by Hughes, Maya
“Actually…” I leaned over the counter closer to him. “You’ve got a booger.”
He snapped up straight and grabbed a handful of napkins, rubbing them against his nose.
“Have a great day. Bye.”
* * *
“Weren’t you finished an hour ago?” One of the guys from the shift after me wiped down the tables.
After the shift from hell, I’d been looking forward to Nix’s smiling face. I checked the clock on the wall behind the register.
“Someone’s supposed to be picking me up, but my phone died and I forgot my charger at home.” I closed my notebook. I should’ve brought my laptop, or just, you know, gone home, but I’d already waited long enough to not give it fifteen more minutes.
Seeing Mitchell had brought up all kinds of feelings I’d tried my best to avoid. It had made me feel like the same dumb high school girl fawning all over the star football player, only I’d diverted that attention to the star good guy. Stupid girl. So stupid. What a track record.
Why was I still waiting for Nix to come? Had I told him the wrong time? I checked the clock on the wall again: nearly eight. My leg bounced up and down and I craned my neck to look out the coffee shop windows.
What was the worst that would happen? Nix showed up and I wasn’t there? He’d come to my place after. Staying minute after minute made me feel more and more stupid, even though I knew standing me up wasn’t in his character. It was stupidity mixed with anxiety. What if something had happened to him? Maybe his ridiculously expensive car had broken down and there wasn’t a kind enough person to stop and offer a ride like he had when I needed help.
Maybe heading home to see his dad had gone on longer than he’d expected. Just walk home, Elle. This is starting to look pathetic. Lifting my bag, I slung it over my shoulder and got up from my seat. I’d fish some of Jules’ salted caramel chocolate chunk cookie dough out of the freezer and nurse it when I got home.
The handle was ripped out of my hand as the door flew open. Sweat pouring down his face and panting, Nix stood in front of me with wild eyes. “You’re still here—thank goodness. I’m so sorry. My dad practically locked me in his office all day.” He squeeze-hugged me against his chest. His heart pounded like he’d run all the way there.
“There was some homework I needed to catch up on. No problem.”
“I tried to call, but your phone wasn’t working. I figured you were ignoring me.”
“It died.”
He chuckled. “You’re the worst at charging your phone.”
“I know.”
“Let me make it up to you.” He pushed the door open and led me outside, taking my bag off my arm. “Maybe I can finish your paper for you? Or fix your busted doorbell?”
“There are a number of ways you can make it up to me…with your hands.” I cupped one of his in mine, drawing us closer together.
His pupils dilated and he licked his lips.
“With your mouth.” I ran my thumb along his bottom lip. Leaning in, I whispered in his ear. “And with this.” I dropped my hand between us and my fingers brushed against the straining erection pressing against the zipper of his jeans.
“Let’s go.” We rushed out of Uncommon Grounds, my feet barely touching the ground as Nix spirited me away to his car.
He pulled my door open so quickly, I figured I’d see screws from the hinges clattering to the ground. As we sat at a light, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
I ran my hand across his thigh, and he grinned over at me.
The light turned green and he pulled out into the intersection. I sucked in a breath and my hand tightened on his thigh so hard he winced.
My eyes widened. The navy blue car was a blur behind him as they ran their light. A shower of glass showered over me and my head whipped back. Then, darkness.
30
Nix
“You were incredibly lucky.” The doctor stood at the foot of my bed. “But you need to keep your arm in that sling for at least a week. Our scans showed no fractures. There’s some intense swelling right now, but that’s to be expected. It also looks like there’s some muscle damage, but I don’t believe it’s from the accident.”
Scratchy white sheets bunched under my legs as I shifted. At least they didn’t crinkle like the paper on the beds in the ER. Machines were lined up on the other side of the room, unplugged and soundless. Those could’ve been hooked up to me now, but they weren’t. Other than my swollen shoulder, a couple cuts on my neck, and a bruise from my seatbelt, I was okay and had been cleared to leave.
Antiseptic, fluorescent lights and the almost-below-freezing temperatures reminded me of my surgery back in high school—not the headspace I wanted to find myself in again.
Elle’s limp figure beside me in the car had nearly made me lose it when the paramedics arrived. Blood poured down her face like a horror movie. Holding her in my arms as we waited for the ambulance had been the scariest four minutes of my life. I’d never been happier for the med school and hospital on campus.
The low throb hadn’t been much more than a normal day for me before they shot me up with some drugs at the hospital. If anything, right now, I finally remembered what it felt like when it didn’t hurt.
“I’m a football player.” I stared down at my arm cradled against my stomach in the bright white sling.
“A lot of damage for someone so young.”
“Comes with the territory.” I shrugged and winced at the precise dart of pain that zinged down my arm. “Can I see my girlfriend now?” We hadn’t officially put that label on things, but if anything, this showed me I sure as hell wanted to. Elle would probably freak the hell out if she heard me call her that, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Sure, she’s just been discharged as well.”
