He always told me that I was stronger than I thought I was, that I was the one who had helped him get by after my mother left. But that wasn’t really strength. That was coping. That was putting one foot in front of another because there wasn’t a possibility of moving backward.
He’d always been my strength.
With my free hand, I brushed the damn tears away, angry with myself that I kept crying so much in the last day or so. I needed to get a fucking grip.
The nurse finally stopped fiddling with everything and headed toward the door. “If you need anything, Scotty, push that button on your remote that I showed you. Even if you don’t think you need anything, we’ll have someone coming in to check on you every hour, take your vitals.” She gave me a kind but stern look. “Ten more minutes, hon, and then you have to go. He needs his rest.”
I had to choke back a laugh at the absurdity of her comment. Still, I nodded my agreement. The longer I stayed with him now, the longer he would fight to stay alert. That was the last thing he needed to do right now.
When I faced Daddy again, he had a bit of a grin creeping over his face. “She’s lost her damn mind if she thinks anyone can rest in this place with all that beeping.”
At least he hadn’t lost his sense of humor. I bent over him and kissed his forehead, using my fingers to brush his hair back from his eyes. It had grown too long. We needed to take him in to get it cut sometime soon, but that wouldn’t be easy to do for a while. His skin felt clammy to the touch.
“Are you hot? Cold?” I was already on my feet to adjust the thermostat in his room, or get him another blanket, or—
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
“At least we know you come by it honestly.”
No, he definitely hadn’t lost his sense of humor.
He curled his fingers of hand toward his open palm, a silent entreaty for me to come back to his side. I sat and took his hand between both of mine.
“You look tired,” he said. “You didn’t sleep?”
“I slept.” Some. How little sleep I got wasn’t important. I wouldn’t have gotten the bit that I did if not for Jonny, but that wasn’t really something I wanted to talk to my father about.
“Liar,” he returned, raising an eyebrow.
“I did. Maybe not enough, but I slept.” The bit I had gotten had been good sleep. I’d felt warm and safe with Jonny’s arms around me, like he could make everything all right. But I’d always thought Daddy could do that, too, and now there were things going on that my father couldn’t rescue me from. When I was ten, he could solve any problem. Now it looked like I was going to have to start sorting them out on my own.
“You have to do better,” he said. “I need you to be healthy, baby girl.”
“I am. I’m taking care of myself so I can take good care of you.”
“I’d feel a lot better if there was someone taking care of you.” His eyes got misty, and I wished he would stop talking like that. He always kept bringing it back to him wanting me to have a man in my life, when the only man I knew beyond any doubt I wanted in my life was him. Not only that, but my father wasn’t supposed to cry. I was doing enough of that for the both of us.
“There is someone taking care of me,” I said and immediately wished I could take it back. I didn’t know what to say to my father about Jonny. I didn’t know how I felt about what had happened with Jonny.
Daddy cocked his head in question, almost like a dog would.
Shit. Now that I’d gone there, I figured I’d better keep going.
“Jonny,” I forced out. “He took me home last night and brought me back today.” I conveniently neglected to mention the fact that he’d taken me home with him last night. To his house. And that I’d slept in his bed. And that I hadn’t been home at all, not even to change clothes from yesterday. And a thousand other things that Daddy didn’t need to be worried about right now. I was just thankful that he never seemed to notice little details like what I was wearing. That kind of thing just slipped straight through his head because there were so many other details crammed in there, like what line combinations he wanted to try next or which of his players were struggling.
He gave me a nod, but what little energy he had was disappearing fast. “That’s good. Jonny’s a good man. I’ll have to find a way to thank him when I’m better.”
All I’d done to thank him was cry all over him, throw water in his face, try to punch him, puke in his bathroom… The list seemed to go on and on, and none of it came across as being very gracious.
“I’ll take care of it, Daddy,” I said, even though I didn’t have the first clue how to make up for all that I’d done. “You just rest.” I squeezed his hand again, and his lips curled up a bit. By the time I got to the door, he was already half asleep.
I was expecting to find Dana in the waiting room when I got there, and maybe Laura and Katie. It was early enough in the day still that Laura’s other kids shouldn’t be out of school yet, and Katie went everywhere with her mom right now. They’d started up this new arrangement after Katie’s first chemotherapy treatment a couple of months ago. She’d been diagnosed with leukemia not long before that, but things were looking up. Her treatments were going well, and I didn’t think she had to go through too many more of them.
The three of them were in the waiting room—but they weren’t alone. Jonny was there, too. He looked insanely out of place, an enormous man cramped into a tiny chair in the middle of three women, none of whom were even half his size. My purse was on his lap, and he met my eyes when I came in but stayed quiet. He was always quiet. The only way I knew he’d noticed me at all was that he gave me a slight nod. Well, and he’d met my eyes. Subtle cues were all I ever got from this guy.
Laura and Dana immediately crossed over to me and started trying to take care of me. Laura pulled me in for a hug, and Dana pushed a bottle of water and a granola bar into my hands. Katie stayed put at Jonny’s side, a hot-pink throw blanket over her lap and a turquoise scarf that matched her T-shirt and brightened her blue eyes was tied around her head. She waved and smiled.
