Page 113 of Break the Ice
“He’s not?—”
“He is,” both Finley and I double down.
There’s no way he gets to come home and brush what happened off like it was a small blip, and everything is good now.
That first time I walked Finley back in here yesterday, I felt so damn sick I had to swallow down my vomit at the memory of how he collapsed on himself without warning. He fell so fucking heavy that I was certain he was never getting back up.
Just because he’s standing again, it doesn’t erase what happened.
“You have to take it easy,” I tell him when he steps back from me.
The loss of his proximity sends a mournful chill through me that has me clinging tighter to Finley’s hand and looping her into me again. Her back into my front so that her body buffers the distance he put between ours. Something he studies with a marveled uptick of his lips.
Does he like it?
Can he feel the way my heart is pounding into her back?
Is this as perfect for him as it is for me?
Well, almost perfect. I’d give anything to put my hands on him and feel that he is okay for myself. To hold him until all my worries and doubts and the trauma of the last twenty-four hours ebbed away.
As though he can hear my thoughts, Elijah murmurs across Finley’s hair, “I’m fine. I’m good.”
I nod.
He smiles.
Even so, I’m still fucking choking on everything. If I don’t find another focus point, I might fall apart because the relief of being told thathe is perfectly healthy by the neurologist, has nothing on this staggering feeling of having him home.
This is where he belongs.
This is where he’s safe and close to me.
Still, the memory of catching him clenches my muscles, causing my arm to close around Finley’s shoulders tighter.
“What now?” I ask, clearing the over emotional frog from my throat.
“Rest,” Lex doubles down.
The reminder of his presence has me taking a step back that is quickly reversed when Finley wraps her arm around Elijah’s waist.
“And what else?” Finley asks, adjusting herself between Eli and I so that we’re sandwiched together side to side.
With an awkward shuffle, Eli lowers himself onto the coffee table, nodding for Finley and me to sit on the couch opposite him.
Lex sits on the armchair to the side with a deep-set frown on his face while he watches the three of us closely.
“I’m on strict sleep and hydration routines,” Eli says, leaning over his thighs while he focuses on his intertwined hands. “I need to reduce screen time and finding different ways of managing stress like therapy.”
“Is this why Coach keeps telling you to see Dr. Armstrong?” The question is clipped and ground out between my clenched teeth. “Did you know how sick you were? Why didn’t you do something earlier, say something? I told you to go back to Doc.”
“I thought I could sleep it off like I usually do. It didn’t feel different to the other migraines I’ve had before.”
“Fuck, what does this mean for you and your career?” The question may sound stupid, but I need to know if I’m about to lose him.
Not because of the game. Not because of the team.
Because I can’t fathom not being around him every day.
