“Thomas! Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not.” I shook my head. “Every time I’m there, I hear other guys, other soccer players, talk about how good you are, and I just wish…”
I stopped again, looking away from her and over to the wall next to our bed. I felt her hand on my cheek, slowly turning me back to her.
“I’m yours,” she said softly. “I don’t care about those guys or what they say.”
“They can…they can do all this shit I can’t…”
“Thomas Malone!” Nicole yelled, and I cringed against the pillow. “Don’t you dare talk about yourself like that! You have made so much progress in the last few months, and I will not listen to you sell yourself short!”
“It’s true!” I insisted. “They could run around a field and kick a ball around with you. They could hold your fucking books between classes instead of needing a damn cane to get around.”
“Stop it!” she said. “Don’t make me call Justin! He said if you started feeling sorry for yourself again, I could, you know!”
I took a deep breath and blew it out my nose. Most of the time, that kind of shit really didn’t bother me, but when I saw those guys looking at her and talking about her, and I knew I no longer had what they had, it just about killed me.
“Sorry,” I finally said. “It doesn’t get to me that much, just…sometimes.”
“I know,” Nicole said as she sat up and tucked my hair behind my ear. “I don’t like hearing you talk about yourself like that. Sorry I yelled.”
“It’s okay,” I told her
, and she placed a light kiss on my cheek. She kept her hand in my hair, twirling it around her fingers before tucking it around my ear.
“Does it really mean that much to you?” Nicole eventually asked.
“Getting married?” I clarified. She nodded. “If we were at least engaged…I mean, we wouldn’t have to set a date or anything. If you just had my ring on your finger…”
My voice trailed off.
“Let me see it,” Nicole said with a huff.
“See what?”
“The ring you think I don’t know about.”
Damn. I really couldn’t hide much of anything from her.
“No,” I said, scowling. “You don’t want it.”
“Don’t make me get it myself, Thomas.”
She pushed herself off of me and made a grand gesture with her arm toward the other side of the room and my desk. My heart started beating faster, and I swung my legs to the side of the bed and carefully stood. My balance was still a serious problem, especially when I first stood up. I took the four steps across the room without the cane, though. My right leg, the one that had been gashed, did suffer some nerve damage and dragged behind a little.
I opened up the top drawer and reached into the back where I had been hiding the little black satin box. I brought it back over to the bed, stumbling a bit but not falling, at least. I hadn’t actually fallen in a week. I balanced the box on Nicole’s knee.
She looked at it as if a ref was going to pop out of it and red-card her.
After staring at it for an eternity or two, she finally reached out and ran her fingers over the smooth top. Her thumb played over the front edge for a moment before she popped it open, and her eyes went wide.
It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was pretty decent-sized. There was a large diamond in the center with smaller ones on either side.
“Do you like it?” I asked softly.
“It’s…it’s beautiful,” she breathed. Her fingers traced lightly over the center stone.
I placed my hand on the side of the bed and lowered myself down on my left knee.