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Chapter Three
Malcolm
A week after they cleared my concussion, set the bones in my leg, and transferred my follow-ups to my orthopedic surgeon at home, I was allowed to fly.
Jacks, who had been at the hospital with me for that week, offered to forego the rest of his tour and fly home with me. Essentially, he offered to babysit me.
Fuck that.
“Don’t be an idiot. You just got back here.”
It’s true—he spent over nine months taking care of his mom when she was going through her cancer treatment, and since he got a fiancé and a healthier mom out of the deal, he’s not complaining. Not that he would anyway—Jacks is the silent-and-steady type—the kind that methodically pushes through until shit goes his way.
I’m a bulldozer, crashing through windows and doors and people until I get where I fucking want to be. Hence, the double broken leg. But, despite all that, I’m a big boy, and regardless of what Jacks or Brooks or any other idiot thinks, I wasn’t actually aiming to break myself on that run. I just wasn’t afraid to let it happen.
“What in the ever-loving fuck is the difference?” Hunter asked when I told him that earlier in the week.
“Don’t act like you’re afraid of pain, either,” I tossed back at him. “Pain is part of the job, and you know it. If I went at every run worried about the fall, I’d never drop in again.”
“Or you’d drop in with a little less aggression,” he snapped. “I get it; part of your style is the constant offensive—the fact that you push yourself to heights reminiscent of Burnquist and Way, but for fuck’s sake, Mal, for the past two years you’ve thrown some shit that you’re lucky you survived.” I wanted to yell at him that surviving was relative—that being alive wasn’t all there was to it, but I wasn’t ready to go there, and I knew it’s what he expected.
So, I took a different approach.Deflect.
“Impending nuptials have made you a pussy.”
Jacks narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t take the bait and storm out to leave me be like I had hoped. Resilient bastard.
“Or,” he said, “maybe being in love with my own girl has shown me what it must be like for you missing yours all these years.”
Goddamn fucking Hunter. We were brothers—had been closer than most blood-related family our entire lives. When my mom left, it was Hunter’s family who swept me in. When my dad died—a slow and painful death from brain cancer after beating the ever-loving shit out of me for most of my life—it was Hunter who sat with me, made the funeral arrangements, helped me deal with lawyers and inheritance, and selling everything. And when Nala Jansen came into my life like a whirlwind, stealing my heart and then forcing me to break it when she was fifteen, it was Hunter who instinctively knew I needed to get the fuck out and stay gone.
Now it’s Hunter who knows I need to go back, that I need to find a way to mend my heart, and get my girl—or I might not ever be whole again.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I defended, but we both knew that’s what it was, a lame defense. Because he knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Sure thing, Mal. We can pretend you aren’t throwing harder, more dangerous tricks every time you enter a competition just so you can forget, even for a second, that there’s a gaping hole inside of you.”
I didn’t say anything after that, and Jacks, being the calm motherfucker he is, didn’t either. Not until he dropped me off at the airport this morning.
“Podium,” I said, holding up my fist.
“Podium,” he repeated, knocking his into it. “Kiss my fiancé when you get there—tell her I’ll be coming for her in less than three weeks.”
“To hell with that. You talk dirty to her on your own time. I’ll just give her the kiss and hope for your sake she doesn’t switch her affection to me when she realizes what a real man tastes like.”
Hunter just grinned that smug look at someone completely secure in his lady. Bastard. “Oh, she knows she’s got a real man. Besides, it would be like falling in love with yourself. You and Isa are cut from the same cloth—punch first, ask questions later.”
True. Isa was a Colombian spitfire more prone to tantrums like me than calm and collected lists like Hunter.
“Hey, Mal,” he said, halting my slow progress out of the car.
“I already told you—I’m not relaying dirty messages to Isabel. Use your phone and your imagination.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t need an imagination, I have FaceTime. Besides, that’s not what I need to tell you.”
“Hustle up, Sally, I have to get on a few trains to make my gate, and I’m slow as fuck as is.”
“You have twelve weeks to win her back.” That stopped me. Hunter nodded. “Twelve weeks before your leg will be in any kind of shape to start training. For most it would be closer to sixteen, but I know you and your superhuman-healing rates, so I’ll give you three months instead of four. If I were you?” he said with a raised brow. “I’d take those twelve weeks and figure out how to get down on my knees and beg. Maybe then when you come back you’ll actually be here, ready, instead of half here, half on the beach with her.”
