Page 97 of Tight End

“Okay, now you’re pushing it.”

I laugh. My phone vibrates against my leg and I fumble in my pocket to grab it. It slips from my fingers and I juggle it in the air with one hand to keep it from crashing to the ground. Icatch it before it slips out again and stab the Accept button when I see Chase’s name flash across the screen.

“Hey, what’s u?—?”

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for an hour.”

My chest tightens at the alarm in his voice. “I’m at rehab for my knee. My phone wasn’t on me and the ringer was off. What’s wrong? Is it Mom or Dad?”

“No.” Chase pauses, and when I’m about to scream at him to tell me what the hell happened, he finally speaks.

“Brixton was gunned down in the parking garage here at the hospital. Security found him and rushed him to the emergency room.”

I collapse backward against the wall, the crutches crashing to the floor at my feet.

My heart lodges in my throat, thin streams of sweat slithering down my spine. Blood rushes between my ears, pulse thundering hard. I clutch the phone tight in my shaking hand because I know there’s more he hasn’t told me.

“Is he okay?” I manage to croak the words even though I don’t know if I want to hear the answer.

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” he says in a low voice. “They don’t think he’s going to make it.”

Chapter 34

Sam

The phone drops from my hand. White noise assaults my ears.

Brixton…gunned down…parking lot…they don’t think he’s going to make it.

Jack shakes my shoulder. “Sam, what happened?”

Fear snakes through my bones, whipping around my heart and squeezing it like a vise.

My eyes slowly focus.

“Brixton. He’s in the emergency room. He was…” My voice cracks. “Shot.”

“Fuck.” He looks at me, his brows knitted together. “You want to go to him.”

He doesn’t ask it as a question because he knows. He can see it.

I nod, unable to speak.

He helps me adjust myself with the crutches once he picks them up from the floor. We don’t speak the entire car ride to Mercy. The silence is like clanging gongs. Deafening. Leavingme with nothing to blunt the horrible thoughts racing through my head.

Lunchtime traffic is brutal.

Jack weaves in and out of cars while I clutch the sides of his leather seat, as if digging my fingers into the cushions can somehow be a lifeline for Brixton.

As if I can hold onto him tighter to prevent him from disappearing from my life.

Because much as I hate to admit it, I want…no, need him.

He opened himself up to me and I shut him out.

I was afraid of the damage it would do when he broke my heart.

But it’s nothing compared to the devastation that would ravage me from losing him so tragically.

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