Page 18 of Hail Marry
Super rude of him to call my bluff. If I’m being honest, there’s something kind of nice about his insistence on taking care of me. “Fine. You can check on me again.”
He nods. “Make sure your phone volume is turned up all the way for your alarms. After tonight, you should be fine to stop doing that.”
I salute him, and a hint of a smile flickers over his lips before he walks toward his car. “See you tomorrow,” he says.
At bedtime,I turn up my phone volume, but it’s a call rather than an alarm that wakes me.
“Hello?” I say groggily into the phone.
“It’s one o’clock,” Luca replies. “Just making sure you’re okay.”
I blink and rise up on my elbow to look at my phone screen. It’s 1:05. I must’ve slept through my alarm again.
“Get some sleep,” he says, and the line clicks off.
The same thing happens just after four.
He comes to check on my arm and change the bandage after I’m home from work, and this time he brings a burrito. It’s not a burrito from one of those trendy places that add all sorts of foreign objects that have no place in a tortilla, like kale or quinoa. This one is from a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. It’s divine and incredibly messy, and it distracts me from the sting of the soap.
Meanwhile, my road rash is starting to look better. No gangrene for this girl.
Luca comes the following day with a different burrito variety and his bag of medical tricks, and I sink deeper into the hole of indebtedness. If it were anyone else, I’d wonder if he was trying to make a move on me. But there’s absolutely zero evidence of any interest on his part. He’s all business. Brooding business.
And still, I have no idea how to thank him. He doesn’t seem like the type of person who likes receiving gratitude anyway. But he saved mylife.
Today, his frown seems particularly deep and he’s even less talkative than usual as he tends to my arm.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Good.”
I narrow my eyes at him until his gaze flicks to mine. Our gazes hold, and he’s totally unfazed.
“At the hospital, you said you had a lot on your mind,” I say.
He refocuses on wrapping my injury. “Still do.”
“Was it my comment about sweaty hands? Because I was joking about that. It was a perfectly normal amount of sweat given the situation I put you in.”
He laughs softly as he puts the old bandage in a small garbage bag, and a little zing of pleasure shoots through me. What is it that makes getting a laugh out of someone as stoic as Luca so satisfying? “It’s not that. Just visa stuff.”
“Visa,” I repeat. “As in the credit card company?” I didn’t take Luca for a shopaholic, but thatisa nice shirt, and those shoes are probably well upwards of $100.
“No. I’m here on a student visa.”
“Oh.” My brows pull together. “Here from where?” The man looks like a home-grown, all-American boy.
“Canada.”
“Really?” Gilbert Blythe immediately pops into my head. “Huh. Sayabout.”
He glances up at me quizzically. “Aboat,” he says with a perfectly Canadian accent. Gilbert himself couldn’t have done better. “Believe me?”
“You passed with flying colors. So, you’re Canadian, but you’re going to play in the NFL?”
He puts his medical supplies back in the bag. “Wasgoing to play in the NFL.”
I search his face. He may be a stoic, but those brown eyes betray at least a bit, and that past-tense verb is crushing the man. “It’s the visa keeping you from it? Haven’t there been players from other countries before?”
