Page 64 of Flagrant Foul
He gives a tiny shrug. An actual physical one.I know, but it doesn’t matter. It’s you.
I wish I could say it doesn't mean anything to me. That my heart isn’t clattering with hope. That being captain isn’t something I’ve dreamed of, or that I don’t care about things like this. But I do. I care so fucking much. I want this, and more than that, I have this feeling, deep in my bones, that I’ll be good at it. That I’m meant for it, and it’s meant for me.
“I nominate Sev,” Teddy says in a loud, clear voice that breaks my heart.
He smiles at me immediately after he says it, and arteries and chambers quickly knit back together.
It’s too much. A heart isn’t made to be broken and unbroken in such quick succession. Hearts aren’t made to survive things like this.
There’s a split-second pause, and then someone behind me says, “I second Delorean.”
There’s a chorus of “Yay,” “Sev,” and “Go, Sixty-nine.”
Hands go up around the room in favor of me. Many hands.All the hands.
I look around the room in disbelief. There are faces all around me saying my name. Blue eyes and green eyes and brown eyes. All of them are looking at me and telling me the exact same thing:it’s you.
I find Teddy in the haze. Our eyes meet and the noise goes away.What if I’m not good enough?I ask.
He scoffs and shoots back a complicated, silent sentence I find hard to decipher.
I turn to Coach to gauge his reaction. To my endless shock, I find the tension between his brows has faded. He looks pleased by my nomination, not outraged, not amused, not even surprised.
“Any other nominations?” he checks.
Silence.
“Okay, great. That makes it nice and simple. Delorean, you’re captain of the Blackeyes until further notice.”
“Why did you do that?” I ask Teddy as I drive us to St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital. “Was it because…?”
“I didn’t do it because I love you.”
My heart breaks again. More than breaks. It doesn’t crack down the middle like the pictures of broken heartsyou normally see. It shatters into tiny pieces because of how much I hate the way he says he loves me. Casually. Like it’s a fact. What I hate more, what takes the tiny, shattered pieces of my heart and grinds them into a pulp, is the fact that I feel it and can’t say it back.
Teddy glances at me and hits me with a blistering blue gaze. “Okay, fine, maybe I did it a little because of that, but mainly, I did it because everyone was looking at you, and it made total sense. It’s what people do. They look to their leader in times of uncertainty. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have. You’re not only the obvious choice, Sev, you’re the only choice.”
I hold on to the steering wheel as tightly as I can and breathe through my nose to stop myself from pulling the car over and kissing the ever-loving shit out of him.
It’s been a difficult couple of days. An unpleasant whiff of disinfectant clings to most of the members of our team. The hospital smell. There’s a heavy presence hanging over us.
We all want to be in Tampa with Bryce, but instead, we’re here, in New York. We won against the Rangerstonight. It was a pretty good game, actually. Close. It went to a penalty shoot-out, and Teddy nailed it. He stopped a low shot that came off the back of a late swerve. There aren’t many goalies that would come close to saving a shot like that, never mind catching it in their fucking glove and tossing it to a kid in the crowd like it was easy.
We’re in the bus on our way to the hotel now. Ordinarily, we’d be celebrating the W, but we aren’t in the mood to celebrate tonight.
I’m glad we won. We wore pink armbands for Kell and baby Amelia, and it meant a lot to be able to call Bryce when the final buzzer went and tell him the score. It did. It’s just that it felt a little empty.
I’m feeling a little empty.
I’ve been feeling all the things, really. There’s been a lot going on, and it’s made it hard to process my emotions, but my heart is heavy. So heavy it feels like a weight in my chest. It’s not just heavy. It’s achy too. It feels raw, like my pericardium has been sanded down, worn away, exposing the organ to the elements.
It’s not just about what’s happening to Bryce and his family. It’s been like this since Teddy and I had our big conversation. Spending hours at the hospital has been tough. The good news is that Kell is doing much better.They were able to stop the bleeding, and her doctor says she should be able to have more children if she wants. Amelia is still struggling to breathe on her own, but the doctors seem cautiously optimistic that she’ll be okay. Bryce is trying so fucking hard to keep it together, and it’s hard to see him like that. He loves Kell so much, and having a baby is something he’s dreamed of for years.
I feel guilty as fuck about being made captain under these conditions, and even worse for being happy about it.
It’s not even permanent. It’s pathetic that I’m taking it so seriously.
What’s more pathetic is that I simply cannot stop thinking about Teddy. I should have been thinking about Kell and Amelia on the plane. Instead, I spent the entire flight replaying every word Teddy had said to me today. Every look he’d given me. Every smile.
