Four seconds.
“Noooo!” I fisted my shirt over my heart. “CAGE!”
He brought the ball back to his chest, protecting it, then heran with it.
Three seconds.
Ducking his head and hunching his shoulders, he collided head first with a defender.
Two seconds.
All eyes in the suite shifted from me to him as he fell to the ground.
One second.
I banged my hands against the glass. “CAGE!”
With the clock stopped at one minute, my world laylifelesson the field. Coaches, trainers, and doctors rushed to him and that fucking eerie silence spread through the stadium.
Gretchen hugged my back. “It’s okay, he’ll be okay.”
I shook my head, tears bleeding down my face.
Fuck fate.
Fuck premonitions.
Fuck life.
Ben died and I lived. Bullshit… in that moment I was far from alive. If Cage left, I wanted to go too.
CAGE
“Help… me…”My words found no voice. My lungs begged for air. I couldn’t move.
Before the doctors got to me, I saw it on my teammates’ faces—fear.
Why wouldn’t my hands move? My legs… I could feel them, but I couldn’t move them. My lungs… what the fuck was wrong with my lungs. Why couldn’t I breathe? Tiny puffs of air, that’s all I could take. It wasn’t enough.
They asked me so many questions as they went through all their checks with me.
“Bring your legs together,” one of the doctors instructed.
I couldn’t.
Lake. She knew.
They screwed off my face mask and eased me onto the board, strapping me down while someone held both sides of my helmet.
I was paralyzed.
I couldn’t breathe.
Lake. She knew.
“Can you give the crowd a thumbs up?” one of the doctors asked.
My thumb moved, more like a twitch, but that was all. Over seventy-thousand people in the stadium, and all I could hear was my heart. It felt weak.
