Page 108 of Love Lessons
Ian has a cab waiting for us outside. We climb in for the short ride, and Ian begins tapping his fingers on his knee. After a couple of minutes, I place my hand on top of his to silence the drumming.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say gently. Ian is in a good place. He doesn’t have those bad dreams very often anymore. He seems happier, and the team is doing well.
“I want this. It’s important.” He sighs. “That doesn’t make it easy.”
“Right,” I agree, curling my hand around his.
Ian wraps his arms around me and kisses my hair, and I hold him for the rest of the ride.
* * *
Once we arrive,Ian escorts me through a series of secure doors and checkpoints and then up an elevator I’ve never seen before.
Patrick O’Doul is waiting for us outside a conference room on the VIP level. He’s wearing a suit and a purple tie. “They’re here. They’re waiting for you.”
He hugs Ian, who accepts it with a grim smile. “Let’s do this.”
Ian lifts his chin and opens the door with his head held high. He smiles as he steps aside for me to pass through first.
There are several people in this room, including PR people from both teams. But I have no trouble picking out the young player seated in a chair beside a woman who must be his girlfriend. They are holding hands. And he looks… not healthy. His face is pale beneath his baseball cap as Ian and Patrick greet him.
When Davis stands up to shake hands, he moves slowly, bracing one hand on the table.
All the joy runs out of me.
“Nice to meet you,” I say with a smile when it’s my turn to be introduced. His grip is strong, and it calms me.
“I’m Ian Crikey,” my boyfriend says when it’s his turn to shake.
“Oh, I remember,” the kid says with a grin.
The Brooklyn publicist offers beverages all around, and I take a seat off to the side, because this isn’t my meeting.
When everyone is settled, Ian regards the other man with a serious expression. “I know it doesn’t help, but you have been in my thoughts every day since our fight.”
“Not an exaggeration,” O’Doul murmurs. “We had a lot of soul searching here in Brooklyn.”
“I just want you to know how sorry I am that you got hurt,” Ian says. “If I could, I’d do things differently.”
Davis shakes his head, a thin smile playing at his lips. “Not sure you should feel that way. That’s why we needed to meet. I’ve gotta tell you a wild story.” He clears his throat. “After the punch, my bone shattered. The fragments caused me some immediate soft tissue damage and a lot of bleeding. I don’t remember much of the following week. And then came the surgeries.”
My stomach clenches, but Ian doesn’t flinch or blink. He just listens.
“The doctors had to stabilize me before they could deal with a weird thing they discovered. I have bone cancer. It’s pretty rare. Usually hits kids between sixteen and twenty years old. Usually gets you in a limb. Getting it at age twenty-four in my clavicle made for a really unusual case.”
“You have…cancer,” Ian says slowly.
“That’s right. That’s why the punch shattered the bone in the first place. It wasn’t you. It was me.”
“Jesus,” Ian whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
The guy shrugs. “Not your fault. I mean—I wish this was your fault, so I’d have somebody to blame. And I actuallydidblame you for a little while. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and I just wanted to go back in time to those hours before the fight, when everything in my life was fine. But it doesn’t work that way. And the crazy thing is that if I hadn’t challenged you, it might have been a while until I got my diagnosis.” He takes a sip of his soda. “Might’ve mattered to my treatment plan. If anything, I’m supposed to thank you.”
Ian leans back in his chair and contemplates the ceiling for a moment. “No need to go that far.”
Several people chuckle, but I can’t. My eyes are hot.
