I do. He's so bossy when I'm not.
Cole groans. “Jesus. I’m gonna throw myself out the window. Why didn’t you flatline permanently if this was what I had to come back to?”
I give him a lazy smile with a mouthful of muffin. “Because you’d cry without me.”
“Bitch, I did cry—”
Elias throws a napkin at his face. And for the first time since the crash, everything feels a little bit normal again.
Night falls like a fucking countdown.
Elias is at home, our home, moving like a storm through my apartment, texting me while he stuffs gear and Reapers jerseys into his bag. I watch the messages light up my phone screen, one after the other:
I don’t want to go without you.
It doesn’t feel right, sir.
I hate this.
I’m packing but it feels like I’m leaving you behind.
What if we lose again?
What if I fail you?
I smirk at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard, ready to send something reckless, something that’ll make him skate harder, hit meaner, burn hotter, but I stop myself. Because the truth is, I don’t want a message. I want him. I want to see his face when I walk through that tunnel. I want the moment to hit him like a punch to the chest—the shock, the relief, the disbelief. I want him to feel it in his bones when he sees me standing there, alive, upright, and coming straight for him.
“Mr. Kade,” a voice says from the doorway, dragging me back from the fantasy. “You called.”
It’s the doctor. The same one who dug into my chest, rewired my lungs, and stitched me back together when I was trying my hardest to bleed out on his table. He steps inside, bracing for a fight he doesn’t want to have. “How are you feeling?”
I look him dead in the eye. No hesitation. No softness. “Like I could crash again.”
He blinks, stunned by the honesty, or the insanity. “That’s… concerning.”
I grin at him. The kind of smile that normally comes right before a bad idea or a good fight. “I need you to let me go tomorrow morning.”
His eyes narrow immediately. “Absolutely not. You’re not fully stable. Your body hasn’t even regulated post-op. There’s swelling—”
“Put your best doctor on me,” I interrupt. “Shit, you come with me. Take a short vacation. First-row seats at the Cup Final. Five-star hotel. You’ll eat better than you ever have in your life.”
“You need rest, Mr. Kade.”
“I need to be there.”
He folds his arms. Unmoved.
I exhale, then stare straight at him. “Look, my boy is going to win that game in two days. And I need to be there to put a ring on his finger on center ice in front of thousands of people.”
Silence.
Then I drop my voice, cold and hard. “I’m going whether you let me or not.”
The doctor looks at me long and hard, the kind of look that strips you bare and measures every reckless impulse threaded through your bones. His eyes narrow, his jaw works, and I can see the exact moment he starts calculating all the ways this could end with paperwork, lawsuits, and a very public scandal. But he keeps staring as if he’s waiting to find even one sign that I’ll back down.
Finally, he exhales. Not sharply, no, this is a long, heavy sigh. The kind that carries weight. Defeat and resignation. “You’re a goddamn pain in my backside.”
I smirk, leaning back enough to make it cocky. “You’ve seen my team.”
