Page 62 of Blindside Sinner

I stumble and fall. The black comes for me—and this time, I let it.

31

SLOAN

My heart is in my throat. I watched Beck go down. I swear I could hear his head crack against the ice. And then I watched him fall a second time after only a single step.

After that, he didn’t get up again.

The air sucked out of the building like the entire place was holding its breath. I look for the fuck who cross-checked him.Duverger. It’s a name I’m never going to forget.

They’re trying to get him off the ice, but he’s a lot of man for just two guys to move. When Dix and Adrian help roll him onto his side, I can see Beck’s face is cut and the ice is stained red with his blood.

I can’t just sit here and watch. I need to get to him.

By the time my head realizes what my body is doing, I’m running down the stairs to meet the medical team carrying Beck off on a stretcher. Security guards are bellowing at me, but I don’t give a shit.

“Where are you taking him?” I scream as I jog alongside the stretcher. No one’s listening to me, and the panic rolls up my throat. I can’t let them leave me behind. “Where the fuck are you taking him?”

I grab the shirt of one of the ambulance people and hold on so that he has to look at me.

“Seattle Presbyterian,” the man answers. “Are you his wife?”

“Yes.”

It’s just a little lie. Just so I can ride in the ambulance with him. I could theoretically follow in the car, but as freaked out as I am, I don’t think anyone in Seattle wants me on the road driving right now.

The EMT sighs and tells me to follow him.

It takes what feels like forever for the ambulance to deliver us to the hospital. It’s then another bout of forever for the tests, for the doctors, for someone to come out and tell me that Beck is back in his room and I can go see him now.

I burst through the door without bothering to knock. He’s awake and he has six stitches in his forehead over his eye. When I see him grin weakly, I can finally breathe again.

“You look like shit,” I whisper, my voice crumbling to bits.

“You really know how to make a guy feel special,” he croaks back.

I laugh, mostly so I don’t cry instead. “That was awful. That was really, really awful.”

“You should have felt it from my end.”

“Does your head hurt?” I wince as soon as I ask the question. I’m Captain freakin’ Obvious. The man just had his skull cracked open by a blindside hit—of course it hurts.

He nods slowly, eyes closed, and there’s a part of me, a tiny little minuscule part, that wants to kiss it better.

The other ninety-nine point nine percent of me squashes that urge dead on arrival.

I sink to a seat in the visitor’s chair next to his hospital bed. “Is there anything I can do? I feel useless just sitting here.”

“You mean like hold my hand because I’m scared?” He smiles. “Calm yourself. I’m fine. As a matter of fact, if you want to go home, you can. I can catch a ride with…” He looks around like he might see someone volunteering to take him home. “I can get a Lyft, I guess.”

The words are out of my mouth before I can think how they’ll sound: “Over my dead body.”

That infuriating grin of his flashes again before another wave of pain rinses it away. “I don’t think your murder is necessary. Not just yet, anyway.”

The relief of the moment surges in my blood, and I have a sudden urge to throw myself on him and hug until he hugs me back. I have to curl my nails into my palms to keep from grabbing the bed rail and vaulting on top of him, just so I can touch him and make sure he’s real and here and okay.

I’ve made enough of a fool of myself already.

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