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When I woke up the next morning, I was pretty sure I was in hell. So when a knock sounded on the door, I croaked, “Come in,” hardly caring who it was. I just needed some damn pain meds.
The door swung open and Hailee’s head peeked into the room. “Oh my god,” she hurried over to me, unshed tears in her eyes.
“I hope you’re not going to cry on me,” I said gruffly, “because I don’t do tears.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Perching gingerly on the edge of the bed, Hailee grabbed the box of pain meds and gave me two, handing me a glass of water to wash them down with.
A pained groan rumbled in my chest but I stuffed it down. “Thanks.”
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to go the ER?”
“Not gonna happen. But I’ll go see our physician Monday.”
“Coach is going to lose his shit.”
“It is what it is.”
“Jason don’t do that. Don’t downplay the fact you just threw away the play-offs to try to defend my honor.”
“Of course you think this about you, little miss ‘look at me’.” Even though it hurt like a bitch, I chuckled. The look on Hailee’s face was just too damn priceless.
“You mean, you didn’t do this to get Thatcher back for trashing the portraits?”
“Oh, I definitely got a couple of hits in for that.” I managed a wink despite the bruising around my eye. “But no, it wasn’t about you.”
“So what the hell… Felicity.” Her eyes widened. “This was all for Felicity.”
“How’d you guess?”
“Because this isn’t you. Well, it is, I mean you’re not exactly known for your cool headedness. But you wouldn’t risk everything, the play-offs, if it wasn’t important.” The understanding in her eyes was almost too much to bear. “What did he threaten to do?”
“He has some photos of us. Threatened to send them viral if I didn’t agree to the meet. I couldn’t do that to her, not after everything.” Flopping back onto the pillows, I stared up at the ceiling.
“So all this? Pushing her away, shoving Jenna in her face, acting like you didn’t care, it was all to distance yourself? To protect her?”
My eyes slid slowly to hers. “He knew she was someone to me. He knew she was my weakness, so yeah, I thought if I pushed her away, if I pretended I didn’t care, he’d forget about her. I didn’t know he had the images. He must have had one of his guys keeping tabs on me.”
“Oh, Jason.” Hailee did something she’d never done before; she grabbed my hand and squeezed gently. “You care. All this time you cared. You know you have to tell her, right?”
I gave her a pointed look.
“Jason, come on, she thinks you and Aimee—”
“Aimee is nothing to me.”
“I know that, but Felicity saw the way she jumped in to protect you. Put yourself in her shoes. She didn’t even know you had an ex.”
“Fuck,” I breathed out, pain splintering through me. Only this time, it wasn’t just the physical kind.
Everything was so fucking messed up.
“You have to fix this. Otherwise, it was all for nothing.”
That’s where she was wrong though.
It wasn’t all for nothing.
Because if I knew anything about relationships, about love, it was that you protected the people you cared about. You stood up for them and made sacrifices.
