Page 49 of The Girl He Loves

Chapter 18

Late Tuesday Night

“Why areyou standing there looking scared and worrying your hands?” Dax stretches on the couch while watching me.

I went into the living room to check on him and take an extra blanket, only to find him awake. Midnight is fast approaching.

All evening, I’ve felt like a horse’s ass for my behavior at the hospital. Besides owing Dax an apology, I want to make sure he understands my reaction. He seems chilled, but he’s also medicated.

I stand at the end of the couch near his feet, still dressed in my cutoff shorts and T-shirt. My toenail polish from this afternoon looks like a hack job, smeared and chipped. “I was awful to you. I rushed in and jumped your case. I made a bad assumption.”

He nods. “You were awful.”

I clasp my hands to my face in horror. “Was I really?”

“You just said you were.”

“But I thought you’d disagree with me.”

“Would you believe me if I did?”

I shake my head.

He does a one shoulder shrug. “There you go. So let’s just move on from it because nothing I say will make you think otherwise. I’d rather talk about how you can make it up to me.”

I take in a deep breath. Humiliation from my earlier behavior spreads across my chest like a light sunburn, leaving my chest feeling warm, the red blotches blossoming. “You mean, more than letting you stay here and catering to you?”

Dax’s narrowed eyes and pressed lips tell me he’s considering my response. Then he says, “Yeah, other than that. Tell me. Were you scared when you saw I was injured?”

I move to sit on the arm of the couch, my feet on the cushion. “No. I was relieved it wasn’t Tyler.”

Dax frowns. “That doesn’t make me feel good. Lie and tell me it terrified you.”

I laugh. “When I came in, you were joking with the doctor and nurses. I knew you were okay.”

“Fair point.”

I confess something I’d been holding back from him. “But that away game last year, when you played the Chargers and you took that hit from their safety, I was scared then. You went down like a sack of rocks and didn’t move. Those were the longest minutes of any game I’ve ever watched.”

He looks pleased. “Did you watch all my games?”

I shrug as if it's neither here nor there. “I watch a lot of football. Sometimes it was a game you were in, and sometimes it wasn’t.” No lie there. Only I omitted that I watched as many of his games as I could.

He seems only slightly satisfied. “I would’ve been scared, too, in that game, if I’d been conscious. When I came to, I was confused. I knew something was wrong.”

“I really wanted you to let them cart you off.”

He tucks his hands behind his head. “I had the wherewithal to know if I did that, I was definitely sitting out for several games.”

“Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing,” I point out.

“In hindsight,” he says with a smile. Because seven games later he sustained another concussion.

“Was it that last one that clinched the deal, made you get out?” I tuck the tips of my toes between the cushions.

He rubs a hand over his face then puts it behind his head. “It was a couple of things. The first was, I struggled to remember the playbook. The second, my parents happened to be in town for that game where I got my last concussion. My mom brought pictures of my sister’s kids, and I couldn’t remember their names.” He makes a point of making eye contact. “They’re seven and four. I’ve had plenty of time to remember their names.”

The balloon Tyler gave him is weighed down by a heavy plastic heart tied to the string. It floats by the couch and I play with the string, making it bounce up and down. “And anything else? Not that losing your memory wasn’t enough.” But I knew Dax. I knew something else had scared him.

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