asks—which is a considerable amount of people.
She’s gotten calls or texts from cousins, the coaching staff, most of her teammates, her brothers.
But when it’s just the two of us, she admits that she’s terrified to go back to the same hospital where she had her surgery.
I hate that I can’t make it better for her.
Her phone buzzes with a text on the mattress next to her and she groans before reaching for it. “Will you look at this and tell me if it’s my Aunt Paige? She keeps sending me shirtless pics of male models to try and cheer me up.”
“Your Aunt Paige is weird.”
“You have no idea.”
I snort when I see who the text is from. “Everly is Paige’s daughter?” I ask.
“Yeah. Why?”
I hold out the phone so she can see the picture of the half-naked guy on the screen. She laughs. “I guess that brand of ridiculousness runs in the family.”
While I’m holding the phone, it buzzes again. This time the sender’s name makes me tense up.
Cecelia must notice my reaction. She groans. “Oh, God, please don’t tell me she sent like, a full-frontal nude of someone.”
“No. It’s uh… Devon. He just wanted to let you know that he’ll meet you and your parents at the hospital for the scan.”
She adjusts her position to face me, her forehead furrowing in concern. “You don’t have to go,” she says immediately.
I blink at her. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m going.”
She chews on her bottom lip. “I don’t want you to take the chance of getting into trouble.”
“Cecelia. I’m going.” I tuck some hair behind her ear. “He would expect me to go. I’ve been helping with your training all season.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll…you know. Figure it out?” she asks, sounding unsure. “If he sees us together?”
I hate this. Hate that we have to worry about this. Hate that she’s even considering telling me not to go when she basically begged me last night to promise I’d be there for her today.
“It’s no different than it’s been this whole time,” I tell her. “We’ll just act like we’re in a totally professional relationship.”
She looks dubious. “You think you can do that? Now?”
I know what she means. Since she got hurt yesterday, I haven’t been able to allow any distance between us.
It’s like a physical need, this desire to be close to her, to try and take care of her, to make sure that she’s safe and okay.
The idea of sending her off to get an MRI and not being able to hold her hand or kiss her makes my stomach hurt.
“I can handle it,” I tell her through gritted teeth, because what’s the alternative? As apathetic as I’m feeling about my clinicals since her injury, I know there’s no way she’ll allow me to say fuck it and blow up all my hard work.
“Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t sound too convinced.
The MRI sucks just as much as we both anticipate.
We sit in a waiting room with her parents and Devon before a tech comes to get her.
Devon is keeping up a fairly steady stream of conversation with her parents, trying to lighten the tension, but Cecelia is fidgeting and quiet.
Nervous. It doesn’t help that it’s cold as hell in here.
The urge to move to the chair next to her and put an arm around her eats at me.
When the technician, a middle-aged woman in light pink scrubs, comes out to get Cecelia, she mentions that she’ll need assistance getting her sweats off and into a hospital gown. I almost move to go help her but luckily, I catch myself in time when Sam gets up.
“We’ll see you after,” Cash says, standing to hug her. Devon stands too, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “You got this, Ransome,” he says. She looks at me, her smile small and tight. I nod back, hating every fucking second of this.
Once they’re gone, Cash manages to sit still for approximately thirty seconds. “Hate hospitals,” he mutters, shoving a hat onto his head. “I’m gonna take a walk.”
I want nothing more than to leave too, to pace around this building until she’s done, but Devon calls me over as soon as Cash goes. “Might as well go over some training notes,” he says. “Since we didn’t get a chance after the match.”
I take a deep breath, trying to keep it together. I don’t want to go over training notes. I don’t want to be professional or try to mask my feelings. The girl I’m crazy about is back there somewhere, scared out of her mind and hurting.
But what choice do I have?
She’s gone for nearly an hour, and I’m practically coming out of my skin by the time she hobbles back into the waiting room on her crutches, her mom at her side.
The technician comes out behind them and goes straight over to confer with Devon.
“The radiologist will take a look and send the images over to the team doctor and the orthopedic surgeon who did Miss Ransome’s surgery,” she tells him.
“How long does that usually take?” I ask Devon once the tech has left.
“Dr. Patel will probably want to meet with her tomorrow,” Devon says, looking grim. “If the orthopedic surgeon has a chance to review the scans, we should have a pretty good idea if there’s been an additional tear by then.”
Please, please don’t let it be torn.
Cecelia is quiet the entire ride back to the house, clinging to my hand in the backseat of her Dad’s SUV. Her face is paler than usual and I’m pretty sure she’s in pain but doesn’t want to say it in front of her parents.
They insist on coming inside. Her dad wants to make her food to last a few days and I think her mom just wants to fuss.
The Littles are all home, too, but Cecelia ignores their request to sit in the living room and watch TV with them, saying she just wants to rest. I follow her into her bedroom but she puts her hand up once we’re inside.
“I really just need a minute,” she says, her voice tight.
“Okay. We’ll lie down and—”
“A minute to myself,” she clarifies, not meeting my eye.
“Cecelia.” Her jaw is tight, her eyes red-rimmed. “Let me help you lie down and get some ice on your knee. Then I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.”
She shakes her head a few times, and a tear leaks out. I hear her swear softly under her breath.
“You need to cry?” I ask. “Is that why you want to be alone?”
She nods, the motion jerky, and my heart breaks a little. “How about we lie down and you can cry all you want and I’ll pretend I can’t hear you?”
Her laugh turns into a sob and I can’t stand a second more of this. I pick her up and carry her to the bed, laying her down and adjusting a pillow under her knee. Then I climb in with her and pull her into my arms while she breaks down again.
“This is so embarrassing,” she gets out. “I never cry.”
“It’s just us,” I remind her. “You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
“I cried in front of my family yesterday,” she argues.
I smooth the hair back from her face. “You think they’re judging you for it?”
She’s quiet for a moment but eventually she shakes her head. “They wouldn’t judge me. But I’m sure they were surprised. That’s not me.”
To be honest, I hadn’t noticed their reaction when I walked in that room.
All I could think about was getting to Cecelia, not the people standing around her bed.
But looking back on it, yeah, I think it’s safe to say they were pretty shocked.
Whether that was in reaction to her crying or me storming in there and grabbing her without saying a word to anyone, I don’t know.
“It’s okay if it is, you know,” I tell her. “It’s okay if you’re someone who cries sometimes. Hell, it’d be okay if you cried all the time. You should see Jay when the Lakers lose. Weepy bastard.”
She giggles, and I feel lighter. No matter how bad things are for her right now, it’s good to know I can still cheer her up.
I hold her a little closer. “You don’t always have to be strong, Cecelia. Even if your family or your team expect you to. It’s okay to feel however you feel, to be exactly who you are.”