Chapter6
The phone was buzzing non-stop in Max’s pocket while he was schooling some kid in online basketball. He felt bad whooping on a kid who must only be a teenager in a basketball video game, but he felt less and less bad for the kid the more the little punk trashed talked him. He’d never heard such words come out of a kid before, and he had spent most of his childhood in a locker room with punk teen boys just like him. At half-time, he’d finally had enough of his phone buzzing, and he paused the game.
“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Geez, kid, get a juice box and take a breather; I’ll be right back.”
He muted his headset just as the kid was letting off another string of curse words. Chuckling, he shook his head and took his phone out of his pocket. It was Eli, and he had several missed calls, voicemails, and texts. No wonder it felt as if he’d been wearing vibrating pants. The only thing the voicemails and texts repeated was that he needed to call him immediately, of course sounding more frustrated the more he was getting ignored. Max didn’t know what type of trouble he was in. Honestly, he couldn’t imagine the type of trouble he was in. In recent weeks, all he’d really done was go to practice, go to games, play his video games, and do things with Aaliyah. Not even fun, exciting things that would get him into trouble—things that people would normally be doing.
It was tough having to give up his nightlife style in favor of sponsored events and dinners in nice restaurants. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like the time he spent with Aaliyah, when they weren’t fighting that was. For the most part, she was all right to be around; she was sexy as hell, so she was always nice to look at, and she wasn’t too bad to have around for dinner. Truthfully, he didn’t really know much about her; she kept herself pretty private, which was just about the only time she was shy. At least once a night, her feisty side would kick in after something he did would piss her off, and then they’d get into some sort of a fight. Sometimes he would go chasing after her, sometimes she’d come after him, but in all honesty it was mostly him that did the chasing.
Eli informed him that it was usually because he was the one who screwed up. It was almost like Eli had become some sort of relationship counselor for the two of them. Max knew that Aaliyah would unload her frustrations on Eli in the morning, and if it was Max’s fault, he’d get a call before lunch telling him what he had done wrong. Usually, it was something he’d said, something that was apparently offensive or obnoxious, but at the very least he’d gotten better at not hitting on other girls. At least in front of Aaliyah, or anywhere there might be people taking pictures, which was pretty much anywhere. What made him most proud was the fact that he was not only staying out of the public eye in any negative fashion, especially with women, but he wasn’t letting them come on to him either. In fact, he’d become a one-woman man, keeping only Aaliyah on speed dial.
Not that he minded one bit. She was incredibly sexy and drove him basically wild in bed. He couldn’t get enough of her, the way she felt, the way she tasted. Sure, he’d had better in bed—women who were more experienced, who could do more things, cheerleaders who were far more flexible, but Aaliyah did something else for him. With just a touch of her hand, she could drive him insane with desire, and he loved every second of it. He didn’t feel the need to call any other woman, which was a new feeling for him, but one that he wasn’t minding. Sure they fought all the time, but when they were behind closed doors, they were pretty perfect together.
They would be completely perfect together if they could get through one night without a fight. But even with their disagreements, he still had no idea why Eli would be so mad at him. He had no idea what kind of trouble he could be in. Deciding not to put it off any longer for fear of making Eli even angrier, he hit redial to get it over with. He had a teenager to whoop on.
“Where have you been?” Eli shouted in greeting.
“Um, I’ve been at my apartment playing video games. Why? What could I have possibly done?”
“What are you talking about? Why do you think you did something?”
Max rolled his eyes and leaned back into his couch. “You’ve been calling and texting non-stop, and you sound pretty pissed right now, so clearly that must mean I’m in trouble for something.”
“No, you’re not in trouble, and being sucked into your stupid teenage video games is probably why you haven’t heard what happened.”
Suddenly, panic started to sweep through him. Had he already gotten traded to a new team and just hadn’t been informed yet? It didn’t happen often, but it did happen sometimes that the news would get leaked before the player knew. What would Eli do if he got traded? What would he do? There was no way he’d survive without him.
Eli’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Are you even listening to me right now?”
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said that Aaliyah’s been in an accident. You need to get to the hospital right away. I’ll meet you there.”
Max almost had to ask Eli to repeat himself, but Eli hung up before he got the chance. Aaliyah had been in an accident? No wonder Eli had been blowing up his phone so much. He threw on some clothes and called his driver.
