Chapter 22 #2
“I hope you don’t mind, sweetheart,” Anna said, “but I called your parents while we were at the hospital. Dom asked me to.”
“No, it’s okay,” she sighed. “Saves me the trouble of having to do it.”
“You should call them anyway.”
“Oh, I will, I just… I don’t really want to hear how sorry people are yet. They shouldn’t be sorry. I was being stubborn and now I’m paying the price.”
“You are a fierce competitor and sometimes that can override good sense. I’ve never seen anyone want it the way you do, Penny. Not even Alex. I remember the first time he laid eyes on you.”
“What?” She whipped to face Anna in surprise.
“Oh, he didn’t tell you about that?” She smiled fondly, lost in the memory. “It was around this time last year.”
Penny’s thoughts flew to a night back home when he’d confessed to seeing her for the first time and wanting her even then, but he hadn’t been specific. “He mentioned something, but…”
“You were on a practice court and he was up next and completely surrounded by people wanting his autograph, mostly young women, daughters of club members, some of the wives as well.” She paused, her eyebrows wiggling, and Penny laughed.
“Anyway, finally, security came and broke it up a bit, and he turned around as you were coming off the court with Dom. Dom stopped and said hello to us, but you were in your own little world. Still had your racket in your hand, mumbling to yourself, something about staying low and driving through the ball, and Alex asked Dom who you were. He told him your name, and I knew it, right then, that it was over. You should have seen him in that practice session. Completely distracted. It would have been hilarious if he didn’t have a quarterfinal match that night.
I think he was already half in love with you. ”
Penny kept her eyes glued to the man on the court, the man she loved more than anything, maybe even more than tennis, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with the urge to say those words out loud, to scream it from her seat down to the court and let him and the entire world know exactly how she felt.
“He won that night,” Penny said.
“He did because he has what you have, that need to be the best and the fight to just put everything else away and win.”
“Well, I won’t be doing any of that for a while now,” she said, lifting her leg, still feeling it sting a little bit, even with that smallest of motions.
“Of course you will. Every day you stay off it, it’s healing. That’s a win. Every day you listen to Dom and the doctors, that’s a win. Every day you get closer to getting back on the court and winning the US Open, that’s a win, too.”
“The Open…” Penny trailed off.
“Don’t pretend like you weren’t thinking about that as soon as you got the news.”
“How did you…”
“Because I was with Alex when the doctors told him four to six weeks after his knee injury in Australia; because as soon as he could train again, he called up Dom and got on a flight across the Atlantic Ocean to get back to where he was before. So, that’s what you have to do, Penny.
Go back home. Rest. Recover. Then kick some arse in New York. ”
Anna flushed a little at the crude word spilling from her own mouth, but Penny smiled back at her, feeling a rush of warmth toward this woman.
“Time,” the chair umpire said, calling the players back to the court for the next game.
“New York,” Penny muttered to herself as she watched Alex return to play.
Anna patted her hand lightly. “Indeed.”
Penny had to wait for Alex as he, still covered in sweat and grass stains, smiled through a press conference after his five-set nail-biter of a win against Masters, then showered and went through doping protocol.
Penny simply sat in the players’ lounge, waiting, dealing with the sidelong glances from every player, coach, trainer, and official who walked past her.
They’d see her, clock the air cast, and then their faces would flicker into pure pity—aside from a couple of girls on her side of the draw who couldn’t mask their glee quickly enough—before becoming deliberately and carefully blank.
Every single time it cut her just a little bit deeper. She didn’t want anyone’s fucking pity. Especially not now.
Then when he finally emerged, freshly showered, looking to all the world like a man ready to win yet another Grand Slam, getting congratulatory pats on the back and fist bumps from the same people milling around outside the locker room doors, that was when she broke.
She couldn’t bear to let him see her fall apart.
So, she stood, trying not to draw his attention, and walked away, but because of that air cast and her fucking crutches, she moved slowly.
