by Stacey Lynn
“Like I said the other day, it’s because I’m the best.”
“And arrogant.”
“Funny and sweet.”
“Cocky.”
“Humble and kind.”
“Okay.” I shoved him off me, our grins as wide as could be. “Enough. I get it. You’re the best. Happy now?”
His smile fell. Gently, he brushed my hair off my face with his thumb, cupping my cheek. “I think I am.”
The power in his statement made me gulp down my fears. I was trying to keep this light. Open up and give him parts of me I usually kept tucked away.
He was making it so damn difficult to not hand over all my hidden places.
“I need my wine.”
Chuckling, he sat us up. Then he dumped out my wine and as he refilled the glass, I dug in my purse for my phone.
“Oh no.” I jumped up as I stared at the screen. Four missed calls. Two voicemails. I didn’t listen to them. “I have to go home now, Beaux. Now.”
“What is it?”
“My dad.”
My heart raced for a different reason. I pulled up Mike’s number and hit send, one hand tugging my hair. Damn it!
“What is it?” I said as soon as Mike said hello.
“Paige? Where are you? Jesus, Elsa and I have both been calling you.”
“I know. What is it?” I didn’t have time for this. “Beaux!” I snapped. “I need to go.”
He must have sensed the panic in my voice because he had everything loaded, blanket tossed over his arm.
“It’s dad,” Mike said. “He’ll be okay. Just know that he’s going to be fine, but Elsa found him outside tonight. He was wandering we guess.”
Crap crap crap! This wasn’t happening. Damn it. I should have been there.
“Elsa found him? I thought she was with him!” She’d told me she would watch him tonight. Where had she gone? “How bad?”
“He’s in the emergency room. I’m here, waiting, and I haven’t seen him. Elsa said he was bleeding pretty bad. A few cuts. I don’t know much else, she was pretty upset.”
“Shit!” I cursed and started running. Beaux was hot on my heels, the thumping of his feet keeping pace with me. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Which hospital?”
He rattled off the name and I shoved my phone into my purse.
“Raleigh Regional, Beaux. I have to go.”
“What happened?”
“My dad is hurt.” I glared at him. He was taking too long. Hurrying as fast as me but damn it. I shouldn’t have done this. One night. I took one night for myself and this was what happened.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BEAUX
By the time we hopped into my truck and I’d set the GPS for the hospital, Paige had already shut down. I saw the moment it happened, when she realized while she was off enjoying herself, her dad was somewhere else, injured.
The moment she glared at me, her walls had slammed back up.
I got it. I did. I understood the guilt and the responsibility.
Didn’t mean I liked it and it didn’t mean it didn’t tick me off.
Fuck. I had one night of her. One night where all she gave me were smiles and her body and her playfulness and I was hooked.
No way in hell was she taking it back now.
She was sitting next to me, arms crossed over her chest. The gesture was obvious. Another back-the-hell-away from me stance and I gave her that play, my mind on the end zone, not the fifty-yard line. When we pulled up close to the hospital, only a few turns left until I knew she’d hop out of my truck before I came to a stop, I couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“You know this isn’t your fault, Paige. There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about because you went out and had some fun.”
Her eyes slid to me, a glare so chilled I felt it in my balls.
I sighed and pulled into the parking lot. Emergency in red and white flashed like seconds on a game clock. “Let me park and I’ll wait with you.”
“You’ve done enough, thanks.”
I slammed on my brakes. Thank fuck there wasn’t another car behind us. She yanked forward in her seat and fell back, the seat belt locking immediately.
“What the hell!”
“Don’t,” I growled. “Don’t fucking tarnish what we had tonight. Don’t do that to us. I get you’re mad. I get you’re blaming yourself, and most of all I get why you feel so damn guilty. You forget I’ve been where you are, Paige. Don’t fucking forget I spent most of my teenage years watching my mom die. I fucking get it. But don’t for one damn second think you get to take what happened between us tonight away from me, or you. I won’t let you.”
Tears spilled from her eyes before I was done lashing out.
For a moment, I thought she was going to soften, but she rolled her shoulders back and wiped tears off her cheeks. “You don’t have a say in it. I need to get to my dad.”
She flung open the door. I reached for her other hand but she pulled it from my grip. “Paige—”
“I told you the first night we met I wasn’t available, Beaux, and this is why. My dad will always come first, and he needs my help and attention more than I need to be getting off in a field.”
“That’s not all that was and you know it. And you don’t have to do this alone.”
“I’m not alone. I have my dad.” Tears were falling from her cheeks and she viciously swiped them away, shaking her head. “He’s all I have, Beaux.”
God. Her pain was as evident as her anger and guilt.
She had me. All she had to do was reach out and take it.
There was no way she’d listen to me, not as upset as she was and blaming herself.
She hopped out of the truck. “Thanks for the ride.”
She slammed the door before I could respond.
It sounded eerily like my head crashing into a brick wall.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PAIGE
I rushed into the emergency room already regretting the way I talked to Beaux. Too bad I had other, more important things on my mind.
