Page 33 of Retaking the Shot
“Hey,” I answered.
“We haven’t heard anything other than the doctors are still tending to him.”
Her words didn’t make me feel any better, and I rubbed a hand down my face. “How much longer until you get there?”
“A little more than an hour.”
“Okay, I’m leaving now. Call me if you hear anything.” I went to grab my keys, but they weren’t on the table near my door.
“I will. Drive careful,” she directed.
We said goodbye and then I started frantically looking for my keys, but it was as if they had vanished into thin air. I’d used them to open my door when I got home, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly when I walked through the door. Finally, I caught a glimmer of metal on my pillow. Without wasting another second, I snatched them up and hurried to the door.
As I flung the door open I jumped, not expecting someone to be on the other side.
“What are you doing here?” I breathed.
“I’m going with you,” Coop stated.
12
COOP
The cabof my truck was quiet as I drove us out of town. I hadn’t expected to see Ford at Chrome. Nor had I thought I would be driving us to Hartford in the middle of the night. I had no clothes, no toiletries, and I had morning skate and a game the next night.
But this was Ford.
The moment he had come back into the club from his phone call, I’d seen the pain on his face. When he’d uttered the words his grandfather had a heart attack, it had felt as though my own heart had stopped beating, and I knew I would do whatever I needed to do to help him.
As he sat in the passenger seat, I stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye. The distance between us felt like a hundred miles and not a few feet. It had been two months since I’d seen him and I wasn’t sure if it was my duty or not, but I felt I needed to help him again. Just like I had the night he drank and took sleeping pills.
“Thanks for doing this,” Ford said, finally breaking the silence several miles down the interstate.
“Of course. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking and I feel better knowing I can get you there safely.”
“I would have been fine.”
“You probably would have, but I would have been worried the entire time. Plus, I didn’t want you to drive after you’d been drinking.”
“I didn’t drink tonight.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Oh.”
“I haven’t had any alcohol sincethatnight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t elaborate why, but I guessed it was because he’d messed up and drank and took the pills.
I focused on the road, the yellow lines blurring as my thoughts wrestled with the unexpected twist of fate that brought us together again. After several minutes, I finally turned on the radio to drown out the silence. Everything felt awkward and weird and all wrong. Wrong because this was Ford,myFord. The guy I had fallen in love with, the one I had shared a piece of myself with. But as we got closer to my hometown, the discomfort between us didn’t seem to get better.
I needed to change that.
I cleared my throat. “So, I went on this date a few weeks ago and I almost got kidnapped.”
“What?” His head snapped in my direction.