The knot in my stomach wouldn’t loosen until I’d seen her. The mental picture of the fear in her eyes just before the impact of the crash sent a shiver down my spine. We’d been lucky. If I’d pulled out into the intersection a split second sooner, we’d have been hit full on.
“Phoenix.” My dad’s booming voice rocked and rattled the curtain-covered windows in the hallway. His unmistakable form turned the corner and made a beeline straight for me.
“Dad, what are you doing here? I thought you were headed to LA.”
“We were backing away from the gate and I told them to let me off.”
“And they were cool with that?”
“It was either let me off or I was pulling the emergency slide.”
My throat tightened. Somewhere deep down where I didn’t want to admit it existed, I could never be sure Dad would care enough about me to change any plan he’d made. He must’ve been scared to get a call saying something had happened to me in a car accident after my mom.
“Sorry about your trip. I’m fine, a little banged up, but no big deal.”
He tugged me into a back-breaking hug.
I winced and hugged him back. It was the first one I’d gotten that didn’t come with a whispered correction to a throw I’d made or a play I’d run.
“You’re okay.” He seemed to be saying it more to reassure himself than tell me.
“I’m good. My shoulder’s tweaked, but it’ll be good to go with some rest.”
He let go and held on to both of my shoulders, staring at me. “We’ll get you to a team doctor. They’ll give you anything you need for that. We’ve got to have you out and mobile for the draft. If this gets out, it could push you down a few spots. Take that sling off. That’s all we need, someone seeing you with it on and having it cause an even bigger issue.”
He might as well have kicked me in the chest. Without fail, it was the first place his mind laser-focused on after making sure I wasn’t on death’s door—how this would affect my draft number, if a team would try to lowball me out of a few million to scoop up a deal. Who gave a fuck? All I wanted to do was see Elle and go home.
“The doctor said to keep it on.”
<
br /> “Some hospital hack who doesn’t know what this can do to your career before it even starts. You’re not leaving with it on.” He said it in his ‘My word is final’ voice.
Shaking my head, I grabbed my chart from the end of the bed and slammed it into his chest. “You go tell the doctor his entire medical degree means nothing because you said so.”
I charged out of the room. Getting into a fight with my dad in a hospital hallway wasn’t on my list of things to do.
My dad called after me but stopped when he ran into my doctor, demanding everything in my file from that afternoon. I shook my head, cradled my arm against my chest, and walked away.
Jamming my finger into the exit button, I walked into the discharge area. It was filled with people in various states of being patched up, all waiting for their numbers to be called.
A pink-haired blur plowed into my side, and relief washed over me like a cool drink of water after a midday practice.
Elle’s hands wrapped around me, her fingers tangling in the fabric of my sling. “They wouldn’t let me come back because I wasn’t family. I was freaking out and about three seconds from launching myself over the nurses’ station to go look for you. I woke up in the bed and had no idea where you were or if you were okay!”
I held her tight with my free arm. “Good thing I came out when I did. Are you okay?”
“Just a couple of cuts on my forehead—apparently they bleed like a mother. Two cuts, two stitches, a ruined uniform, and your clothes are ruined too.” She pointed to the blood stains all over the collar and front of my shirt.
I brushed back her hair from her forehead. The small white bandages were taped to her skin. “You’re really okay?”
“Fine. They thought I had a concussion for a bit, but now they think I probably passed out from the blood.”
“From blood loss?” My heart squeezed.
She blushed. “No, from the blood itself. I’m not exactly great with seeing it.”
“Is anyone?”
“I was pretty much ten seconds from passing out during both blood drives.”
“You were great at hiding it.” And so much more. The gaps in her wall were getting bigger, but it was still there and holding on strong.
She tilted her head and stared into my eyes. “How are you?” Her fingertips traced the edges of my bruises and cuts.
“Other than my arm, I’m all good. Doc said I need to rest up for a bit and it’ll be fine. The damage—the damage I’ve got doesn’t have anything to do with the crash. They’ll know more once the swelling goes down. I’m sure I’ll have a full battery of tests at all the appointments my dad is probably setting up right now.”
“He’s here?” She craned her neck, looking behind her.
“Yes, it’s a long story—actually, it’s a short one, but I don’t want to talk about it right now. Let’s get out of here.”
“We’ve got to do any final discharge stuff, and they’ll probably want me to leave a kidney behind as collateral for the bill.” She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Are you hurting?”
“No, but this wasn’t an expense I’d counted on for this semester.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Phoenix.” My dad’s baritone cut through the murmur of the discharge area. “We need to talk.”
Turning us around, I kept Elle pressed against my side. “We’ve talked enough already, Dad. I’m taking my girlfriend home. I’m going home to rest.”
My dad’s gaze bounced from me to Elle. I kept my arm tight around her.
“This can wait. I’m tired, and I think one six-hour-long one-sided conversation per day is my limit. We were discharged, so you can take care of the details. After all, that’s what you love to do. We’re leaving.”