Every word he threw at me was true. Tonight had been incredible.
I felt mounds of guilt that were piling higher than Mt. Everest. My dad had gotten hurt and I wasn’t there. The entire reason I moved home was to take care of him. And where was I? Out getting off like a teenager with no responsibilities.
Crap!
I hurried to the nurse’s station, out of breath and panting as the woman behind the desk looked up. “Paige Halloway. My father, Sam, was brought in by ambulance earlier.”
Her finger clicked on a keyboard. With an emotionless voice, she stated, “He’s in bay five currently. If you take a seat, I’ll have someone come out and give you an update as soon as I can.”
“No.” My head shook so violently my hair stuck to my wet cheeks. “That’s not good enough. I need to know what happened.”
“Ma’am—”
“Paige.” I whipped my head and there was Mike. He was already reaching me, arms outstretched and I fell into them. “He’ll be okay. Come sit with me.”
“I need to know.”
“He fell. He’s hurt. That’s all we know so far. But he’s strong and he’ll be okay.”
I let Mike usher me into the sitting room, his chair closest to the doors heading to the back as if he knew that’s where I’d need to be. As close to my dad as possible.
“I wasn’t there.”
“It’s okay that you weren’t.”
It wasn’t. Nothing about this was. Not me freaking out on Beaux—again. Not me shirking my responsibilities for even a few hours.
I shook my head against his shoulder. “Tell me everything you know.”
He sighed, pressed his lips to the top of my head and squeezed me tighter. “Not much. Elsa said she’d gotten him ready for bed and thought he was settled so she went home to let her dogs outside. She went out later to bring her dog in for the night and saw him collapsed on your lawn. All she got from him as s
he was calling nine-one-one was that he’d gone out for a walk and fallen.”
Damn it. He knew better than to go walking alone. His balance wasn’t that great and it’d been dark. Unfortunately the stroke hadn’t just left him slightly paralyzed, but had affected some of his mental abilities. He didn’t always make the best choices. He and I went for a walk almost every day. I’d just assumed since I was working he wouldn’t go without me.
That’s not even true. As soon as Beaux showed up at the restaurant, I hadn’t thought of my dad at all. Not even to call him to tell him I’d be home late.
“Maybe he just twisted his ankle,” Mike said. His effort to calm me was useless. “They’re probably just checking him over, being careful, but you know Sam. He’s probably in the back right now demanding his release and for everyone to stop all the hullabaloo over him.”
“Okay.” I squeezed Mike tighter and lied through my teeth. I didn’t believe a word he said, and wouldn’t until I saw my dad. “You’re right. He’ll be fine.”
“That’s the spirit. Now, tell me about your night. I’m assuming since you’re not dressed in your uniform you went out after work?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Bet you had fun,” Mike said, totally ignoring me. “And that’s okay, Paige. Your dad hates it that you’re here taking care of him and not living like you’re supposed to.”
“I can’t, not when I know I can leave him and things like this could happen.”
“They could happen even if he was healthy.”
“Stop trying to be so smart,” I said, poking him in the side of his stomach. His quiet laugh echoed in my ear. “You sound like my dad.”
“Yeah, well he’s the smartest man I’ve ever met and you know exactly what he’s going to say to you once you see him and start with this guilt trip you don’t need to be carrying. He’s going to say you’re too damn young to be taking care of him and all he wants is for you to experience the life you were supposed to have. That’s what he’s going to say.”
God. What was it with men throwing all this in my face? He was my dad. My responsibility. Mike repeating almost the same thing Beaux had said didn’t help, either. They might have understood. Hell, logically I agreed with them.
It didn’t help me emotionally.
“You sound like Beaux.” I should have kept my mouth shut.
“Yeah? Is that who you were with tonight?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mike sighed and hugged me tighter to him. I pulled back from his embrace and wiped my cheeks. My dad would hate knowing I was crying over him. I had to be strong. “Bet you don’t want to talk about it,” he murmured. “I bet that’s a yes, too, then. Look at you, hot shot…out with the quarterback of the football team. He bring you here? Awfully late for a girl like you to be out.”
He shot me a smirk and I rolled my eyes. Mike played the big brother card perfectly, even if we weren’t related and he was years younger than me.
“I was a bitch to him,” I admitted reluctantly.
“Eh. He’s got big shoulders. Strikes me as the kind of guy who can handle it.”
Perhaps. But tonight very well could have been my third strike, too. How many times would a guy come back when he was constantly pushed away? At some point, he wasn’t going to think crazy was cute, and tonight’s behavior could have permanently blown my chances.
Which was really for the best.
Tonight proved I didn’t have the time for a relationship anyway.
So, why, as Mike and I settled into silence, did I palm my phone in my hand, debating whether or not to text him an apology?
He deserved one, but more, he deserved an explanation why I was such a mess.
Before I could pull up the message app and send something to him, a woman dressed in scrubs came out of the emergency and scanned the waiting room.
“Paige Halloway?”
