Page 70 of Save the Game

Max

Eyes closed, I number each of Luke’s inhales. He’s still asleep, leg kicked between mine and face pressed hard into the space where my neck and shoulder meet. We’re so close, we might as well be conjoined. Knowing that any movement on my part will wake him up, I stay as still as possible. He’d come over late—far later than I’d been expecting—and there’d been something off about him. I wish I’d thought to turn on the light and get a good look at his face; a sad Luke is unnatural, but that’s precisely the vibe he was projecting last night.

Cracking an eye open, I try to gauge the time by the light filtering into the room from around the blinds. Early, yet, probably not even six. Too early for most college students to be awake on a Saturday, but I’ve always been an earlier riser than most. I close my eyes, hoping I might get lucky and fall back asleep; if not, lying here in my Luke cocoon is scarcely a hardship.

I doze off, drifting in and out of sleep until Luke jolts. He’s muttering incoherently, arm tightening around me as though there is any possibility of us pressing closer together. Opening my eyes, I run my fingers along his arm, barely grazing the fine hair there. When I reach his hand, I pause. Are his knuckles wrapped? Carefully, I trail my fingertips over his skin again, stopping when I encounter the familiar feel of skin tape. What the fuck?

There’s no way I can tip my chin down far enough to see his hand, not without waking him up. Now I really wish I’d turned on a light last night. Sliding my hand back up his arm and away from his hand in case he’s seriously hurt, I stay silent and still, butterflies erupting in my stomach as I wait for him to wake up. It feels imperative that I see his face. He easily could have gotten hurt at practice, but I feel certain he would have told me about that. Which means something must have happened last night when he was out with his roommate.

When he rolls his hip over mine, stretching his leg out and groaning, I immediately reach for his arm. He turns his face deeper into my neck and groans again, slowly trying to drag himself to wakefulness. I rub his arm, staying well clear of his hand.

“Luke?”

“Mm,” he mumbles, lips against my neck. He adjusts his hips again, rotating mine further toward the mattress. Reaching a hand back over my shoulder, I touch the side of his head, brushing my fingers through his hair.

“Luke?”

He murmurs something that sounds like baby against my neck, nuzzling his face into my hair. He’s barely conscious, still in limbo between asleep and awake, so I make a concentrated effort to tamp down my nerves and not rush him. There’s a sound from the kitchen, and I can picture Marcos making his careful way around, quietly brewing coffee. It dawns on me that he must have let Luke in last night, since it obviously wasn’t me.

“Hey, Maxy,” Luke whispers, lifting his face enough that I can hear what he’s saying. He slides his leg back as though suddenly conscious of how he was pressing me into the mattress.

“Morning. You okay?”

His breath tickles my ear as he exhales. I want to turn over and look at him, but the self-preservation side of my brain is warning me to stay like we are. My hand slides down his arm until my fingers are resting against his wrist.

“I have to talk to you about something,” he says, voice still pitched low.

The butterflies multiply. “Something bad?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, “something bad.”

I let that curdle in my stomach for a minute, biting my lip. I know it can’t be anything to do with us or he wouldn’t be spooning me right now, lips pressing gentle kisses against the nape of my neck. Instead of wondering what something bad might entail, I let myself fixate back on the fact that his hand is taped. Loosely wrapping my fingers around his wrist, I pull his arm out into my field of vision. Fuck.

Sighing, Luke backs up and puts his hand on my shoulder; immediately, I flip around so that we’re facing each other. Fuck.

“So, something bad was you got into a fight?” I ask, touching two fingers to his cheek right below a bruise.

“Yeah, something like that.” He adjusts himself, trying to move the pillow awkwardly with his left hand. Gasping, I sit upright and reach for his right arm; it’s wrapped all the way up to the middle of his forearm, but bulky enough that it’s obvious there is a brace below the bandage. Two of his fingers are abnormally straight as though they’ve been splinted.

“Luke.”

“It looks worse than it is,” he says hastily. I look at him, incredulously.

“It looks broken.”

“Well, yeah, it is,” he doesn’t pull away from me, but lets me rest his busted hand down into my lap. Looking down at him, I perform a visual inspection of his naked torso, narrowing my eyes at another bruise coming up on his ribs.

“Were you—were you at the hospital? Last night, before you came over?”

“Yeah,” he says slowly.

“You should have called me,” I tell him, frowning down at him. “Jesus, what happened? This doesn’t look like you got into a fight, this looks like you beat somebody to death with your bare hands.”

“Tried to.”

The words don’t land. Sliding out from under the sheets, I step a foot off the bed. “I’m going to grab you an icepack and some ibuprofen. Do you have the discharge paperwork?” I look around, zeroing in on his pile of clothing. “I bet you’re supposed to change those bandages.”

“Max—."

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