Page 99 of Sweet Temptation
A lifetime’s worth.
“Lexie’s lungs are failing her.”
Failing.
Fuck. She’s still alive.
“And this is putting a strain on her heart.”
“Fix them,” Carys pleads.
“We’re going to try, Carys.” Lex has been seeing Dr. Bunton for most of her life, but that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference right now.
“How?” Cooper’s voice wavers as I stand here, feeling like I’m standing in the middle of a bad dream. A fucking nightmare.
“We have a plan. We need to place Lexie in a medically induced coma to give her body time to heal without having the added stress?—”
“Added stress of what?” Carys cries. “The stress of living?”
Dr. Bunton’s eyes soften, but it’s there, right there in front of me. He doesn’t know if this will work.
How did my girl go from fine to this?
“We’re going to do everything we can for her. I’ve been here with your family before. You know I won’t give you false hope. But I will tell you we feel confident that this new treatment should clear up the infection her body’s been battling.”
“The same one you’ve had her on three different rounds of three different antibiotics for?” I ask, ready to rage at the world. No one ever tells you that fear will do that. Make you rage when you’re too scared to do any other fucking thing. “If none of them worked, why should this?”
“We don’t know whether it will, Lucky. The next forty-eight hours are critical, but we’re hopeful.”
Hope.
We’ve been reduced to hope.
It feels like a joke.
“When can we see her?” Cooper asks, his voice a hell of a lot shakier now than it was when he was giving the nurse grief.
“I can take you back now, but she’s in ICU. Two people, max.”
“We need three, Jim. You know Cooper and I will stay out of the way, but Lexie would want Lucky there too. They just got engaged. Let him talk to her. It could help,” she pleads, and Iswear to God and on every single Sunday prayer I know, Carys Sinclair just became a saint in my eyes.
Istarted this football season thinking the only thing that mattered was earning my position on the team. I never wanted to doubt that I deserved to be there. Never wanted to wonder whether my family owning the team was the only reason I was there.
I’m not a big enough dick to believe it wasn’t part of the reason.
But I needed to prove to myself it wasn’t the only one.
To prove I deserved it. That I earned it.
If you had asked me in August if I’d miss a single game so long as there was breath in my fucking body, I would have said no way.
But twelve hours after Lexie told me she’d marry me, I thank my aunt, the GM and president of the Philadelphia Kings, and end the call, not giving a single shit that I just asked her to put me out on medical leave for this week’s game.
I lean back against the wall outside of Lexie’s door and close my eyes for a minute. Trying to pull my shit together before I go back in.
“You scared me.” Cooper’s voice is clear as day as he walks up beside me. “When your dad and Idecidedit was better for Lexie if you stayed away, it was because you scared me. When she was with you, she was reckless?—”
I open my eyes and look at the man who’s aged ten years in the last twelve hours. “I swear to you, Cooper, I took her to the doctor myself a week ago?—”