***
A broken freaking leg. After spending hours in the emergency room Thursday night, my dad had been taken back for surgery to have pins placed in his leg. He’d be in a cast and would re-start physical therapy as soon as he was strong enough. At least we already had a wheelchair for him in the mean time. I was able to get the story from him once the doctor had taken Mike and I back.
On a walk around the block using his walker, he’d stumbled over a crooked sidewalk a few houses down and fallen into a shallow hole right next to the cement. He’d broken his leg, laid there in pain and then somehow managed to drag himself back toward home, collapsing in our yard when he couldn’t walk any further.
Thank God for Elsa. Who knew when I would have found him? That thought only made my guilt heavier.
Beaux still deserved an apology from me, and he’d get one, but I was too busy and too tired while I spent most of the weekend in the hospital with my dad.
But it didn’t feel good to ignore the text from Beaux I’d gotten on Friday night asking how my dad was.
That was all he said. How is your dad?
No hello. No call me. Nothing personal. I deserved it, completely, but it still stung.
I hadn’t bothered to answer. He had to have sent the text on his way to Atlanta. He needed to focus on the game, not on me.
Now it was Sunday, and Dad and I were home from the hospital. I’d called Paulie and told him I needed two weeks off work until Dad was more mobile again. He’d argued, threatened and told me this was my last chance, and after he begrudgingly told me he hoped my dad was okay, he hung up.
I was really starting to like my boss.
We were settling in. I’d helped Dad out of his wheelchair and into his recliner, propping up his casted foot on a pillow to keep it elevated and then handed him the remote knowing exactly what he was going to turn on.
“Stop fussing over me,” he said when I draped a blanket over his lap. It was almost ninety degrees outside, but I still wanted to make sure he didn’t catch a chill.
“No.”
“You’re driving me crazy, girl.”
“Right back atcha.” I kissed his forehead and smiled. “Stop being so grouchy. I want to take care of you.”
I walked away and went back to the kitchen, grabbing his pain pills and going through all the instructions the hospital had given us. All of it was common sense, I just had to make sure I didn’t overdose my dad or get him addicted to the painkillers.
I took a few more minutes and made us lunch, trying to ignore the broadcaster’s voice on the television coming from the family room. He was talking about the Rough Riders, how great of a pre-season they’d already had and how good they looked for the upcoming season.
But as soon as he mentioned Beaux’s name, my ears perked up.
I couldn’t get away from him. It only made me feel like shit for not even responding to his text. I’d been raised to be independent, but I hadn’t been raised to be a complete bitch, and he hadn’t deserved any of the stuff I’d thrown at him since I met him…except for maybe the water.
I smiled at the memory and made a decision. I’d call him later, like the grown-up I was and apologize, again, over the phone. Then I’d gently let him know that I was too busy, had too much on my plate to handle a relationship.
We’d end things friendly. And that would be it.
It was the best, smartest, decision I could make. At least that way, my heart wouldn’t end up hurt when he walked away from me like Spencer did.
So why did it feel like I’d been punched in the gut at the idea of not seeing Beaux again? Because I liked him. A lot. I’d have to move on from that, too.
I finished up lunch and loaded up our plates, taking them to my dad on a serving tray and setting everything he needed within reach.
“Thanks, Paige,” my dad said.
“No problem. Anything for you, Dad.”
He gave me a look, one that didn’t exactly look thrilled with my statement and turned back to the television.
I settled on the couch, w
ishing I could ignore the game, but there was no escaping it. As soon as the Rough Riders took the field and the game kicked off, I was entranced. Every time I saw Beaux on the screen, I thought back to how I’d admitted how much I loved his butt in his uniform. When he ripped off his helmet at halftime, the Rough Riders down fourteen to zero on a team they should have been easily beating, and scrubbed his hand through his hair, I wanted it to be my fingers running through his silky mop.
And when a reporter stopped him, frustration evident all over his face, I wanted to be the one to smooth away his stress lines.
All of it only made the ache in my chest more intense until I felt like it was being squeezed to pieces.
Stepping away from Beaux might be the smartest decision to make, but once again, logic and emotions were battling inside of me, causing a churning storm I had no idea how to settle.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BEAUX
I had fifteen minutes to get my head on straight. Fifteen minutes to try, again, to wipe away the way Paige had slammed the door in my face and hurried away from me like the time we’d spent together had meant absolutely nothing to each other.
Fifteen minutes to scrub away the memory of her that was seared into the deepest recesses of my brain.
Fifteen minutes to get over the fact she hadn’t returned a simple fucking text asking how her dad was.
I’d tried for the last two days and it hadn’t worked, but now I was playing like crap. I was making sloppy plays, slow in the pocket, hesitating when I usually envisioned the play before it ever happened. Hell, I’d even managed to get myself sacked.
We were getting our asses kicked, and I had no one to blame but myself.
I was sitting on the bench, knees spread, head in my hands. Damn Paige Halloway. She’d invaded my brain and I couldn’t shake her. Now was not the fucking time to be strung up on some girl who’d made it clear, time and time again, she wanted nothing to do with me.
Move the fuck on, Hale.
“What the hell is going on?” Coach Pomville asked. “Hale?”
