Page 126 of Under Pressure

“You need to be careful here. I don’t want to see you fucking wrecked again. Especially not now.”

“Appreciate the concern, man, but I’m not worried. You need to let off, or we’ll be having it out in the parking lot,” Beck replies.

He sounds growly. For the first time in over a week, I’m hearing his voice, and it’s so rough and determined. My toes curl in my shoes before I scold myself for getting distracted.

“They’ll be at this all night if you don’t just go in,” Finn says softly.

“What are they arguing about?”

“You.”

The jolt of the word drives me forward. I all but stumble into the room, and suddenly, various sets of eyes fall on me. It’s a lot all at once.

A lot of testosterone, for one. Towering male bodies crowd the otherwise normal-sized room, but I look for one and one only. My eyes are drawn to him like greedy magnets. He’s sitting on a chair with his baseball uniform still on and wrapped tight around his body.

His beard is still there, and fuck me, it’s all thick and bushy. Way more so than it was the last time I saw him. My fingers twitch, wanting to brush against it. But more than anything, I want to reach out and touch him everywhere, just to make sure he’s really here.

There are deep blue bags beneath his beautiful eyes, and his mouth is flat instead of curved into a dimpled grin or cocky smirk. My heart tugs sharply, and I move closer, taking slow steps toward him.

“We’ll go check with the doctor,” Roman says.

I don’t look away from Beck as everyone shuffles out and the door clicks behind them. My lungs finally inflate around a full breath, and the fog that’s been swarming my thoughts floats away.

“Quinn.”

My lips tremble. “Beck.”

“Come here.”

I move. My bags sit abandoned behind me.

Without jostling his shoulder, I step between his legs and cup his jaw, thumbs stroking across his thick beard. Talking isn’t a possibility. My throat’s too tight.

Just the scent of him is enough to send me over the edge. I breathe him in with greedy inhales and drop my face to his head, guiding him toward my chest. The thick hoodie I’m wearing creates a thick boundary between us, but I can still feel him there, his heat bleeding through it. It’s almost hard to do anything besides fall to my knees and kiss him.

“You didn’t have to come here. I’m heading home in the morning.”

“Don’t. Please don’t. Just let me do this.”

He hums gently, hands finding my lower back and pulling me closer. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“Of course you scared me.” Fear has me clutching onto him tighter. “This isn’t supposed to be a sport where I need to worry about you injuring yourself every time you go out to play. What happened? Kellan didn’t tell me, and I didn’t have a chance to watch the game. I know that makes me terrible. I couldn’t even watch you play while you were gone. But it was for a good reason. I’ve been trying to watch more recently.”

His exhale ghosts across my chest. I run my fingers through his hair, then reluctantly tip his head back. Our eyes connect, and I quickly bury my hand back in the thick waves, needing the contact.

“I’ve never cared if you watched my games. Baseball doesn’t need to be important to you for me to love you. One of thereasons I do is because you’ve never viewed my career as anything but that. Ultimately, it’s a means to an end. I’m just lucky that I love playing it and have gotten this good.”

“It is important to me. The things you love, I want to love, too. It was selfish of me to not figure that out sooner.” I frown. “There was a lot I didn’t figure out sooner.”

With a wince he can’t hide from me, he stands. I move with him, taking a single step back to make room for him before instantly closing the gap again. Concern has me reaching for his bicep and dragging a soft touch up to his shoulder.

“Tell me what happened.”

He drops his head and presses our foreheads together. “Overworked myself. It could be a tear, but I think I just pulled something that was already close to giving out.”

“You were in pain the day I went to the stadium to see you. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It wasn’t the time.”