“See?” Laura said. “He came through all right. He’s going to be just fine.”
“You need to eat something,” Dana said. “You haven’t eaten a bite since I got here, and that was hours ago.”
They were tugging me over to where they’d been waiting, and my feet were moving, but I wasn’t processing a damn thing. Laura pushed me down into a chair—right next to Jonny—and she and Dana kept fussing over me. I let them because I didn’t know what else to do.
Laura got started talking, and once she really got going, there was no chance in hell she would quit anytime soon. “We’ve got your keys now, so we can take care of getting your car back to your house for you. And you’re not going to have to do anything alone. I’ve already started working out a schedule with all the players’ wives and girlfriends, we’re all going to help.”
“It’ll give us all something to do other than worry about our boys, anyway,” Dana said.
“That’s right.” Laura’s cell phone beeped in her pocket. She pulled it out and started texting as she talked. “They can worry about themselves for a while. God knows that’s all they’ll be concerned about, with the playoffs starting up in a couple of days. All of us, we’re going to worry about you. And your dad. You won’t have to worry about a single thing because we’re going to take care of it all before you even realize you need something.”
“But eat that,” Dana said, gesturing toward the bar she’d handed me a moment ago.
I opened the wrapper and took a bite, numb to everything. It was easier to just do what I was told than to try to figure anything out. Maybe it was for the best that Laura was already taking over.
That was when she was in her element, anyway—when she could be in charge of something, organizing people, making sure everyone was on task and every detail was taken care of. That was when she thrived.
She kept talking, but I cou
ldn’t focus on any of it. My head was swimming. Too many things were happening at once.
I don’t know how long I was just sitting there and staring dully, attempting to eat the granola bar, when I felt Jonny’s big, strong, steady hand come down on top of mine. For the first time in hours, my lungs filled with air. I shot my head up so I could look at him.
He leaned down so his mouth was near my ear, and his warm breath fluttered over my neck. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, despite the fact that I wasn’t even close to all right.
His presence was helping with that, though. The heat from his hand gradually moved through me, flooding my body with a sense of calm that I hadn’t felt in almost twenty-four hours.
“You’re not,” he said. “You aren’t a very good liar.”
Dana narrowed her eyes at me. “You need rest. And real food.”
“And a shower,” Katie added.
“Right,” Laura said, eyeing me shrewdly. “Jonny, since you’re here, why don’t you take her home?”
He grunted, which could have been either a confirmation or a denial. It was impossible to tell.
Laura seemed to take it as him agreeing to do what she’d asked. “Dana, Katie, and I can take care of getting your car sorted out while you shower and change and all of that. Then Katie and I’ll have to go get the other kids after school, but Dana can keep you company. And later, we’ll bring you dinner. And wine.” While she talked, she took my purse from Jonny, dug out my keys, and twisted the car key off the ring. I should have been upset that she would just go through my purse like that, but that took too much energy.
I didn’t really want all of them hovering around me all day, and I couldn’t have wine since I was pregnant, but I wasn’t up to arguing. Not right now. I took my purse when Laura handed it back to me, and I shoved my remaining keys in my pocket.
“That all right with you?” Jonny asked.
His voice seemed to rumble through me the same way his heat had, making a gradual path through every inch of my body until it pooled in my toes.
“Yeah, that’s okay,” I said.
Laura was on her feet in an instant. “Good. We’ll meet you back at your place in a bit.”
Katie and Dana followed her out, with Katie waving over her shoulder as they went.
Jonny’s pensive eyes stayed glued to mine. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
Something in the way he asked threatened to unleash more tears, but I fought them down. “Let’s just go,” I bit off.
He carried my purse for me, and he didn’t let go of my hand the whole way out to his truck. Even then, he only released me so he could get a grip on my waist to help me up into the monstrous thing.
“Maybe I should get some running boards,” he mumbled.
He’d only need those if he was going to be driving me around more, though, and that wasn’t likely to happen.
ON THE WAY to my house, I finally forgot about my own concerns long enough to remember that Jonny had some pretty heavy shit of his own that he’d had to deal with today. He hadn’t said a word about any of it. He’d only been concerned about me and my issues, and so had I. He had to think I was the most self-absorbed person on the planet right about now. Lord knows I did.
“How did the hearing go?” I asked, hopeful that I could get him to talk. Jonny was generally a relatively taciturn person, dealing more in grunts and nods than actual words—so much so that I’d actually started being able to interpret his nonverbal forms of communication. At least sometimes I could. Not always.
“Fine.” He kept his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road. Monosyllabic responses were a step up from grunts, but only just.
“Just fine? Will they reduce the suspension at all?”
“They’re rescinding your dad’s.”
Daddy wasn’t going to be able to coach for quite a while, so that didn’t really matter. His suspension was the last thing on my mind…and it wasn’t what I’d asked Jonny at all. He was avoiding my question. “But what about yours?” I prodded. “I get that they have to suspend you at least for a couple of games after that, but isn’t ten games over the top?”
