FORCE: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (18 page)

My sister was on her way. My parents were calling lawyers.

Jake was sitting in a cell with an icepack on his head. Ian’s tackle had sent him flying into the metal door handle.

I hoped it hurt like hell.

I blinked again and tried once more to focus on what the officer was saying to me.

“…Can get him for theft, because of the phone. And for assault and battery, for the—” he gestured to my neck, and I reflexively swallowed, feeling the raw ache that still lingered where his fingers had crushed into my windpipe.

I nodded. “And attempted rape, too,” I said. My voice could barely rise above a whisper, but I was surprised at how steady it sounded.

Olivia started rubbing my shoulder even harder.

The officer nodded. “That’s up to you, ma’am. Sometimes the women these things—happen to…they don’t want to relive it. Because it’s your word against his and all.”

I lifted my chin defiantly. “I want to press charges,” I repeated. “He tried to rape me. If Ian hadn’t shown up when he did, Jake
would
have raped me. He told me so himself.”

The officer’s eyes widened for a second. Then he nodded and noted something on the report in front of him.

Olivia put her other hand on my shoulder, and started rubbing that one, too.

I closed my eyes, feeling the frustration clench in my chest. “Are we done now? I really need to go.”

“Just a few more minutes.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I told you everything. I cooperated in every way.” I stood up. “Now, I need you to go and do your job while I go see if my boyfriend—the one who saved me from this whackjob—made it through surgery all right.”

Something old and not quite gone inside of me winced at how
mean
I sounded.

“Such a shame,” the officer said, shaking his head. For a second, I melted at the sympathy. Then he continued, “We were so close to getting the Cup this year.”

I rolled my eyes, and then shook my head a little at Olivia when she opened her mouth to start reaming him out. “Let’s go,” I told her.

“Your car?”

“Yes,” I said, then looked down at my trembling hands. “But I think I need you to drive it.”

She drove like an absolute madwoman, getting me to the hospital in record time. My mind raced the whole time, over and over again, replaying the same scenes.

Jake’s hands on my throat. The red mist creeping in from the edges of my sight as he closed my airway. The terrible thudding of the blood in my ears that was still not loud enough to drown out the jingle of his belt buckle as he freed himself. Nor was it loud enough to mask the sound of stitches popping as he yanked my jeans down past my hips. I had stomped and squirmed, clawed and fought, but the harder I fought, the more quickly I lost oxygen…

And then the yell, the blur, the dizzy thumping as I sank suddenly to the floor, freed from Jake’s grasp by Ian, swooping in like an avenging angel.

The second time he’d rescued me.

First I had to find my breath again, and stop the world from spinning away. My sight cleared in increments, revealing the chaos around me. But all the while, Ian was at the very center of my vision, the only thing I could see through the blur.

Then I had to quiet my hysterical gasps. Then I had to wait for my heart rate to slow.

Only then could I stand up and go to him, and by that time, the ambulance had come and they were lifting him up on the stretcher while he gritted his teeth in pain.

Then the police came, with their questions and evidence collecting. I tried to give them the time they needed, but all the while I was thinking about this.

This moment, when I would finally see him again.

I burst into his room and stopped dead, my hands going to my mouth. “Oh Ian, no.”

He was lying on a hospital bed, his massive frame making it look like it was built for a child. The sheets were twisted into ropes around him, no doubt from him writhing in pain.

A cast covered his leg from the thigh all the way down to the ankle.

“How long?” I asked, barely able to contain my tears.

He swallowed and stared at the ceiling. I felt my heart sink. The finals were in ten days.
There was no way…

“Six months,” he breathed. “Six months in the cast.”

“The Cup—” I choked.

He blinked and then chuckled. “They’re going to have to win the Cup without me.” The last word came out in a strangled whisper.

My heart broke in half. I went to him and brushed the dark hair off of his forehead. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Ian. I am so sorry. I know hockey is everything to you.”

His eyes snapped open and he turned, craning his neck to look me right in the eye. “No,” he said firmly. “You’re wrong.” He lifted my hand and kissed it fiercely. “You’re my everything.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ian

The nurse who came in pushing the wheelchair was as big as a house. And stronger looking, too. I briefly considered asking her to try out for the Blackhawks next season.

“Let’s get you home, Mr. Carter,” she said sweetly, in a soft, girlish voice that was completely at odds with her appearance.

“Yes, Mr. Carter,” Candace echoed, smiling. “Let’s get you home.”

I couldn’t keep the flutter of anger from my belly as we took the elevator down to the main floor. Waves of nausea coursed through my body, and I gritted my teeth, steeling myself as the elevator settled to a stop.

Then Candace’s small hands alighted on my shoulder, and I felt instantly calmer. “Every day,” she said, echoing the words the doctor had said just before my discharge. “It’s going to get better. Little by little, every day you will heal.”

I nodded, but when I caught my reflection in the mirrored glass, I could see the sullen look on my face, and I hated it.

“Wait here,” Candace said as we rolled on to the front entranceway. “I just need to run and grab my car.”

“I can get up now,” I told the nurse, once Candace had disappeared into the parking garage.

“No, I’m sorry sir, not yet,” the nurse said softly.

I gritted my teeth, and angrily closed my fingers around the armrest of the wheelchair. The five minutes it took for Candace to pull around the front felt like a lifetime.

But finally she did pull up, and got out of the driver’s seat with a huge grin on her face.