He thought that maybe he should be more worried or something, a bit more panicked, but selfishly, he was so relieved that the phone call didn’t have anything to do with his team that the drive was spent with his mind fairly blank. So he had to admit he wasn’t as prepared as he should have been to walk into her room and see what he saw.
Aaliyah looked like she was in bad shape. Monitors beeped a steady melody all around her while tubes and wires came out of every part of her. She looked as if she was in some sci-fi alien movie instead of lying in a hospital room. Eli was already there and talking to the doctors by the time Max entered her private room.
“What happened?” he asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
The doctor looked at Eli, and Eli nodded his consent. “This is her boyfriend, Max.” The doctor nodded and turned his attention to Max.
“She was crossing a street and a car ran a red light, hitting her head-on. Witnesses called an ambulance, and she was unconscious by the time they got there. She hasn’t woken up yet, and we’ve started running some tests. We know she’s got a broken leg at the femur and broken ribs. She’s got some internal bleeding, but we should be able to stop that.”
Max nodded. It sounded bad, but it also sounded like she’d be okay.
“What we’re concerned about is her brain and spinal column. She isn’t reacting to stimuli, which could mean paralysis. We’re still running tests and, hopefully, we should know more about that soon.”
Max felt his mouth go dry. Paralysis. He couldn’t believe that. She was so young and healthy, this couldn’t be happening to her. It wouldn’t be fair. The doctor left the room, and Eli took a chair next to her bed, but Max couldn’t bring his feet to take him any closer to her. She looked so fragile, so breakable.
“Should we call her parents?” he finally voiced.
Eli shook his head. “Her parents are both deceased, and according to her friend Caroline, she has no other family.” Tenderness filled the man’s eyes, and he could see that somewhere along the line, Aaliyah had become more to Eli than just a business project.
“You and I are all she has.”
That fact hit Max too close to home. Max had his team and he still had him, (the whole reason he was staying in this city), but in reality Max saw that Aaliyah really only had him, too. How had he not known that Aaliyah was all alone?
“I need some air,” Max said and bolted out of her room.
All Max could picture when he saw Aaliyah was him, lying in his hospital bed at home, where he’d been for the past five years, and Max couldn’t take it. Grief overwhelmed him, and he needed to get out. He saw the doors to the front of the hospital and he nearly broke into a run, feeling his lungs burn with the need to breathe, but as soon as he opened the doors, flashes of light burned his eyes.
“Max! What happened to your girlfriend?”
“Will she be okay?”
“Were you with her?”
“Can we get a statement about her condition?”
Reporters were rattling off questions faster than Max could keep up. It was obvious there’d be no solace outside. “No comment,” he mumbled and closed the door on his way back inside.
This was all too much, too overwhelming. There was no way he was equipped to deal with a fake girlfriend who was possibly permanently injured. He had enough of that in his own life, having to schedule his own life for someone else, that he wouldn’t possibly be able to do that with her. There wasn’t enough left of him. He was sitting in the cafeteria in a corner booth, twirling a cup of coffee, when Eli walked in and took the seat next to him.
“They took her for some more testing,” he informed Max, but Max could only nod back. “The main concern is, of course, Aaliyah right now, but in the meantime, while we are waiting to know anything, I have to mention how it will look to the press and to the world if you walk away from her right now.”
Max’s eyes shot up to meet Eli’s. “Did you call all those reporters?” he growled.
Eli shook his head. “I didn’t need to. You guys are the ‘it’ couple that everyone loves. The reporters found out all on their own. And mark my words: they will chew you up and spit you back out if you walk away from a hospitalized girlfriend right now.”
Max could feel his blood boiling beneath the surface. He couldn’t stand having one more person in his life that he had to take care of. But he couldn’t tell Eli that. No one knew about him.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of cruel that instead of worrying about Aaliyah you’re out here plotting how to save face in front of the media?”
Eli’s eyes turned to stone as he stood up from the table.
“I haven’t stopped worrying about her since I got the call. She’s become far more than an employee to me, and seeing her like that rips my heart out.”
Max bowed his head. He knew that Eli had started to care for the girl, like a parent would a child. And with Eli childless and Aaliyah parentless, it only made sense.
“But what I won’t allow is for this girl to become a joke to the world because her ‘boyfriend’ couldn’t stick by her side.” Eli leaned in closer to Max and whispered to him with venom in his voice, “I will not let this girl get hurt by anyone, especially you.”