“Ten games is automatic.”
“But they know you were just—”
“I broke the rules, Sara. I have to pay the price.” There was a muscle, just behind his ear, that kept tensing and releasing when he spoke. I had a strange urge to massage his shoulders, to try to release some of his stiffness. Instead, I looked out the window as the neighborhood rolled by.
“I’m sorry, Jonny,” I said after a minute.
“Don’t be sorry. I made choices. Now I have to live with them.” He made the turn onto my street. “I wish you’d call me Cam.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want me to call you Cam? Everyone calls you Jonny.”
“Not everyone,” he said gruffly, but he didn’t elaborate. He pulled up in front of the house and parked on the street, probably so Dana and Laura could get my car in the driveway when they arrived. I pulled my purse strap over my shoulder and unfastened my seatbelt. After he shut off the ignition, he came around the front and helped me climb down without falling the way I’d done last night. His hands lingered near my waist, close enough that I could feel their heat but far enough that I almost strained for their touch. I had placed my hands on his biceps when he picked me up, and they were still resting there. His muscles rippled beneath my fingertips.
Almost inadvertently, I leaned in closer to him as though I needed him to keep me grounded. We were so close that each time one of us inhaled, our chests touched briefly in a moment of featherlight contact that made my heart pound like a battering ram.
He backed away all of a sudden, so fast that I nearly lost my balance even though we’d barely been touching. Then he closed the door of his truck. “Do you have your keys still?”
I pulled them from my pocket and crossed the lawn ahead of him, trying to get my pulse to slow down. I really couldn’t allow myself to continue reacting to him like this, but the more time I spent around him, the more it was happening. He might be suspended, but he was still a hockey player—and he was definitely still one of Daddy’s players. None of that had changed, regardless of the fact that my father was in the hospital and wouldn’t be coaching in the near future. And, hell…I was pregnant with some random guy’s baby. Not exactly the right time to be starting a new relationship.
My hands shook as I tried to unlock the door.
“Let me,” he said from right behind me.
I nodded and let him take the keys from me. In no time, he had the door open and returned my keychain. Our fingers brushed in the transfer, and I shivered from the electric charge passing between us from that brief connection.
“Thank you, Cam,” I said. It felt weird using his real name. It felt too personal.
He backed down the steps, running one hand over his buzzed hair. The movement stretched his T-shirt taut over his chest, and I couldn’t seem to remove my gaze from his pecs and the way the muscles in his arms worked together.
“I, uh…I should get out of here,” he said.
If he left, then I’d have to be alone in this big house. I still wasn’t ready for that.
I didn’t know how I would get through a whole week without my father coming home. His presence was big enough that he filled up all the empty spaces. And I know I was usually ready for him to leave on a road trip before he’d been home for too long—it was nice to get some time to myself—and with him recovering from his surgery, I’d probably be sick to death of him in a few days, tops, once he came home, but at the moment, the emptiness was more than I could bear. It was such a contradiction—I missed him when he was away, and I could only take so much of him when he was home. But that was our relationship. It had been that way for so long, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if it changed.
Right now wasn’t the time for me to find out. “Don’t go,” I said.
“Not yet. Unless you have somewhere you have to be,” I added when I thought better of it.
“I don’t have to be anywhere.”
“Then come in. Please.” I adjusted my purse strap because it felt as though he was staring a hole through me and I needed to do something.
For a moment, it looked like he was waging an internal debate, but then he shrugged. “Okay.” He came up the steps again and held the door to let me precede him inside.
I headed into the kitchen and set my purse and keys on the island.
“Dana’s right,” he said, startling me with how close he was behind me. I jumped. I hadn’t heard him moving. I hadn’t heard a damn thing since the front door had closed. How had he come all the way into the kitchen without me hearing him move? He was bigger than Daddy. He ought to have a personality that was big and lumbering and loud to match his size, too, but Jonny was the absolute opposite of that. He was gentle and quiet.
“Right about what?” I asked, mentally reminding myself that he was Cam, not Jonny. That was what he wanted me to call him, and after all he’d done for me, the least I could do was call him by the name he wanted.
“You need to eat. You’ve only had a few bites of toast and then, what, half a granola bar?”
“Why are you worried about how much I’ve been eating?”
Again, with the prickly, bitchy thing. I seriously needed to stop that. He didn’t look like it had bothered him, but nothing ever looked like it bothered him. It was bothering me, though. Insane hormones or not, there was no cause for me to treat him like shit.
I took a calming breath. “Sorry. I’m just on edge.”
“I know. It’s all right. I’m worried because I care.” The way he said it—that he cared—sent a series of flutters tickling through my veins. Cam pulled open the fridge and scoured its contents. “You’re not still nauseated, are you?”
“That passed hours ago,” I said, shaking my head.
“How about a sandwich, then?” He took out deli meat and cheese and the like without waiting for me to answer.
“I just don’t have an appetite with everything that’s been going on.”
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