“Would you fucking stop?” Sean growled. Good. I was starting to think I’d never get him out of this funk. “How can you be so fucking perky when they’re talking about shit like the fact that you might never see out of that eye again?”
One thing I learned about Sean the first week we knew one another that had never changed: he turns into a bitch when he’s sleep deprived. And seeing as he hadn’t left my side, I was pretty sure he was overtired by this point.
“Oh, I don’t know…maybe because it’s better than sitting here crying over something that’s not certain. And even if it is, I can’t change it.” I rolled to my side, a small movement that hurt more than it should, and squeezed Sean’s fingers until he finally looked at me. “Look, what’s done is done. I think we both know that my odds of staying in Chicago were already slim to begin with. Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me it’s time to grow up and get a real job.”
It sounded good, and I’d been wondering how much longer I was going to play, but now that it was a real possibility and out of my hands, the very thought was terrifying. Baseball had been my life for so long, I wasn’t so sure I was ready for this to be the end of my playing career. Then again, if it was my swan song, I’d be leaving in style.
I didn’t give Sean a chance to respond because I knew it’d be more bullshit about how I needed to think positive. He liked to give me a hard time about how I never take anything seriously, but I do that because I’m a devout realist. Sometimes, laughter is the only way to keep from crying over shit I can’t control. If you ask me, Sean’s the one with a more optimistic outlook on the world most of the time; except when he’s tired and stressed out.
“Now that that’s out of the way, why don’t you open that door and see if the doc is out there waiting for us to get done making out,” I teased.
Sean’s cheeks flushed an adorable shade of red and I realized how my voice carried through the room. The meds had shut down the already weak filter between my mouth and my brain and I hadn’t considered who might be standing on the other side of the door.
Coach and Ike were both supposed to be here sometime before I left, not to mention teammates or anyone else who might decide to drop by. The league talked a good game about not being discriminatory, but there were plenty of ways to get rid of a player if his teammates weren’t comfortable around him.
“Yeah…I’ll…” He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he knocked the chair over as he stood, pointing at the door. “Mason, your mouth is going to get us both in trouble one of these days.”
“If I’m lucky,” I gaped at him and he winked at me.
* * *
Sean
Rather than sneak outthe service entrance, Mason insisted that I push his wheelchair right through the front doors. The media was camped outside, carefully maintaining a respectable distance so they weren’t kicked off the property, but they descended on us the moment the doors opened. I didn’t have a head injury and these clowns gave me a migraine with all their questions.
Mason waved, but didn’t attempt to answer their inquiries other than to remind the reporters that there would be a press conference soon to discuss the incident. Because of the unique circumstances, the press managers from both teams thought it’d be a good idea for Mason and me to make an appearance together as a way to show there were no hard feelings.
We wove our way north out of the city on a series of surface streets and country highways before looping back to make sure no one was following us home. Mason’s parents were running some errands and planned to meet up with us later. I was pretty sure it was their way of giving us some time to reconnect without worrying about having them eavesdropping.
Today was the first time I regretted not buying a posh house in a gated community. It would have been nice to have that added measure of security to keep the photogs from stalking us.
All things considered, Mason was doing quite well. He’d rack up frequent flyer miles at the clinic to make sure he didn’t have any long-term effects to overcome, but the doctor who checked him this morning seemed to think he’d have a full recovery. His near future would include regular visits at the concussion clinic, as well as physical, occupational, and speech therapy, on top of the regular doctors and plastic surgeon.
It was startling when the doctor took off the bandages. Mason had stitches running along the left side of his mouth and his skin was a kaleidoscope of color. The only bandage they replaced was the one over his eye, hoping that if he was allowed to relax it, he wouldn’t have any permanent vision loss.
While he got settled, I rummaged through the freezer to see if there was anything to make for dinner. I knew I’d likely be kicked out of the kitchen as soon as Sean’s mom got to the house, but I wanted to at least pretend that I knew how to be a good host. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to choose from, and even less as I threw away the food that was freezer burned.
“Mason, I have to run to the store. You going to be okay for a bit?” I yelled up the stairs. When he didn’t answer, I rushed to the second floor to find out what was going on. That proved to be a huge mistake when I opened our bedroom door just as he stepped out of the bathroom.
Steam billowed out of the room, creating an ethereal haze around my lover, who was wearing nothing but a towel wrapped low around his hips and a cocky smirk on his face. I was about to cuss him out because he wasn’t supposed to get the patch of gauze over his eye wet, but I noticed that he was dry from the neck up.
“You keep gawking at me like that and I might start getting ideas,” Mason teased. He stalked toward me and I backed up, hoping his gaze didn’t travel lower than my chest because I had a problem building below the waist.
My body longed for him, but he wasn’t up for it, no matter how he taunted me. “I’ve missed you, baby. I hope you don’t mind waiting on the rubdown, but I can think of plenty of other things we could do.”
I swallowed hard as Mason continued closing the gap between us. My mouth was dry and I struggled to form words. “Mace, what are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, reaching up to run his fingers down the length of my chest.
“Babe, we can’t.” The little voice in the back of my head screamed for me to shut up and let Mason decide how much he was up for. “You had a head injury less than twenty-four hours ago.”
Mason took one more step toward me, stopping when he was so close his breath ghosted across my neck. His hand slid down to rest on my hip. “Yeah, but that head isn’t required for what I want to do with you right now,” he whispered.
It would have been so easy for me to close my eyes and take what he wanted to give me, but I couldn’t. No matter how much I wanted him to lean in and brush his lips against mine, I knew it wouldn’t stop there. There was no way I could feel his warm, still damp body pressed against mine and not reach for the towel barely hanging on his hips.
I placed my hands on his chest and pushed him away. When I opened my eyes, I saw him staring at me through one sad, green eye. I wondered for a moment if my heart would break twice as much if not for the bandage covering the other. “Mason, stop. We need to take it easy.”
“Fuck that,” he argued. “We only have a few days before you’re going to have to leave again, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a few cuts and scrapes keep me from showing you how much it sucked being away from you.”
