Jett

 

When I open my eyes, it’s bright as hell in here. My head is killing me, but it feels slow as well. Sluggish. This isn’t the first time I’ve woken up in a cold hospital room with all the sense knocked out of me. I get it immediately. I know why I’m here.

Dirt bikes. It has to be.

I close my eyes and try to focus on my breathing, hoping my rapid heartbeat will calm down if only to make that stupid machine shut up. Where the hell am I and what race is it?

That’s right. Details come back to me slowly. San Antonio. Heat race.

I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.

“Shit,” I say, opening my eyes. I get a bright dose of hospital lights and I lift my head, but I can’t sit up much. I’m groggy, heavily drugged from the feel of it.

“Hello!” I call out. There’s hospital blankets on top of me, and I smell like sweat. I look down and see my leg is in a cast. Fuck.

A cast. A real one, plaster and all, not just a walking cast or a splint.

This is not good.

A curtain opens and a white coat doctor with graying hair appears with a cheerful smile on his face. I look around find myself surrounded in these white curtain walls. That explains why it’s so damn loud in here. We must be in the ER.

“Hello, Mr. Adams,” the doctor says in a booming voice.

“Mr. Adams is my dad,” I say on impulse, although that doesn’t really matter right now.

“How’s your head feeling?” the doctor asks.

“Like shit. What’s wrong with me? My leg? Anything else? How bad is it?”

I try sitting up on my elbows but I quickly fall back down because the drugs are making me woozy. The doctor chuckles. “Just take it easy, son. You’re not in too bad of shape. Just a minor concussion and a fractured tibia.”

I sigh and curse under my breath. “A fracture is a big deal, doc.”

“You’ll be healed up in about six weeks,” he says, giving me an assuring smile that does absolutely nothing to assure me.

“Six weeks is a lifetime in my world.”

He chuckles again and holds a narrow flashlight up to my eyes. He does a few more checks and says some more shit about how I’ll be able to leave the hospital today and that my head isn’t that bad. I don’t pay much attention. All I’m thinking about how is how I can’t race for Team Loco for the next six freaking weeks. This might ruin me. What if Marcus kicks me off the team?

The tail end of something the doctor says catches my attention. “Your sister is here, so she’ll be in here soon…”

I look at him. “My sister?”

He nods. “She’s here. You do have a sister, right? I’m tired of these dirt bike guys being followed around by stalkers claiming to be family members.”

I nod slowly. “I have a sister but—my parents are here?”

“No, just your sister. She told me you live few hours away.”

That doesn’t make any sense. My sister is a baby. How the hell is she here?

The doctor opens the curtain and motions to someone, and then Keanna appears. She’s got a timid smile as she slips past the doctor and approaches my bed.

“Hey,” she says. “Good thing I was here because they only let family join you.” She gives me wink.

I grin. “Thanks, sis.”

The doctor tells us someone will be in here shortly to discharge me and then we’re left alone.

“Oh my God, Jett,” Keanna whispers. She grabs my hand and squeezes it. “You scared the hell out of me.” Tears immediately flood her eyes and roll down her cheeks. I reach up and swipe them off, cupping her face in my hand.

“Baby, I’m okay.”

She shakes her head, blinking quickly to clear the tears. “You’re not okay. You have a broken leg and a concussion. I watched you crash and you didn’t get up and it was the worst thing ever.”

She takes a ragged breath. “It’s just—I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Seeing her makes me happy, and for about thirty seconds I feel relieved and glad to be with her. Then it all comes back to me, the reality of my situation and how I’ve just been injured on the first damn race of the season.

“This sucks,” I say, covering my eyes with the hand that’s not holding onto Keanna. “I’m out for six weeks.”

“Marcus is waiting in the lobby,” she says. “He’s not mad,” she adds after my eyes go wide. “He’s just really concerned about you. He sent Clay in to race after you left, and he qualified in the next heat race so Team Loco is still being represented tomorrow.”

I nod slowly. “That’s good.”

She squeezes my hand. “Marcus wants you to focus on getting better and then he’s putting you right back into the races. He told me to tell you that so you wouldn’t be mad.”

I chuckle. “So, he’s not kicking me off the team.”

“No way.” She leans down and kisses me. “You’re just on a short hiatus.”

“Hey now,” I say, giving her a playful look. “Sisters don’t kiss their brothers like that.”

She turns beet red. “Shut up! I had to say it so they’d let me on the ambulance.”

I run my thumb across her palm, staring at the ring I gave her. “We should get married. Then you’ll have all legal rights to be with my broken ass in the hospital.”

She swallows. “What, like right now?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Soon. I mean…that’s where we’re headed, right?”

Her lips break into a smile that’s so sweet it makes my heart hurt. “I hope so,” she says quietly. “But you can’t just marry me because it makes it easier to get into your hospital room.”

“That’s not why I’d be marrying you,” I say. It’s a sweet moment, but a nurse interrupts us by barging in and talking about the discharge procedure. I’m loaded into a wheelchair and rolled outside where Marcus is waiting in my truck to take me back to my hotel.

Every freaking bump on the road sends pain shooting through my head, but I believe the doctor when he says my concussion isn’t too bad. I’ve had worse. My leg aches as well, so the hospital meds are probably starting to wear off.

Clay and Marcus help me get into a wheelchair the hotel has on hand while Keanna looks at me like I’m go into break into pieces if I’m not handled carefully. “I’m fine,” I tell her. “I’ll be able to walk on crutches after my freaking head gets a little better.”

“We’re getting you a wheelchair,” she says, her face resolute. “I have to go fill your pain med prescription so I’ll get a wheelchair, too.”

“I’ll drive you,” Clay tells her as we all pile into the hotel elevator.

“Thank you,” she says, giving him a smile. She puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’re going straight to bed, mister. No walking around. You need to rest.”

“Shit, how the hell am I going to get us home tomorrow?” I say, looking down at my foot. I can’t exactly drive with a huge ass cast on my right foot.

“I’ll drive us,” she says. Despite how she’s scared of big trucks and she’s never driven mine at all, she says it with confidence and a tone in her voice that says I’m not allowed to argue.

I kind of like it when she gets like this. It’s totally sexy.

When I’m in my hotel room, Clay and Keanna head to the nearest pharmacy and my heart immediately beats a little harder in what is most definitely jealousy. I’m glad it’s Clay with her though…the other guys on my team would no doubt try to hit on her. But Clay only cares about motocross, so hitting on my girlfriend would be the last thing on his mind.

Marcus gets me a soda and hangs around while we wait for them to get back. I know the procedure—get a concussion, have everyone watch you like a baby for a few hours. It’s annoying.

“You got a good girlfriend,” Marcus says.

“Trust me, I know.”

He laughs. “I’ve seen so many motocross fangirls in my life, and they’re always in it for the wrong reasons. Not that girl, though.”

“I know what you mean.” I pile the pillows on the bed so I can sit up on them. “She’s the best.”

“When I was racing, I never had a steady girlfriend,” Marcus says. “They were all in it for the wrong damn reasons.”

Marcus was a pro racer about twenty years ago, but he only lasted three years before his parents died in a car wreck and he quit to take care of his siblings. My dad knew him a little bit, but Marcus was older than him so they never raced together.

I’m pretty sure he’s been single his whole life, or at least never married. You never see Marcus with a girlfriend, and he never talks about dating anybody, but maybe he just keeps that part of his life to himself.

“I’m going to marry her,” I say.

Marcus holds out his can of soda to me in a toast. “I bet you will, Adams. I want to be invited to the wedding.”

I grin. “You better get us a badass wedding gift.”