Page 108 of Turn Me On

I catch up to him in seconds. “I need to see Zane. He’s my boyfriend,” I blurt out.

Owen’s eyes flicker with surprise. “Oh. Okay. Cool. I’m going too,” he says, then I clap his shoulder and run ahead of him, catching a glimpse of a purple jersey, a pair of strong shoulders, dark hair in the corridor in front of me.

Zane’s turning into the room.

My heart pounds with the fierce knowledge that I want and I need to be the one to comfort him. I jog down the concrete hallway, my footsteps echoing. I pull up in the doorway just as Zane’s scooting up onto a table next to the trainer. He raises his face. Meets my eyes. He’s…mystified. Like I’ve stepped out of a mirage in the opening sequence of a movie or something.

“You’re here,” he whispers across the room.

With quick strides, I close the distance, curl a gentle hand on his shoulder. He sighs into my touch. “I had to see you. Are you okay?”

He frowns. “It hurts, Mad. I hope it’s not broken,” he chokes out.

My throat tightens. I turn to the trainer. “You’ll do an X-ray right away?”

“Of course,” the young man with the mustache says, inspecting Zane’s wrist.

The first baseman leans against me, resting his head against my side. I wrap an arm around him and kiss the top of his soft hair, sweaty and messy from the game.

“Let me get the doctor,” the trainer says, then steps out as Owen walks in. But Owen quickly takes the temperature of the room and says, “Be right back.”

Once he’s gone, Zane looks up at me. “The trainer’s getting the doctor,” he repeats, his eyes wide, his voice wavering.

I run my hand through his hair. “It’s protocol, sweetheart,” I tell him.

He swallows, maybe embarrassed he’s so worried. He turns to me, resting his face against my chest. “Stay with me,” he whispers.

“I’m not leaving you,” I reassure him.

He takes a big breath. When he lifts his face again, he knits his brow. “Hey. What the hell are you doing here?” The question is full of wonder. “How did you pull this off?” It’s just hit him that I’m here with him in public, comforting him. “You’re not Super Agent right now. You’re…Super Boyfriend.”

I can’t resist smiling. “I had to see you. I told Vance I quit. As in,tonight.”

His green eyes sparkle. “You did?”

“Sometimes you just have to go after what you want fearlessly. With everything you have. I wanted to be with you and make sure you were okay,” I say with confidence and certainty.

“Have I told you how much I love you?”

“Feel free to say it again.”

“I love you,” he says softly, then pulls me down next to him, exactly where I want to be.

* * *

“Nothing’s wrong.” The young doctor with the soprano voice gestures to the X-ray a little later. She also did an MRI. “All clear. Not even a fracture, a sprain, or a muscle tear. But take a couple days off,” she says to the patient.

Zane laughs ironically. “I have the next few days off.”

“Good,” she says drily. “Then you’ll probably continue your Mister Durable streak. Since that was quite a lucky fall.”

When Zane looks my way, a smile tips his lips, then lights his entire handsome face. “Yeah, it sure was a lucky fall,” he says to me, a little woozy, a little slap-happy.

He’s not taken any drugs besides ibuprofen, but I think he’s high on the good news. The lack of an injury can do that to a man.

“Walk me out, hottie,” he says to me with a wink as he rises.

As we head through the corridor so he can rejoin the team in the dugout, he says, “You know, there was an empty seat next to my brother earlier.”

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