Silas coughed out a laugh.
“It’s amazing what you can do when you think someone you love is hurt.”
I shut my eyes and nodded. What was the point in denial? No one was buying it anymore, if they ever did.
I loved Stella. Whether I’d tried to avoid it or not. I’d loved her as my friend for years, but it had escalated into something more—so slowly yet so fast I had no idea when it had truly started.
All I knew was that it had. And even though our lips had never touched, everything had changed, and there was no going back.
The one thing I knew for sure today was that the only place I wanted to go with Stella was forward.
Once I figured out how.
TWENTY-TWO
STELLA
“Hey, girl. How was the CT scan?” Bailee asked after I was wheeled back to my emergency-room bed.
“Thrilling,” I quipped, whispering a thank-you to the orderly after he settled me onto the hospital mattress. My head still pounded and my cheek was raw, but I hadn’t been dizzy or disoriented, other than when my face had first hit the floor.
Or when I’d thought Lee had been about to kiss me.
“I appreciate your sticking around, but you could have gone home,” I said, letting my sore head fall into the lumpy pillow. “I’m fine.”
“Carl has the kids, and I wouldn’t leave you in a hospital with a head injury. What kind of best friend does that?” She narrowed her eyes. “Besides, Lee asked me to stay here while he made some calls so you wouldn’t be alone when you came back.” She popped her brow. “Toldme, really.”
Lee shaking from head to toe at the notion of me being hurt, whispering how he couldn’t go through this again, messed with my head more than any outside impact today.
If Silas had come in two seconds later, my mouth would have been on Lee’s, and everything would have changed. But it already had; I’d just run out of room to deny it.
“He literally jumped over the railing to get to you. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then he scooped you up off the floor and carried you away. I half expected him to jog to the hospital with you in his arms.”
“Lee is just a good guy. He’s always been protective like that.”
I ignored Bailee’s scowl in my periphery.
“Jesus, Stella. How hard did you hit your head?”
As much as I would have loved to dismiss it as a hallucination, it was all real. His thumb gliding across my lips, the hungry yet desperate look in his blue eyes, how he’d held on to me as if he’d been afraid I’d slip away.
Once my head healed, we needed to talk. But despite knowing Lee for so many years and how the words had always come easily between us, I had no idea what to say or where to start.
“How did it go?” Lee asked, yanking the curtain open around my bed hard enough for the shrill scrape of the rings against the metal to aggravate the pain and make me wince.
“Sorry,” he whispered, bending over the bed. “How’s the pain?”
“Same. The tech said we’d have results in a half hour, but I’m fairly sure I don’t have a concussion and I’ll be fine. I can rest with an ice pack tonight.”
“We’ll see.” Lee’s lips twisted. “They can’t really tell on a scan for sure, so either way, you’re taking it easy for a couple of days.”
“Everyone okay in there?” I recognized Nate’s voice. “Is it okay to come in?”
“How did you get back here?” Lee asked.
“I have my ways.” Nate’s lips lifted in a slow grin. He was still in uniform, so his ways were most likely starstruck nurses and doctors clearing a path to let him go through.
“Ricky wanted to apologize.” I found Ricky Ruiz standing behind him when he pulled the curtain all the way to the side. I’d met him a couple of times when I’d brought Bennie to the stadium. He was a young player, early twenties, I guessed. The poor kid looked like he was going to cry as he peeled off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his short curls.
