Julia snuggled closer and stroked her hand over his forearm, but she didn’t sleep. She still had to figure out the best way to tell Noah his leg wasn’t stable enough to compete.
Julia’s eyes fluttered open to bright sunlight. She was completely disoriented to place and time. She pushed up on her hands and winced at a barrage of aches in unusual places. Then she smiled.
Noah.
Her mind snagged. Alarm coiled in her gut. She opened her eyes, and the alarm blew into panic. “Noah?” she yelled, throwing the covers back. “Noah.”
She looked at the clock. 10:28 a.m.
“Holy shit.” Then caught sight of the note beside the clock and snapped it up.
You looked so peaceful, I decided to let you sleep in.
I’ll make breakfast as soon as I get back from the doctor.
“No. No.” She pushed her feet to the railing. “Noah!”
Silence.
Her heart plummeted. Her shoulders sank. She closed her eyes and hung her head. Guilt swamped her chest and her mind raced. Too late to reach him before the appointment. Too late to meet him at the doctor’s office.
She pressed a hand to her eyes, where tears of fear burned. “Dammit.”
McMillan was probably signing off on his medical release right now. Was probably telling Noah that he was good to go do all those crazy-ass stunts he loved so much. Now, trying to get him to believe the risks she’d discovered was going to be a royal bitch. And she’d, no doubt, look like the bad guy.
Dropping her face into her hands, she sighed a groan. She turned into the room, dragged Noah’s red button-down from the floor and slipped it on, then headed downstairs to wait.
By the time she reached the kitchen, her stomach was coiled so tight, it ached. On the counter, the coffeepot remained dry, the blender unused, his supplements still in their baggie. She sighed, wondering what it would take to keep him healthy after she was gone.
After twenty torturous minutes of waiting, she decided to shower and turned for the stairs. She’d just gripped the banister when the front door burst open, followed by Noah’s bellow.
“Julia!”
She jumped so hard, she tripped on the first step. Alarm zinged up her spine, and she rushed into the kitchen, just as he swept in, parka and boots still on, snow on his shoulders and in his hair. “What?”
He caught his forward momentum on the breakfast bar, his expression intense. The second it took him to catch his breath, Julia’s mind righted, and she knew what this was about—not the emergency his panic indicated but the visit to McMillan.
“You tell me,” he said, slapping down a medical form releasing Noah to compete in the X Games with McMillan’s signature at the bottom in bold black ink. “Tell me all about your visit to McMillan yesterday behind my back.”
She stiffened and crossed her arms against the chill he’d brought into the house. “It looks like he already told you at least part of it.”
Noah moved around the counter and came toward her with an intensity that made her take a step back.
“Julia…” he warned.
God, this wasn’t how she’d wanted to tell him. “You know I’ve been researching the material the surgeon used. I’ve put several calls in to him, but he hasn’t called me back, so I found a data specifications sheet on the compound—”
“Stop with the medical talk,” he said, voice loud and rough. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see him?”
“Because I wanted to get as much information together as I could before I brought it to you to explain the risks.”
He huffed a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all and looked away, his gaze scanning the kitchen before returning to drill into Julia. “You know these Games represent millions and millions of dollars to me.”
“I knew this was going to be difficult news to give you. I was waiting for the right time—”
“The right time? So right after you got home from the meeting and took me out to Zephyr Academy, that wasn’t the right time? Because I recall all sorts of free moments you could have mentioned it.”
She shifted on her feet. Tension pulled her shoulders toward her ears. “I wanted to do some more research on the cement. I wanted to show you that there’s more to your future than the Games. I wanted—”