EIGHT
Milk
Deacon
I’m half-asleepon the couch when something pokes my shoulder.
“Hey,” Dash whispers about as softly as a six-three right winger is able. “Still alive?”
I grunt. “Unfortunately.”
“Good. Coach D would string me up like Christmas lights if I let you die.” He squints at me, phone light in my face. “Follow my finger.”
“I’m going to follow my fist into your face if you don’t move that light.”
He smirks, satisfied I’m not brain-dead. “Wake me if you start choking on your tongue. Before I check on you again in?—”
“I don’t need to be checked on. This isn’t my first concussion.”
He moves back to the cot. “You go into a coma, I’m unplugging your life support out of sheer spite.”
“That’s friendship.” I chuckle silently.
He moans as he sinks into the cot, and two minutes later, he’s snoring loud enough to rattle the walls.
I start drifting again, until soft footsteps move across the hardwood. Then, a feather-light tap to my knee.
“Deacon?”
Her voice. Soft. Uneasy.
I crack an eye. Claudia stands over me in pajamas, holding Savannah’s baby monitor like a lifeline when she’s just steps away.
“You okay?” she whispers.
I should tell her to go to bed. That I’m fine. That Dash has the idiot-on-concussion-watch duty. But the truth is, I like her voice breaking through the dark.
“Still here,” I rasp.
She kneels beside the couch, hair loose and messy and unreal in the glow of the monitor’s light. She doesn’t touch me, but she’s close enough that I feel the warmth of her skin.
“Concussion protocol,” she murmurs. “You should be checked every few hours. I don’t want to wake up and find?—”
“Me dead on the couch?” I finish, amused.
She winces. “Something like that.”
“Dash has alarms set. He’s doing shifts.” I angle a lazy smirk her way.
Her mouth twitches. The smallest smile. God, she has no idea what that does to me.
“Good,” she says. “Though honestly? I’d be the one stuck explaining to the paramedics how you drank breast milk and then died on my watch.”
I grin slowly. “Worth it.”
She rolls her eyes, and she tries to stand. I catch her wrist lightly, just a touch. No pressure.
“Claudia.”
