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Chapter Forty-Two
I knock at the door and wait for it to open.
When it doesn’t even after a couple of minutes, I knock again. Well, I bang my fist on the door until it’s snatched open, and there he is.
Frowning.
And naked.
“Why are you naked?” I ask, looking at his sweaty and heaving chest.
“What —”
“And panting?”
That frown of his thickens. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t —”
I put a hand on his chest — mostly just to cop a feel because he’s always been hard to resist when he’s all sweaty — and push him back so I can enter.
His childhood home.
I’ve been here before, of course.
Lots of times when Callie and I were in high school, and I never missed a chance to come over and watch her big brother like the perv I was. And I always thought that their home was beautiful. Not because they had fancy things but because all the things that they had were accumulated through the years. They were well-used and loved. They meant something to the people who lived here.
A perfect house for a perfect family.
But now I know how wrong I was.
They weren’t a perfect family. They were — are — just that: a family. With their own flaws and cracks and issues. While I still like this house, I don’t like the fact that he’s stuck here alone. With all the memories and history.
I hear the door snapping shut. “Why aren’t you at the hospital? You —”
I turn around to face him. “You never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Why are you naked? Well,” I look him up and down and find that he’s wearing his infamous gray sweatpants, “half-naked. And panting.”
He’s still doing that by the way, his chest going up and down with his harsh breaths. As he watches me like I’ve lost my mind. I raise my eyebrows at him when he still hasn’t answered my question.
Then with a sharp breath, he does. “I was out back, running drills.”
“Why aren’t you back in New York, running them with your team? You’ve got an away game in a few days,” I ask, even though I know the answer; my brother told me.
He said that Ledger will stay here for the next couple of days and will sit out the next game. Apparently, Conrad and the others were completely onboard with it.
“I’m taking a break for the next couple of days.”
“Why, did you punch someone again?” I quip, trying to yank his chain.
His jaw clenches. “Unfortunately, no.”
“So then —”
“Why do you think?”
For me.
I knew that too. No, my brother didn’t have to tell me; I figured it out on my own.
Turns out, there are a lot of things that he’s been doing for me.
This latest one is because of the scare I’d had day before yesterday. They kept me under observation for twenty-four hours and let me go with clear instructions to relax and take it easy for the next few days. My brother and Callie picked me up and had every intention of taking me home with them.
But I had them drop me off here instead.
Something they both were very happy about, if Callie’s breath of relief and my brother’s muttered, ‘about fucking time’ were anything to go by.
“Show me your room,” I tell him next.
“What?”
“It’s upstairs, isn’t it? Second floor.”
“What the —”
I spin around and start to waddle toward the stairs. It’s kinda intimidating, climbing all those stairs by myself, but I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that. Because someone is going to come to my rescue.
And in the next second, he does.
He grabs my biceps to stop me, and he does it so gently that I have to consciously keep myself from sighing. From leaning into him, his strong, heated body. Into his care.
He turns me to face him, again gently, which is in total contrast to the expression on his face.
Tight and thundering.
A frown on his forehead. A tic in his jaw and the hollows on his cheeks standing out.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls.
“Going up to your room,” I tell him, trying to smell his cinnamon-y scent mixed in with his musk.
“Why do —”
“Because I want to see it.”
I do.
I have wanted to see it for as long as I can remember. Back then, because I was so obsessed with him and everything that he did. Now, because during one of our bath time conversations, he told me that whenever he comes to visit, he always stays in his room. Even though there’s no need for it. It’s just something he does out of habit and he hates it.
Almost as much as he hates the house.
“Okay.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, his fingers tightening and loosening around my arm. “Why the fuck aren’t you at the hospital?”
“Because they let me go.”
He exhales a sharp breath. “Why in fuck’s name would they do that? I told them —”