Too slowly, because she heard him call her name.
“Penny!” he said again, closer now, catching up.
She couldn’t even do this right. Couldn’t even make sure she didn’t bring him down when he should be celebrating.
And now the tears.
Shit.
She stopped and frantically wiped them away, just in time for him to reach her, a hand at her shoulder as he moved in front of her.
“Didn’t you hear me calling, love?” he asked, peering down at her, confused.
“No, I mean, yeah, sorry, I just thought…” She trailed off as his expression shifted from befuddled to concerned.
“You all right?” he asked, gaze moving from her face to the air cast, and she didn’t want to watch the pity appear.
“Yeah, of course. Well, not completely, obviously, but can we just… we should go see Indy and Jas’s match.”
“Hang on a tick,” he said, a hand falling to her elbow. She sniffed, biting her lip and keeping her eyes averted as much as she could. “C’mon.”
He guided her, hand at the small of her back, through a door.
Looking around, she furrowed her brow. It was a closet… shelves full of cleaning products, mops, and brooms hung from the wall, and a fluorescent light shined down from above them.
“Alex, really, I’m fine, we can just go.”
“You’re not fine,” he said, closing the door behind them. “You’re hurt and you’re crying and running away from me, albeit not very well.”
She laughed, and damn it, that made the tears she’d had control of fall again. “I wasn’t crying until you showed up.”
“C’mere, love,” he said, drawing her into his chest, warm and solid and so, so alive. “You need to cry, you cry.”
“I don’t want to, though,” she said, looking up at him. “I didn’t come here to cry all over you.”
“No?” he asked, wiping a tear away from her cheek with his calloused thumb. “Why, then?”
“To congratulate you,” she hedged as that hand cupped her cheek and she leaned into the touch. Why was this so hard? She’d known for so long, maybe since he’d first gotten to OBX or not too long after. But saying it out loud felt impossible.
Until now, with his eyes soft and sweet, his arms around her.
There for her no matter what, win or lose.
Open and honest and so in love with her that sometimes being hit with the full force of it was more overwhelming than anything she’d ever felt.
It didn’t feel real most of the time. A man who could love every part of her, the woman who wanted to crush her competition on the court and then be held while he gently wiped her tears away.
“Penny—”
“I love you.”
His blue eyes lit up in a way she’d never seen before, not on the court, not in bed, nowhere, and she hated herself just a little bit more for making him wait when it had been true for such a long time.
“I love you, and I’m so sorry for not being able to say it before now. I don’t know why I couldn’t. Maybe I was scared or, I don’t know, but I love you so much, too much.”
“No such thing,” he argued, because of course he did, but she didn’t have a chance to respond because he lowered his mouth to hers, a simple kiss, nearly chaste.
But it didn’t stay that way. Vaguely, she heard the clatter of her crutches hitting the floor as Alex’s arms came around her, lifting her, and in one step and then another, he sat her atop a sturdy shelf bolted to the wall and bent to his task again, a kiss to her lips and then a trail over the line of her jaw.
She wrapped her leg, the one that didn’t have an air cast on the end, around him and pulled him in as close as she could. His hand moved to her thigh, squeezing gently and then sliding up under the thin cotton of her dress.
Alex pulled back a fraction, staring down at her, that new, beautiful but still unfamiliar look in his gaze again, until it darkened into one she knew well.
Dropping to his knees, he held her eyes with his, and she bit her lip as he pressed a kiss, just as chaste as the one from moments ago, against the inside of her knee.
He was so gorgeous and so good, and on his knees, ready to worship her for the simple act of loving him, he was hers.
The next few minutes were a blur of sensation, his scruff on the inside of her thighs, his mouth expert against her, the grip of his hands at her hips holding her to him, the rapid build to a peak that only he’d ever been able to drive her to.
And later, when they emerged with their clothes straightened and faces flushed and hair matching disasters, when people avoided her eyes, it definitely wasn’t out of pity.