Chapter Thirty-Five
Braxton
I landed in Boulder on Monday morning after a weekend of riotous celebration. After the fight, Nick had led me downstairs to the bar where we drank until he passed out. I carried him back up to his room and tucked him into bed. He let out a belch and rolled over, murmuring that he was cold and asking me to turn the moon off.
I was on my way to the restroom when I heard a knock at the door. Thinking it must be Coach come to congratulate us, I opened it.
There in front of me stood a girl in her early twenties. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a paisley-patterned button-down, unbuttoned to reveal a white tank top. She had long dirty blonde hair tied back in a floral-patterned scrunchie, and she smiled, shyly but eagerly, when she saw me.
“Hi,” she said. “Braxton?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
She laughed nervously. “My name is Leanne. I drove all the way down from Salt Lake City to watch tonight’s match. How long have you been training?”
“Since I was in grade school.” I glared suspiciously at her. “Did you need something?”
“No, that was all.” She brushed her hair back, peering through the door to where Nick lay on the bed. “You mind if I come in for a minute?”
I was reminded irresistibly of the first night Jaimie and I had spent together, how she had come to my door as I was getting ready for bed and invited herself inside. Something of the same desperation and fervor shone in Leanne’s face. It would have been intoxicating if I hadn’t already been taken—who could deny himself the spoils of victory after a hard fight? But as it was, I felt frightened.
“No,” I said after a long moment’s pause. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Disappointment shone on her face as I closed the door and returned to tending Nick.
It was raining when I left Vegas on Monday morning, but bright and cloudless in Boulder. The moment I landed, I reached for my phone to call Jaimie and let her know I was in town. But no one answered, and a second later, I glanced up to see her standing in front of me at baggage claim, waving and beaming warmly.
“Hey, you!” She ran forward and gave me a hug and a kiss. She was wearing a purple tank top with the top button unbuttoned and a pair of khaki shorts that rode low on her hips. We stood there for a moment gazing into each other’s eyes, heedless of spectators. “It feels like you’ve been gone for a year.”
“Well, I was on your TV all weekend if only you’d watched it.”
“Oh, I’m aware. If Bones had tried to play comedian in front of me, I would have decked him sooner. I’m sort of amazed at your restraint.”
I smiled. So she had seen the match after all. “Yeah, those jokes were all pretty bad. I knew I had to do something before he asked me to take his wife.”
“Yeah, wow. You did us all a favor.”
“If I wanted terrible comedy, I would log onto Twitter.”
All weekend long, I had been looking forward to taking her out for dinner when I came home. But as we were leaving the airport she turned to me and said, “How would you like me to make lunch at home?”
“Home? Which home?”
“Any home,” she said. “We can go back to mine; I spent all yesterday cleaning and doing laundry so it won’t have that weird cat smell you complained about last time you came over.”
“Okay, I wasn’t ‘complaining,’ I was making an observation. For the record, I also have a cat.”
“Oh, really?” she said in a tone of feigned surprise. “What is that like?”
“Like raising a goddamned child. Let’s go eat lunch.”
Back at her house, she prepared sausage-stuffed ravioli with tomato and cream sauce, served with garlic bread and a garden salad. It was so much better than anything I had eaten at the fancier restaurants in Vegas, and I ate with a greedy relish while she told me about her first days at work and her experience of watching the match with Ren.
“Glad you enjoyed it,” I said. “Did you miss me while I was gone?”
“You might say that. You can ask Ren: I was pretty forlorn during the two days you were out of state. I felt like a puppy sitting in the window waiting for its owner to come home.”
“I missed you, too. The Bellagio wasn’t the same without you.”
“Really? You didn’t have any long conversations by the pool?”
“Not a single one. And I only got one person drunk, and he’s still hungover. Not the worst weekend, but I can think of a few things that would have made it better.”
“I bet I can think of a few, too.” She came over from behind and wrapped her arms around my neck, but at the first brush of her skin on mine, I winced and drew back.
“You okay?” she asked, brows knitted in concern. “Was that too rough?”
“I’ve just had to be especially careful the last couple days because he really bruised me during that first round. I don’t know if you saw, but he had the upper hand there for a while.”
“I saw,” said Jaimie.
“Even in defeat, he managed to make my life difficult. Flying back this morning, every time the plane jolted, it sent a jolt of pain shooting up my back.” Seeing the disappointed look on her face, I added, “I’m not saying we can’t have any physical contact. We just have to go slow and easy during the next week or so. I’m a delicate man.”
“Then I will try not to break you,” said Jaimie, and eased herself back around me, more gently this time. “That better?” she asked low in my ear.
I nodded. Sometimes it was a struggle not to pin her against the will and aggressively make love to her—with her consent, of course. If we could make out whenever we wanted, we would get very little else done.
“I’m not saying I want you to be injured,” she said, her chin on my shoulder, “but it could be fun to have a convalescent to look after for the next week.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked in a teasing tone. “And just how would you look after me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I could read to you…make you some of that marvelous cream and mushroom soup that I make with the chunky mushrooms that you can actually taste…occasional visits to the zoo and the art museum when I see you’ve made progress…”
“Mmmm, tempting. You’d have to call into work and tell them you were nursing a sick patient.”
“I don’t know if I could get away with that, but I could look after you in the afternoons when I came home…” She ran her long fingernails along the small of my back. “With my patented recovery plan, we could get you back on your feet in a few days.”
“And what about exercises?” I asked with a smile in my voice.
Intuiting my meaning, Jaimie said, “I could see us doing plenty of exercises when you’re ready.”
I broke away and turned to face her. “What if I’m ready now?”
She hesitated, as though thinking of a response. Standing up stiffly, I wrapped myself around her, inhaling the juniper scent of her perfume.
“Somehow,” she said, “I don’t think they would allow this in the gym.”
“Really?” I raised one brow in surprise. “They’re missing out.”
“That’s why I’m glad you came here instead of the gym.”
Smiling impishly, she took me by the hand and led me out of the kitchen. “Don’t worry about the dishes,” she said. “I’ll take care of those later.”
“Right now, you’ve got a sick patient who takes precedence.”
“He does.” She ushered me into her room and shut the door.