Jack is propped up against the crisp white hospital pillows. Dark bruises shadow under his eyes from the hit, his bottom lip split and swollen, and there’s a gash on his left cheek and across the bridge of his nose. His knuckles are scraped and already swelling. A bandage peeks out from his hospital gown, wrapped around his ribs and shoulder where Jason’s stick caught him.
“What?” I snap.
The nurse sweeps in again. Like me, she isn’t swooning over Jack.
Sloane and Annie left to grab coffee, and Ethan’s in the hallway calling their parents with an update. I try my best to ignore Jack, but he’s still got that damn crooked grin on his face. And I swear to God, if I have to see those dimples one more time?—
“Worried, Izzy?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Murphy.”
“Murphy?” His voice cracks a little higher than normal, probably the painkillers they’ve given him.
But that doesn’t matter. Using his last name only seems to please him more.
With a sigh, I return to scrolling my phone, mindlessly shuffling through emails, anything to distract me. I’m tired, and I can’t seem to focus. I knew I shouldn’t have come to the game tonight.
“I think you might be worried,” he whispers.
I snap my gaze back to his. “If you want to have your brains bashed in, that’s none of my business.”
“He deserved it.” Jack grips the thin woven hospital blanket and pushes himself upright more, twisting his torso so he’s closer to me. “Glad you came tonight.”
The hint of sincerity in his voice, that rough Boston tumble, sharp like a strong whiskey double, pulls my attention. To his eyes, his mouth, the dark stubble shadowing his jaw.
He really is beautiful.
I nod, my mouth suddenly dry. It’s like even my body forgets what it was doing because my phone tumbles out of my hand and bounces against the tan linoleum floor at my feet. When I reach to grab it, the doctor returns with Jack’s coach, who fills up the doorway.
“Your girlfriend can stay,” the nurse says, checking his IV.
Jack’s coach adjusts his hat, swiping his hand over his hair, then glares toward the hospital bed.
“Girlfriend?” Jack repeats, as if testing the word out for the first time. I don’t know his dating history, and don’t want to, but the way he says it, folding his arms across his chest and grinning, makes me want to forget I ever heard the words from his lips. “Izzy? My girlfriend? I move fast when I find a good thing.”
“No!” I say. “You… I’ll step outside. Don’t want to interrupt… I mean, I don’t…”
“Everything okay?” He chuckles, everyone’s eyes fixed on me as my brain completely short-circuits because Jack Murphy just insinuated I was his girlfriend.
“Fine. Great.” I try to duck around the doctors but get tangled up in the privacy curtain. I battle with the flimsy gray waffle-knit fabric until I’m free and burst into the hallway, searching for a place to hide.
Any place but here. Any room where I’m not stuck with that infuriatingly smug hockey player. Far away so I don’t need to hear that deep chuckle that feels like a rough caress.
Annie and Sloane return with coffee just as the doctor and coach file out of Jack’s room, both looking satisfied enough with whatever updates they got. Annie presses a cup into my hand.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” I lie.
She doesn’t look convinced, but Ethan’s already heading back inside, so we follow. He’s hovering over his brother’s hospital bed with a frown.
“I don’t need a babysitter. Not my first concussion.”
“That’s the problem, you fucking ass,” Ethan grumbles. “It’s your second in eight months.” He twirls his keys around his finger, his backward hat faded, wrinkles gathered around his hazel eyes. “I’ll run to your place and grab an overnight bag, then bring the truck around and meet you all outside. You’re coming with us for the night. We need to keep an eye on you.”
“They wouldn’t be discharging me if I wasn’t going to be okay.”
“You heard the doctor. You’re off the ice for at least two weeks. You’re staying at our place for the night. Twenty minutes,” Ethan snaps, squeezing Sloane’s hand before he rushes out of the room.
