“Where am I?” she asked as we entered the elevator.
“You are at the Hotel Madison where you stepped on a piece of beer bottle, but I have wrapped up your foot, and we’re off to get stitches.”
“What was the final score?” she asked.
“The heck does that matter?”
“Six to three,” Ezekiel said from behind me. “But I’m pretty sure you were about to stage a comeback and whip my ass.”
“Damn right I was,” she said.
Ezekiel gave a low chuckle, and a bell dinged to announce we’d blessedly made a straight shot down to the ground floor.
People’s heads turned as we walked through the lobby. The limo was already waiting. When Ezekiel Angelo asked for something, he got it. Immediately.
He leaned over the open door as I shifted Aubrey into a seat and picked up her heel to apply pressure to her wound. “I told the driver to take you to a doctor I know. We can’t have a star basketball player waiting in the emergency room, now can we?”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re the best, Zeke!” Aubrey said, her glazed eyes incongruent with her cheerful tone.
Grinning at her use of his nickname, he shut the door and off we went.
“Sorry about that,” Aubrey said as she leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” I said. I had that hollow feeling in my throat and stomach, the one you got when someone else was hurting and you were powerless to stop it. “It’s my fault. I should’ve never let you do that.”
“Let me,” she said with a snort. “Frost, I would’ve thought that you of all people would know that I’m going to do what I’m going to do.”
True, and she wasn’t the annoying kid sister always upending Zach’s and my plans, not anymore. “Does it hurt really bad?”
“Throbs like a sonuvabitch, but I’ve had cramps that were worse,” she said. “Just as long as I don’t look at it, I’ll be fine.”
Tough as she was, she’d always been this way about anything more than a minor cut or scrape. Once Zach and I had been wrestling in the front yard at Ms Ruth’s house. He’d accidentally busted my lip, but Aubrey had been the one to faint dead away.
I still had no idea how she’d made it through so many years of playing basketball. Bruises and pain didn’t phase her, but she always needed to take a moment at the sight of blood. She’d missed almost the entire second half of a regional playoff game in high school when someone busted her nose, but when she did come back to the court, she sunk the winning shot.
How could she have forgotten how clutch she was at basketball? Did it have something to do with tearing her ACL while playing in college? Try as she might, that was an injury she never quite overcame.
She sat up suddenly. “Where are my purse and shoes?”
“Right here,” I said, holding them both up. One of Ezekiel’s entourage had placed them in the limo beside us.
She slumped back against the seat.
I went back to applying pressure to her heel. “I wish I could take this pain for you.”
“Don’t be silly. Sorry I made you cut out early from the party. Hope I didn’t embarrass you in front of Ezekiel Angelo.”
“Are you kidding? You may have given me some leverage. How did you even make that three? Have you been playing on the sly?”
“Nope. That was divine intervention.” She opened her eyes but looked steadfastly forward and away from her foot clad in my undershirt, which was now soaked in blood. It was probably about to drip on the carpet of the limo.
“I said a little prayer,” she added in a small voice.
“I’m definitely a believer in the power of prayer now.”
“Hey! What are you saying about my basketball abilities?” She slapped my arm as the limo made a sharp turn and came to a stop.
