“Are you Vince?”
Clicking shutters, and I squinted against the light. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes softened. “You were supposed to call me when you got downstairs.”
“I didn’t need you to pay for the cab.”
We shared a long look.
“Come,” she commanded, hand on my bicep tight, pulling me after her. Two more officers were now plowing through the press of bodies until we reached a steel door that was opened from the inside.
It was quieter behind the door, and there were more chairs with people sitting along the walls. She walked me by curious upturned faces, men leaning against walls, women pacing, and finally through a door at the end of the hall. Inside there was a room within a room, the outer one resembled a cozy waiting room with a couch and chairs, and a small table, and then through a sliding glass door, in bed, was Carson. There were seven people there, four sitting, two pacing, and one, an older woman, standing still, arms crossed, staring daggers at Carson’s mother.
“Who’s this?” she asked, her tone surly, as Carson’s mother steered me by her.
“A friend of his,” she answered tightly, her tone icy.
Once we were at his bedside, I took a breath.
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
Looking up from his face to his mother’s, I tried to smile. “I’m sorry, it’s just so strange to see him so still. He’s normally in constant motion.”
She nodded. “Yes, he is. Even when he was little. Probably more so. My hyper-active baby. It’s why we got him into sports to begin with. He always had so much energy.”
“Makes sense.”
“I wanted him to swim,” she murmured, staring down at Carson, smoothing his hair gently back from his forehead. “I thought he could be the next Michael Phelps but my husband insisted it had to be football. He played in college himself.”
I knew that from all the stories on ESPN I’d seen. Mr. Cress was living his own dreams through his son.
Clearing my throat softly, I asked my burning question. “Why does he look like a mummy?”
His upper chest, as well as his entire right arm from shoulder to wrist was wrapped in an elastic bandage over gauze. His arm was bent at the elbow, lying across his chest, and it so resembled a broken wing that I had to swallow down a sob. He looked so hurt, and it killed me. Even in sleep, his brow was furrowed, his jaw was clenched… it was painful, and when I saw him bite his bottom lip, it took everything in me not to reach out for him.
“Nothing is allowed to move now that he’s had his surgery,” his mother explained. “Everything needs to be anchored in place, so the arm and shoulder were bandaged first and then bound to his chest to secure it in place.”
I nodded.
“But it’s only his arm and shoulder, sweetheart. The rest of him, other than bruised ribs and a slight concussion, is okay.”
At least I could breathe again.
“Vince.”
I turned to look at Carson’s mother as the sliding door opened and several people, among them his father and the older woman who I was guessing was his grandmother, walked in.
“Honey, you can go over and hold his hand, if you want.”
I heard others gasp, and I felt the tension, heard someone ask her what the hell was going on. The words were whispered only because, again, the man in the bed did not look good.
Moving forward, I dumped my backpack on the floor beside him, took hold of his good left hand, and leaned over close to his ear.
“When we were sitting on the couch,” I whispered, “you were talking to me, and you leaned forward to get something and I ran my hand down your back. Do you remember?”
The low rumble made his mother catch her breath.
“I love touching you, your skin… I love the hardness of your body, and not just the one part that gets hard, ya perv.”
His eyelids started to flutter.
“There’s so much power in you, so much strength, and I’m looking at you and all I see is the guy I told myself I shouldn’t want, but….”
I remembered touching him through his T-shirt, feeling the muscles move under my palm, savoring the heat and the virility of him, the simple act of him allowing the closeness. He was so beautiful, all of him, and now, in person, how I felt was exactly as I suspected I would.
I saw no change in him. There was no decrease in the desire I felt for the man. He was not diminished in any way in my eyes. If he never threw another football, I hardly cared. I wanted his arm to work again but simply for him, for no other reason.
His long, thick golden lashes on his cheeks, the mischievously curved eyebrows, and the dirty-blond stubble made me sigh. I was so happy to see him in one piece.