CHAPTER 1 BEN
I hate the ER.
It’s certainly not my first time here, and it probably won’t be my last considering my line of work.
It’s all a blur. The hostess flew into our room, and I was too worried about Kaylee to figure out what was happening down below.
I asked if everyone was okay, but I couldn’t focus on whether there was an answer. It’s like my question was swallowed in the chaos, and then Kaylee started coming to while we waited for the ambulance to arrive.
“She should be just fine. It’s a minor concussion but I would keep an eye on her for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” The ER doctor is asking me to take care of Kaylee after her fall at the club.
Me.
I can hardly take care of myself, but I’ve been around enough concussions (and had a few myself) to know how to care for them.
Still, this is bad news all around. I don’t know how to break it to her brothers that I am the reason she has a concussion. I don’t know how to tell Coach or Calvin or Bruce, my tight end coach, that I have a bruised rib.
It’ll be fine by the time training camp starts. It’s not that big of a deal, and it’s not my first bruised rib. It’s better bruised than broken. But still…
They’re not going to be happy.
Especially if word gets out that I had a hand up Kaylee Dalton’s skirt as we crashed through a door and possibly injured other people.
And it will get out. There will be an investigation, and if cameras in the club didn’t catch what happened, somebody’s phone somewhere probably did. It always comes out in this digital age.
It doesn’t matter, though. We’ll deal with that fallout.
There are bigger issues here at play.
Fuck.
I feel horrible that other people might’ve gotten hurt.
“Got it, doc. Thanks,” I say.
“You’re lucky nothing more serious happened.” The doctor looks between Kaylee and me. “Someone was watching over you two. And, I suppose, everyone else who was at the club.”
“Have you heard anything?” I ask. “Were there other injuries?”
The doctor shakes his head. “Early reports are saying there were minimal minor injuries—mostly cuts or scrapes from the glass. Someone close by saw it coming and was able to move those in harm’s way. You two took the brunt of it.”
I blow out a breath. Could’ve been a lot worse, and I guess I’ll have to assess what this means for our position within the media later. Those were not the first thoughts that came to mind when Kaylee’s head slammed against the table along with my rib.
Thank God we were there on a Sunday night versus a Thursday or Friday when the dance floor would’ve been a lot more crowded.
“I’ll send someone in with discharge papers for you both,” the doctor says, and he walks out.
“You feel okay?” I ask Kaylee.
She nods. “I have a splitting headache, but I’ll live.”
I pull out my phone. Eleven missed calls. Twenty-six text messages.
I can’t deal with any of it right now.
I open a browser and search for any news on what just happened, and I come up empty. I decide to text my buddy who owns the club.
Me: Bruised rib for me, concussion for my girl. Any word on the others?
Mike: No major injuries. Turns out the door latch didn’t catch the way it was supposed to. My apologies. Tell me how I can make it up to you.
I fucked up his club and he’s apologizing to me.
I guess we’re both at fault in different ways. It’s not like I’m going to sue him because his door was broken. It’s fairly easy to assume what goes on in these private rooms, and I’m sure we’re not the first ones to lean against that door. We’re just the ones who fell through it.
You can prepare as much as you want, but you can’t account for accidents.
You can’t account for a faulty latch on a door that doesn’t catch the way it’s supposed to.
You can’t account for items sitting on a tabletop crashing to the ground below after a two hundred fifty-five pound man crashed into that table.
I text my agent next to let him know about the rib, and then I text Ellie.
Me: Kaylee and I are both okay but there was an accident tonight at a club. We fell through a door onto a balcony. She has a concussion and I have a bruised rib. A vodka bottle fell a story below us but early reports sounds like nobody got hurt. Just wanted to let you know.
My phone starts ringing almost immediately but I send it to voicemail.
Me: Still at ER. Will call tomorrow.
Ellie: Holy shit. You’re both okay?
Me: We’ll live.
Ellie: I’ll see what I can do. Send me the club details ASAP and let me know if either of you need anything.
Me: Thanks, E.
By the time I get Kaylee home, it’s a little after one in the morning. Bruised ribs suck and sometimes take a while to heal, but it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.
Kaylee, however, has never had to deal with a concussion.
Once I’m lying beside her in bed, I ask, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine. I really wish you’d stop asking.”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I assume you’re not going to school tomorrow, right?”
“Why would you assume that?” She sounds annoyed.
“Because you hate your job and it’s the last week of school and you have zero fucks left to give.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “But I still have an obligation.”
“I think people would understand—”
She cuts me off. “I don’t care if people would understand.”
“Are you mad at me?” This isn’t me—this vulnerable, unsure fucker. I don’t know how to navigate this. This is new territory all round. New feelings, new relationship…and now, a new twist.
And then it hits me. The reason why she’s being so standoffish.
To be fair, maybe there’s more than one reason. We did, after all, plow into a table that caused drinks and bottles to fall an entire story down onto a dance floor and, though accidental, it was still irresponsible. Maybe she feels guilty about that. Maybe I do too.
But it shouldn’t be the type of thing that tears us apart.
It should be the type of situation that pushes us together.
Even still, knowing that nobody was hurt besides the two of us, we now have a very big risk of what we were doing being broadcast to the world and therefore being caught by her family.
And it isn’t just the potential of our secret being found out.
From the very beginning, she told me that she valued privacy.
Once the tapes from tonight hit the media—and they will hit the media, that’s a guarantee—she’ll be exposed.
Quite literally. It’s not her choice to show our private moment to the world.
Instead, it’ll be the world seeing my hand in a place that should be reserved for the privacy of our own home.
Compound that with the video we still haven’t seen starring her ex on top of the fact that she suffered a concussion tonight, and it makes sense that she would be in a bad mood.
“No,” she finally answers. “I’m not mad. I’m just tired.”
I decide to take her at her word, but this shit is the part of the reason why I don’t do relationships.
I’m just not smart enough to read between the lines or uncover her hidden meaning or try to read her mind to see if what she’s saying is really what she means.
So I take the out. “Can I get you anything?”
“Yeah. I want to watch the video.”