“What are you so happy about?” I asked. I genuinely wanted to know.

She winked at me. “Now it’s
my
turn to make
you
wait until I open the door!” she crowed triumphantly. Then she looked up at the sky. “I wish it was like twenty degrees colder.” Then she looked startled. “I cannot
believe
I just said that!”

I laughed out loud, some of the tension draining away from my shoulders. I couldn’t stay mad, not with Candace around. “I wish I had a tape recorder, so I could play that back for you,” I teased her.

She stuck her tongue out at me, and then opened the passenger door. I got up slowly, not wanting to get dizzy, and accepted the crutches that the nurse held out silently. The pain meds they had me on made me dizzy as all hell. I took one cautious step forward, and finding that I was still stable, took another, then another. “Look at you,” Candace said encouragingly. I bristled at being patronized, but then tamped it back down again.

“Yeah. Look at me walking. I’ll be skating again in no time,” I said.

I sounded unconvinced to my own ears, but Candace clapped her hands together. “That’s exactly right, Ian. This is just temporary.”

Temporary
, I thought, as Candace pulled out of hospital parking lot. This is just temporary, except, so much was happening without me during this temporary time. Everything I worked for, everything I’d dreamed of in the past four years had been snatched away in an instant. Life was so Goddamned unpredictable.

This was temporary,
I thought to myself.
But there are some other things that I’d like to make permanent.

I directed Candace to my parents’ house in a series of grunts and gestures. Candace seemed to know that I needed quiet, and kept the conversation to a minimum.

“Is this it?” she asked, as we rolled up in front of the familiar tract house.

“This is it,” I echoed.

“You grew up here?” she asked. She was leaning forward, looking like she wanted to take it in all in one glance.

I shook my head. “Not grew up, no. My mom and me, we lived in an apartment in a shitty neighborhood up until I got a scholarship to join the youth hockey league. When Randall came and gave a talk to us about high school teams in one of the Blackhawks’ outreach programs, my mom caught his eye.” I shook my head. “I wonder sometimes if he knew what he was getting into, dating a single mom with a juvenile delinquent as a son.” Candace smiled softly. “But he stuck around, and he’s been there for me, and that’s more than I can say about the bastard whose last name is on my birth certificate.”

Candace pressed her lips together. “I think that’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

“What, really?”

“That he stuck around.” She took my hand. “That’s kind of what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

She held my gaze for a very long time, the moment stretching out between us with so many things that I could say to fill the silence, so many things that I wanted to tell her and couldn’t find the words.

She closed her hand over mine. “I can’t wait to meet them,” she finally said.

I swallowed. The spell was broken, the moment had passed, but that lingering feeling, of words left unsaid, remained.

A thought I had been having, one that was being repeated with longer and louder insistence, took hold.

I smiled. There was no better time. And I knew the perfect place.

Having reached my decision, I leaned forward and grabbed for the handle of the car door. Candace leaned over and slapped my hand away. “That’s not how this works,” she barked menacingly, and I had to laugh.

I sat back in the seat, and allowed Candace get out, walk around, and then open the door for me. “You are just completely delighted that you can do this to me, aren’t you?” I asked her as she took my hand and steadied me while I rose from the passenger seat.

“Oh, absolutely.” Her wide eyes twinkled with mischief, and it was all I could do not to bend her over the car right then and there.

But my parents were waiting, and most likely my mom was already watching through the window. With Candace’s help, I made it to the front door without stumbling once.

I lifted my hand to knock, but the door flew open before my hand could even connect.

I was right. My mother had been waiting. She stood in the doorway with her hands folded in the prayer position, her fingertips pressed to her mouth like they always were when she was trying her hardest not to cry. “Baby,” she said, opening the door and folding me into her embrace.

I had to nearly bend in half for her to get her arms around my body, but I allowed her to pull me down to her. I knew this was as much for her as it was for me.

“You look good, son,” Randall called, rounding the corner out of the kitchen and into the front hallway. “How are you feeling?”

“A little ridiculous.” I laughed, my voice muffled by my mother’s blouse.

“Helen, you’re suffocating the boy,” Randall chided gently.

My mother eased her grip on me, and stepped back. Her eyes were bright with tears, but she held her head high. “And thank you for bringing him,” she said, peering around my shoulder.

“You really do suck at introductions,” Candace chided me, socking me gently in the arm. “Mrs. Randall, I’m Candace,” she said, extending her hand.

“Oh please, call me Helen,” my mother insisted, batting Candace’s hand away and pulling her in for an immediate hug. “I’d say Ian has told me so much about you, but my son doesn’t know how to pick up the phone and call his own mother.”

“I told her,” Randall piped up. “I said you’re the reason he’s been so distracted at practice. It’s very nice to finally meet you.”

He said it so fondly that Candace had to laugh. “I—I’m sorry about that,” she said, blushing.

“I’m sorry that it’s under these circumstances that I’m finally getting to meet you.”

I swallowed. “Me, too,” I said, rubbing her back. There were so many things I wished I could do over again when it came to Candace. How we met, how I acted, how we fought and chewed each other out. But she kept staying by my side, and giving me a reason to try over and over again to make everything perfect. I bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “I love you,” I said softly.

Her eyes widened. Then she smiled and slid her hand into mine. “I love you, too,” she said firmly, squeezing my hand so hard I had no choice but to know she was mine.