Page 113 of Puck Happens

Gently, I sat Liv down on the bench, but I wouldn’t let her go. Not until I could see her gather herself. I looked into her eyes. They didn’t appear dilated, which was a good sign. I’d seen enough concussions in my day to recognize the look of a badly rung bell. I didn’t think she was concussed, but I knew something else had broken deep inside her.

“I’m changing, we’re getting your shit, then I’m taking you to a hospital to get checked out.”

She didn’t say anything, just reached up and placed her hand against my face. Her eyes said everything I needed to hear.

“No, babe,” I said. “I didn’t drop you.”

23

Dillon

She refused to go to a hospital.

I insisted she see a doctor. So, we settled on an urgent care not far from her apartment. The doctor checked her out and said she didn’t see any signs of a concussion. There didn’t even appear to be a lump on her head. According to the doctor, Liv’s cheek had taken the brunt of the fall. She had a bruise forming under her eye that was going to be painful.

Liv answered all the questions like she was completely checked out and I knew she just wanted to lie down and pull the covers over her head.

I wanted to take her back to my place, but she insisted we go back to her apartment because that’s where her stuff was.

She didn’t tell me to leave when she unlocked the door to her place, but she didn’t exactly invite me inside, either. I just followed her through the small living room to the bedroom and waited.

She was in her head.Soin her head right now. Replaying the accident, reliving the pain and suffering that came after it. I didn’t know where she was, I only knew she wasn’t here with me and I hated it.

It felt like I couldn’t touch her. It felt like she was far away. It felt like…

Like I’d lost her.

Ironic, considering I’d pushed her away.

She took off the Bruisers t-shirt and stared down at it. All she’d wanted to do was help those guys and one of them had done that to her as a thank you. I was going to kill whoever was responsible. And it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough for having done this to her. Having put her in this state.

“I liked being a part of a team,” she whispered. “It’s why I skated pairs. And the guys…” she took a deep shuddery breath. “I thought we were a team.”

She balled the shirt up and threw it in the corner.

She peeled off her leggings like she didn’t care that I was standing in the doorway. Wearing only a sports bra and a pair of black cotton panties, she retrieved a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt from a dresser drawer and pulled them on. Comfort clothes. That’s what she’d wanted.

She crawled into bed and rolled to her side, facing the wall.

I should leave. She didn’t want me here. She was about to have some major crying jag and it was going to make me as uncomfortable as hell. I hated it when the women in my life cried. Wendy, or worse, my mom. It made me feel useless because I couldn’tdoanything. Couldn’t fix it. I could only sit there and feel it all with them.

Maybe that was the point.

Liv lifted her arm and waved me over. Like she wanted me inside the room. Maybe even in the bed with her.

“Get naked please. I want your penis, but not like that. Okay?” she said quietly.

I shouldn’t have understood what she meant. But, I knew exactly what she wanted. My body heat. Physical connection. Comfort.

In seconds I stripped off everything, dropping my jeans near the bed, and slid in behind her on the far too small mattress. I pressed my dick into the small of her back, so she could feel me there. I wrapped my arms around her chest and pulled her back against me, my knees against the backs of hers. I tucked my nose in behind her ear and just breathed her in.

Fuck. I’d missed her.

I’d been short tempered and angry all week. I didn’t want to sleep in a bed that she wasn’t in. I didn’t want to eat a meal where I wasn’t sitting across from her. I’d done a pretty good job of not showing her how I felt, but inside I was a raw mangled mess of emotions.

This, here, now, with her in my arms, was the first peace I’d felt in days.

From the moment we met, she had filled up this space inside me I hadn’t known even existed. And this whole week, that space had throbbed with emptiness. A fucking echo chamber in my chest that just kept asking,where is she? Where is she?

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