“I’ll need to talk to you about this.” His pointed stare at Elle and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tightening of her hold against my back made my blood boil.
“Don’t you always.” Without another word, I walked her out of there and got her into a taxi.
She cuddled against me in the back of the car with her arm resting on my stomach, her fingers picking at one of the drops of blood there.
“That was scary.”
“It was. I can’t believe someone would be so irresponsible to blow through a red light like that.”
“I meant the part where you called me your girlfriend.” She laughed and looked up at me.
“Pretty scary stuff, huh?”
“Maybe not as scary as I once thought it was.” She nestled deeper into my side, and the throb in my shoulder melted away.
The taxi pulled up to the front of her house.
“Can we stay at yours tonight?” She threaded her fingers through mine. “Jules is away tonight and it’ll be too quiet.”
“Of course. Do you want to go get some clothes?”
“If it’s okay, I can wear yours to sleep in.” The uncertainty in her eyes made my heart ache for how little trust she had that I’d be cool with whatever she wanted to do.
“You have no idea how much I want to see you sleeping in one of my shirts.”
With my arm over her shoulder and her fingers interlocked with mine, we crossed the street and headed into my place.
“What are you doing getting home so late? And did you get out of a taxi?” Reece drummed on a notebook while sitting on the floor in front of the TV.
“We got into a car accident after I picked Elle up from work.”
Like seagulls calling for another piece of funnel cake, the entire house came alive with people popping up from every direction. We were swarmed.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to your place?” I whispered into the side of Elle’s hair as we said we were perfectly fine for the nine hundredth time.
“No, I like having people around that care this much.”
I nodded. “As you can all see, we’re okay, but we are tired, so we’re headed to bed.”
“No nookie while you’re recovering.” LJ wagged his finger and tapped his foot.
“Says who?”
Berk chimed in before shoving a cookie into his mouth. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Night everyone.”
Closing the door behind me, I flicked on the light. Elle lay down on my bed and crossed her hand over her stomach.
I could have stood and watched her forever. Even a little bruised and in blood-speckled clothes, she was breathtaking in the kind of way that made never seeing a sunset or the ocean again absolutely okay with me as long as I got to see her.
“You coming to bed?” She patted the spot beside her.
“I’ll get you some clothes to change into and you can take a shower. The airbags did a number on my nose, and every breath is filled with a gunpowder smell.”
She sat up. “I thought I was losing it. What the hell makes it smell like that?”
“It’s the shells they use to deploy the airbag.” I grabbed some shorts with a drawstring and a t-shirt.
“How do you know all this?” She walked over to me, teasing me with her swaying walk, the curve of her ass that fit my hand perfectly.
I shrugged. “No idea. I’ll get you a towel.”
“Who’s going to wash my back and make sure I don’t get water on my head?” Her chin dipped and she looked up at me, turning the tease up to a ten.
“It’s probably not the best idea tonight.” I gestured to the discarded sling on my dresser.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do all the work.” Like I was going to say no to that.
She pushed me toward the bed until I fell backward. Unbuckling my jeans, I wanted to tell her she should sleep and rest before we even thought about it, but those words were a pipe dream lost to the wind when she whipped her shirt up and over her head.
Snatching a condom from the drawer beside my bed, I teased the tips of her bare breasts, skimming my fingers over her marred flesh. I pushed up onto my elbows, grimacing at the ache in my shoulder.
“Min
e don’t hurt.” She pushed me back and rolled on the condom. It took everything in me not to come right then. Her fingers felt so good stroking up and down my length, sending shivers of pleasure shooting along my spine. Any pain was long forgotten under her entrancing gaze, riveted to mine and focused on me.
She lifted onto her knees and sank down onto me. The tight warmth enveloped me, but I fought to keep my eyes open as she sat on top of me looking like every fantasy I could hope for, so real and so her and every dream I’d ever had rolled into one.
31
Elle
I sank lower, relishing moving down onto every inch of him. He filled and stretched me, lighting the fuse of pleasure coursing through me. My ass settled against the tops of Nix’s thighs, and he stared at me like I was the eighth wonder of the world.
He had the uncanny ability to always make me feel like I was the center of his universe. His eyes sliced through my walls like a hot knife through butter and overwhelmed me.
I ducked my head, because it was too much for today, too much all at once—the accident, not knowing where the hell he was, rushing over to him and not wanting to let go then him dropping the G-word bomb on me.
There were too many emotions wrapped up in what had happened tonight. Even the way he was looking at me made my chest tight. I dropped down and kissed him, closing my eyes.
He held on to my hips as I moved, rocking and grinding while keeping as much of a connection between us as possible.
My orgasm came too quickly and not fast enough. I wanted to reach that peak right along with him, wanting us to live in this moment for as long as possible. The sparks of pleasure grew and spread down my legs and to my toes.
His hands braced against my back, hugging me close like he never wanted to let me go, and his mouth sucking on that spot on my neck sent my back arching as a strangled cry burst free from my lips.