Page 47 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
She manages a smile, small but real. “Thanks, Beau. I’ll put that in my next performance review.”
The doctor inflates the cuff again, reads the dial, then lets the air hiss out slow. He makes a note on his tablet, then looks up at me with eyes that say get out. “She needs fluids and rest. If she passes out, call me.” He looks at Sage. “You need to eat. And if this happens again, you tell someone. Got it?”
Sage nods, but she’s already pulling herself up, ready to bolt the second his back is turned.
I catch her eye, try to read past the practiced calm. “You’re really okay?” I say, and this time it’s not a question, it’s a fucking demand.
She doesn’t meet my gaze. She looks at the wall, at the floor, at Mia, at anything but me. “I’m fine, Kingston. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
I want to say something else, something that’ll cut through the bullshit, but the doctor steps between us, hands on hips, and the message is clear: conversation over. I back out, but only as far as the doorway. Sage swings her feet off the table, as Mia hands her a bottle of Gatorade with the cap already twisted off. She takes a sip, grimaces, but drinks more. The hands are still shaking, but now she’s controlling it, making the tremor work for her. She’s always been good at that.
She gives me a thumbs-up, which is basically her way of telling me to fuck off. There’s nothing else that I can pull from her right now, so I nod stiffly, turn, walk blindly down the corridor, and nearly plow into Talia. She’s posted up against the wall outside the medical bay, arms folded. The suit is new, probably custom—navy, tailored so sharp it might actuallydraw blood. Her heels are stiletto enough to leave dents in the linoleum, which, knowing her, is the point.
She watches me, eyes narrowed, not bothering to fake surprise. The look is patient, clinical, already dissecting my every microexpression. I try to shoulder past, but she pivots, steps directly into my path. She’s not tall, but she carries herself like someone who’s spent her whole life moving people out of her way.
“Trouble in paradise?” she says, voice pitched low. Her mouth twists at the corners, like she can barely keep from smirking.
I keep my hands at my sides, count to three before answering. “What do you want, Talia?”
She tilts her head, lets her gaze flick up and down my body, then over my shoulder at the closed med bay door. “You’re too pretty to go down with someone like her,” she murmurs, so soft I almost think I imagined it.
My palms ball into fists by pure instinct. I could say a hundred things, all of them worse than the last, but I just glare at her, then intentionally step around, like she’s a traffic cone and not a real obstacle. She lets me go, but I can feel her eyes on my back, cataloguing my every twitch, storing it up for later.
I make it three steps before I catch the flash of movement to my left. There’s a camera guy from the docu crew tucked into the alcove near the elevator, lens pointed right at us. The red light is on—blinking, recording, memorializing my fuckup in full HD for whatever audienceStorm Frontthinks they’re serving this week. When he sees me looking, the guy fumbles with the focus, lowers the camera, pretends to study his shoes.
It’s all been caught. Every second.
At this rate, it won’t be too long before I lose my shit.
16
SAGE
After Beau sees me in what is arguably the worst state I’ve ever allowed another person to witness, I wake up with my body feeling like it’s been rung out and left to dry on the floor. I’m technically fine, no fever, but I have this strange, hollow ache under my skin like something’s moved out and left all the lights on. The idea of breakfast curls wrong in my stomach. Food feels too loud. I stare at the fridge for a long time and settle on a splash of juice, just enough to remind my body I’m still in it.
It’s not the nausea that does me in though. It’s the button. The sound it makes when it pops loose; tiny, traitorous, a tick louder than the click of the kitchen clock. I stare down at the waist of my slacks and try again, but all the sucking-in and exhaling in the world won’t shrink the small, alien swell at my lower stomach. Last week the pants fit; now they cinch my hips in a vise. I stand there in my bedroom, top half already zipped and ironed, the bottom half bunched around my thighs like a snake trying to swallow itself.
There’s a hack I remember from junior high—take a hair tie, loop it through the buttonhole, then twist until it holds. I findone at the bottom of my sock drawer, stretched out and caked with stray threads. The motion of stooping to grab it nearly folds me in half. I ignore the spark of pain behind my pubic bone and hook the elastic through, once, twice, three times. It holds. I test it, squatting, standing. The bulge in my shirt is obvious, but if I keep my hands in my pockets maybe nobody will notice.
A wave of nausea rolls in, the kind that licks the roof of your mouth and makes you taste your own teeth. I breathe through it, slow and careful. There’s ginger tea in my go bag, two packets left. If I can just get through the commute, if I can just make it to the center, maybe I’ll survive the morning.
The subway is a slaughterhouse of old sweat and burnt coffee, so I take the long way, biking up along the river until the air stings my cheeks and the cold spikes my headache. When I get to the Storm facility, the first thing I do is hit the staff locker room, then dump both packets of tea into my water bottle and chug it, no time for steeping. It burns my tongue and does nothing for the twist in my gut, but at least it kills the aftertaste of toothpaste and shame.
At the front desk, Mia is already sorting through patient files, tapping at her tablet with the focus of a nuclear technician. She looks up, eyebrows arched, and does the three-second inventory she always does: eyes, posture, gait, hands. I force my face into a smile.
“You’re late,” she says, but not unkindly. “Three minutes.”
“I biked,” I say, which is true. “There’s a detour near the bridge.”
She buys it, but only because she’s distracted by a tray of incoming sample vials. The entryway is awash with the smells of pine disinfectant and athlete’s foot powder, which together form a new and hellish flavor of cleanliness. I hold my breath, duck into the back, and scan the schedule. The calendar is a losing lottery of overlapping appointments: one player with atorn labrum at 9:30, two linemen for post-op checks, a video conference with the new sports psychologist at noon. I move the appointments around, shuffling time blocks so that nobody will see the blank spots where I should be working on myself.
In the rehab suite, I organize the day’s tape rolls by color and tension, line up the ultrasound gels in order of expiry, and sterilize the exam tables even though they’re already spotless. It’s my armor, the ritual of making everything perfect so I don’t have to think about what’s going on inside my own body. I sit at my desk, open my laptop, and stare at the glowing blue grid of the intake sheet. Every third column jitters slightly, like the whole thing is held together by static.
Mia pops her head in, mouth full of protein bar. “You want me to hold your calls?”
I shake my head, immediately regret the movement. “No, I need the distraction.”
She shrugs, leans against the doorframe. “Suit yourself. Let me know if you want anything stronger than ginger tea.”
