Page 75 of The Maverick's Homecoming

Tuesday morning, Finn got the okay to visit Sean at the hospital in Billings. He rearranged his work schedule and left home at ten.

At twelve thirty, he walked in on Sean just as an aide was taking away his lunch tray. The boy seemed glad to see him and in reasonably good spirits.

“It’s going to be a lot of work and a long recovery,” Sean said. “But I’m tough. I’ll be back on the field next season. You can count on me, Coach.”

Finn gave the boy a big smile. “Now, that’s the best news I’ve heard all week. And I’m not the only one looking forward to having you back on the field. The whole team is on your side, Sean.”

“Thanks, Coach. That’s real good to hear.”

Finn had brought DoorDash and Uber Eats gift cards so Sean could order whatever he was hungry for from a variety of Billings restaurants. He also gave Sean a ball autographed for him by all the other players on the team.

Sean said he’d gotten a lot of calls and an endless chain of texts. “It’s good,” he said. “To know the guys are rooting for me.”

Finn stayed until a nurse entered the room to get Sean up on his crutches for a trip to the nurses’ station and back.

In the car on the return drive to Tenacity, Finn opened the windows, cued up his favorite playlist and turned the volume up good and loud. Sean would be fine…eventually. Finn could let himself believe that now.

What he couldn’t do was talk to Kenzie about it, tell her how brave Sean was, how good it felt to know the odds were solidly in Sean’s favor for a complete recovery.

It hurt, plain and simple, that he couldn’t reach out to her. So he tried to put her from his mind, tried not the think how empty his days felt without her in them.

* * *

That afternoon at practice, Kenzie kept a smile on her face.

It wasn’t easy. In fact, it hurt more today to see Finn out there on the field than it had the afternoon before. It was supposed to get better, wasn’t it? Or at least not get worse.

But itwasworse. She missed him so much. It was fifteen years ago all over again, only more so. She ached for him. She needed him near.

Too bad that couldn’t happen—because she’d sent him away.

She kept thinking about her talk with Lauren and Sandy the day before. They thought Finn was a great guy. Because he was. And knowing that just made the pain of losing him all the more unbearable.

She reminded herself that it had only been a few days. She needed to be patient. In time, she would feel better.

She was sitting on the bleachers, her medical bag ready at her side, watching Finn and Barrett lead the team through their usual preliminary warmup routine when Oscar appeared carrying a tray full of water bottles. He sat down next to her.

“Nurse Osborne,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Something is wrong. It was wrong yesterday. You’re not okay, are you?”

She drew her slumped shoulders back and gave him her warmest smile. “I’m okay, Oscar. I really am.”

He slid her a quick glance and then looked away again. “I don’t believe you,” he said under his breath.

“Oh, Oscar…” She brushed his arm without stopping to think that he wasn’t all that fond of random people putting their hands on him. “Sorry…”

He leaned toward her but kept his gaze on Finn and the team. “It’s okay. But I still don’t believe you. You look at him and he looks at you, but never at the same time anymore.”

She didn’t know what to say. Worse, her eyes had gone misty and her throat felt tight. She swallowed hard to force the tears down. “I just… Please don’t worry, Oscar. It’s going to be okay.”

“Worry doesn’t work that way,” muttered Oscar. “You can’t turn it off like a light.” And then, he jumped up, grabbed his caddy of water bottles and headed onto the field.

Kenzie remained in her usual spot on the bottom row of bleacher seats. She couldn’t help thinking that Oscar was right. She couldn’t turn worry off at will any more than she could keep her thoughts from straying to the people she cared about.

No one needed medical attention that day, which gave her mind and her eyes way too much time to wander. Both her thoughts and her gaze kept straying to Finn. It didn’t seem to matter how hard she tried not to think of him, not to look at him. The moment she let down her guard, her attention swung right back where it wanted to be.

She missed him desperately, so desperately that she had started thinking the impossible, that she really would try again with a man…if that man was Finn Monahan.

But that was just a fantasy, she reminded herself. Trusting a man wasn’t possible for her. Not anymore. And Finn was partly to blame for that. Just because she understood why he’d left her all those years ago and actually believed it was the right thing to do at the time didn’t mean she’d forgotten the awful pain of losing him.