“Are you serious?” Mac demanded, his tone hard and, maybe she was being a bit fanciful, tinged with hurt.
“Hell, Rory,” Kade murmured.
“It’s my professional opinion that your arm is insufficiently healed to play competitive hockey. I am not going to watch you undo all the hard work we’ve done and I am certainly not going to watch you injure yourself further.”
Mac rubbed the back of his neck and he darted a scowl at Kade. “Pretend you’re not here,” he told him.
“Done,” Kade promptly replied.
Mac turned his attention to her and she pushed her back into her seat, not sure what he was about to say. She just knew it would be important. “Rory, listen to me.”
She dropped her gaze and closed her eyes. When he looked at her like that, all open and exposed, she found it hard to concentrate.
“No, look at me...”
Rory forced her eyes open.
“I know that asking you to trust me is difficult for you. It’s not something you do easily. And I know I’m asking you to put aside your learning and your experience. You think that I believe I’m invincible or a superhero. I’m not. I know I’m not... I’m just someone who knows what he is capable of, what his body is capable of. This isn’t just a practice match. It’s the most important practice match of my life, of Kade’s life, of Quinn’s. If I sit it out I’m risking this team, my friends’ futures, my brothers’ futures. This isn’t about me and my ego.”
“It will be about you if you do more damage to your arm. Then neither you nor your team will have a future...or the future you want.” Couldn’t he see she was trying to protect him from himself? She was trying to be the voice of reason here?
“Trust me, Rory. Please, just this once. Trust me to know what I’m doing. Stand by me, support me. Do that by coming to the practice, make sure that my arm is taped correctly. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Be positive.”
“And if I don’t?” Rory demanded.
Mac just shrugged before quietly telling her that he’d play anyway.
“So, really, this entire argument has been a waste of time.” Rory turned away so he didn’t see the burning tears in her eyes. With blurry vision she noticed that Kade was turning down Mac’s street, and within a minute he stopped the car.
The silence was as heavy as the freighter that was making its way across the bay as Mac unclipped his seatbelt and opened his door.
“One of the interns will be along shortly with your luggage,” Kade told him, giving him a fist bump. Mac gripped his shoulder and squeezed before leaving the car. In the open doorway Mac bent his knees to look over his seat at Rory. “You joining me, Rory?”
No. She wanted to go home, pull on her pajamas, grab a glass of wine and cry. “I don’t think so.”
Mac gave her a sharp nod and his lips tightened with annoyance. “As you wish. I’m certainly not going to beg.”
“Like you would know how,” Rory muttered, and his eyes flashed as he slammed the door shut on her words.
Rory folded her arms across her chest and hoped Kade didn’t notice that her hands were shaking. “Can you take me home, Kade?”
“Yep. Can do. Come and sit up here with me.”
Ten
Was she just being stubborn, Rory wondered as Kade capably, and silently, maneuvered his very fancy sports car through the city streets? She’d always been the type of therapist who encouraged her patients to listen to their bodies, to tune in to how they were feeling. She generally listened. If they said they felt better, she trusted they were telling the truth. Why couldn’t she do that with Mac? Why was she balking?
Because there was so much at stake. This one decision could have far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences. Mac loved hockey above everything else and he was risking his entire career on a still fragile tendon and a practice match. She didn’t want him to lose all that he’d worked for. He might be willing to risk it, but she wasn’t prepared to sanction that risk. He was thinking of the team, she was thinking about him—only him.
There had to be another way. There was always another way. They just hadn’t thought about it yet.
“Would it be such a bad idea to let this corporation buy the Mavericks?” she abruptly asked Kade.
Kade considered his response. “It would definitely be different. They have a history of clearing the deck and changing all the management, the leadership. That would mean Quinn, Mac and I would be figuratively on the streets.”
“Other teams would snap you up,” Rory argued.
Kade nodded as he stopped at a traffic light. “Sure, but we wouldn’t be on the same team. We’ve been together for nearly fifteen years, Rory. We fight and argue and irritate each other to death but we know each other. We trust each other.”