Page 109 of Play For Me

“Are you seriously trying to get out of bed right now?”

Cecelia looks up at me, expression guilty, like a kid who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I left my tablet over there,” she says, nodding to the desk a few feet from her bed.

“Then you wait for me to come back or call me to come get it for you.”

She pouts. “This is getting old.”

I grab her tablet and bring it back to the bed, trying not to laugh at her put-out expression. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours.”

Forced immobility and Cecelia Ransome do not go together well.

“Well, I’m sick of this room.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Would you like to go back to your parents’ house?”

Her pout turns to a scowl. “Yeah, that would be better. I really want both of them fussing over me, plus all of my aunts and unclesandmy brothers.”

“See.” I climb onto the bed next to her, leaning back against the pillows before pulling her into my side. “Here you just have to deal with me.”

“You’re pretty bossy, though,” she mutters, and I laugh.

Her parents had put up a big fight about her staying at the house off-campus last night, but Cecelia insisted. She argued that her bedroom at home was on the second floor, which she could not access with crutches, and she didn’t want to spend the night on the couch downstairs. Her dad’s suggestion that he or her brothers or her uncles would be happy to physically carry her around for the next forty-eight hours hadn’t been well-received.

In the end, I pulled her mom aside and told her that I thought Cecelia might have an easier time dealing with everything if she had more privacy. Anyone who knows her could see how difficult it is for her to be vulnerable in front of other people. To my surprise, Sam agreed, on the condition that I stay with her daughter at all times until we knew what we were dealing with.

As if I was going to be anywhere else.

Cash and Sam are supposed to come back in an hour or so to take her to the hospital for the MRI. She keeps saying that she’s eager to get answers to anyone who asks—which is a considerable amount of people. She’s gotten calls or texts from cousins, the coaching staff, most of her teammates, her brothers. But when it’s just the two of us, she admits that she’s terrified to go back to the same hospital where she had her surgery.

I hate that I can’t make it better for her.

Her phone buzzes with a text on the mattress next to her and she groans before reaching for it. “Will you look at this and tell me if it’s my Aunt Paige? She keeps sending me shirtless pics of male models to try and cheer me up.”

“Your Aunt Paige is weird.”

“You have no idea.”

I snort when I see who the text is from. “Everly is Paige’s daughter?” I ask.

“Yeah. Why?”

I hold out the phone so she can see the picture of the half-naked guy on the screen. She laughs. “I guess that brand of ridiculousness runs in the family.”

While I’m holding the phone, it buzzes again. This time the sender’s name makes me tense up.

Cecelia must notice my reaction. She groans. “Oh, God, please don’t tell me she sent like, a full-frontal nude of someone.”

“No. It’s uh… Devon. He just wanted to let you know that he’ll meet you and your parents at the hospital for the scan.”

She adjusts her position to face me, her forehead furrowing in concern. “You don’t have to go,” she says immediately.

I blink at her. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m going.”

She chews on her bottom lip. “I don’t want you to take the chance of getting into trouble.”

“Cecelia. I’m going.” I tuck some hair behind her ear. “He would expect me to go. I’ve been helping with your training all season.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll…you know. Figure it out?” she asks, sounding unsure. “If he sees us together?”