Page 57 of Refusing Kendall

Oddly enough, when I stop fighting him, I realize that Icanactually breathe through the tightness in my throat. It’s not choking me, after all. Does that mean I’m not dying? No, I have to be. The pain in my shoulder and stomach is unbearable.

I open my eyes and turn back to find Lucas still inches from my face. I bring my right hand up to rub it against the stubble growing across his cheek, since my left arm doesn’t want to obey. He truly does look like shit with hollow cheeks, and deep circles under his eyes. I’d do anything to remove that look from his face. His face rubs into my hand like a cat starving for attention.

When I try to talk to him, my throat chokes up again, and I reach for it.

He gently threads his fingers through my hand, “It’s just a tube, baby. T went to get someone to remove it, okay?”

I try to nod, but just have to blink my eyes closed instead. I open them again at the sound of Teagan’s voice, “Found her nurse.”

His eyes lock onto mine, and there’s so much emotion in that one look that I start crying again. I watch the indecision cross his face on whether to come to me or not. He settles for standing at the bottom of the bed as he touches my leg. I hadn’t even noticed Goose off to my right until he moves to make room for the nurse.

“What’s going on in here?” she demands. “What happened to her neck?”

“She must have been having a nightmare when she woke up,” Lucas answers her. “She was trying to claw the tube out of her throat.”

The nurse looks to be somewhere in her forties and side-eyes the guys, “Everyone always reacts different when they come to. We weren’t expecting her to wake this soon.” She reads a piece of paper that’s coming out of a machine. “Nightmare or no, you boys are going to have to leave, so the doctor can get in here and take that tube out.”

Panic claws at my chest again, and the beeping coming from the machine picks up pace. I grab at her wrist just as Goose’s voice fills the room, “We’re not leaving her.”

Lucas is rubbing his hands up and down my face in an effort to calm me, but it’s Goose’s words that settle me back down. They can’t leave me again.

She glances from my heart monitor to my face and back to Goose, “Fine, but you start stressing her out, and I’ll have you escorted out of here if I have to. She needs to start healing, and she can’t do that if she’s under undue stress.”

I watch as he nods to her before she walks out, hopefully to find the doctor like she promised. Goose pushes his chair back up to the bed and takes my hand. I try to tell him that I love him, but the stupid tube won’t let me.

He kisses each one of my fingers and then my palm, “I love you, Kendall.”

My eyes fill with tears again that spill right over. He’s not faring any better. Laying his head down on the top of my right thigh, I watch his tears soak into the blanket covering me.

There’s movement down near Teagan, and I lock eyes with Mav as he scoots a chair under T’s ass so he can sit down. Both of them look just as bad as Goose and Lucas. I have so many questions for them, but I can’t say shit with this fucking tube stuffed down my throat. I’m hurting too badly anyways. All I just want to do is curl into a big ball and cry. Because I’m hurting. Because I’m not dead. Because somehow, someway they found me and were here waiting on me when I woke up.

Surrounded by the four of them, each touching one spot or another on my body, I fall back asleep.

GOOSE

There is absolutely nothing in this world that could ever possibly make me feel like an even bigger disappointment than I do right now. All the shit my dad said to me before has nothing on this. We almost lost Kendall in the worst kind of way, and then watching her wake up from a nightmare, only to fall into despair at seeing Lucas’ face is slowly killing me inside. I want to hit things and cry like the pussy my dad always claimed I was growing up. I settle for getting as close as I can to Kendall without actually lying in bed with her.

She falls back into a deep sleep that’s probably due to the nurse hitting her with another dose of pain meds. It all happened so fast that I don’t even think Kendall realized that it happened. When those tear-filled eyes had turned on me, I felt like I was being stripped bare, right down to my very soul. There’s nothing on Earth that can make me feel the way she can.

I used to think that football was life. Getting on the best teams and showing out while they pay for school, so I can get out from under my dad’s thumb was the most important thing to me. It was a major plus that I love the sport. With my knee shot to hell, I’ve been struggling with finding my way while not knowing if I’ll be able to play again. It sounds so stupid now. I pushed her away and almost lost her, all because I’m a fucking moron.

She never made me feel like shit, even when the doctors told her that I may never step foot on the field again. Kendall was steadfast in standing by me during every minute of the torture that I was put through. I can make all the excuses in the world, like how I didn’t feel like I was good enough for her when I couldn’t even be enough for myself. But when it all boils down to it, it never made her love me any less. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself at the time, I lived for those texts at night when she reminded me that she cared. Fuck, I’ve got so much to make up for. I can only hope that she’ll give me a chance to explain, to tell her that she’s my world and nothing else matters. I’ll remind her everyday if she can find it in herself to forgive me.

Almost as if she can sense my inner turmoil, her hand moves from mine into my hair. I don’t deserve it, but I soak it up anyways, at least while I can. She may not want anything to do with me when she wakes up. I wouldn’t. We weren’t supposed to be on vacation without her. If she was with us, this would have never happened. That responsibility rests on my shoulders. It took something like this happening to wake me up. Yeah, I definitely don’t deserve her.

Those old habits of drowning out my troubles are calling to me, but I’d rather someone break my other knee than leave her. I’m not going anywhere until she tells me to.

KENDALL

Waking up for the second time is almost worse than the first. I’m pulled out of another nightmare back into the real world where everything hurts. There’s a doctor standing over me, asking me questions to make sure that I’m awake. I can’t exactly move much of anything without wincing in pain, so I resort to blinking at him in answer. When he finally pulls the tube out of my throat, it makes me gag, and I have to try really hard not to throw up.

The guys stand on the other side of the bed, watching the whole process.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

My voice is barely a whisper and sounds funny even to my own ears, “Like shit.”

He tries to contain his smile at my honesty, “If you said anything less than that, I’d be worried about your mental state too.”

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