Page 54 of Lovesick (The Minnesota Mustangs #1)
NEW HORIZONS
MERIT
I know this is going to sound crazy after all the stress I’ve put myself through, but this time away from dance has shown me that it’s more harmful to push and push and push than it is to take a break every once in a while.
The doctor said that the key to a quick recovery would consist of switching my medication and limiting my stress.
Now, instead of taking amiodarone, I’m experimenting with flecainide.
It’s an antiarrhythmic agent that blocks certain electrical signals to my heart—those which cause irregular beats.
He also advised that I should continue to exercise regularly, eat healthy, and refrain from recreational substances.
I realized I was pushing myself so hard because I thought I had something to prove to the world, but the only validation that mattered was my own.
The hospital kept me for a few extra days after my incident, just to monitor my vitals. Irelyn visited me daily, and Harlan, Sutton, and Foster snuck in whenever they had free time. They even brought me a surfeit of get-well gifts ranging from chocolates to bouquets to heart-shaped balloons.
Crew—even though he had a full schedule on top of hockey practice—was by my side the entire time.
He brought me my makeup work, slid me my favorite bran muffin and blueberry and banana smoothie from the café on campus, spent endless hours regaling me with stories about his day, and even bought me the cutest little opossum stuffie, along with a stack of newly released romance books.
But my favorite part was when he would just… hold me . No talking, no room for a teeming cesspool of worry. A quiet kind of love, expressed through the unspoken conversation between our bodies.
It’s my first day back, and I have a meeting with Mrs. Burke, so it’s safe to say that the nerves are grinding my confidence like a mortar pounding against the basalt basin of a pestle.
I have no idea what she’s going to say. I may have slipped unscathed from public scrutiny, but I don’t even know if she’ll want me as her teaching assistant next year after my one-woman travesty.
Irelyn, with her fashionable raincoat and Jimmy Choo boots, walks beside me for emotional support.
She has thirty minutes before she has to get to her next class, and she knew that I’d be a mess.
I’m also happy to report that my family—after much convincing—has allowed me to move back in with my best friend.
The wooly storm clouds overhead are tumefied with the promise of rain, the evidence from the night’s previous storm exhibited in overflowing drains and old pipes regurgitating excess runoff.
The ground is covered in wet leaves, their thin, vascularized bodies stuck to the slippery asphalt, and the hem of the sky has assumed a permanent, dreary shade of slow-burning charcoal .
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I mutter beneath my breath.
She circumvents a puddle. “Don’t think like that, Mer. You’re working yourself up. Everything is going to be alright.”
Anxiety tight-fists my stomach as I step into the lecture hall—ten minutes before the next class is supposed to start—with my binder hugged to my chest for support.
Mrs. Burke looks deep in concentration, her tortoiseshell glasses flush against the bridge of her nose.
My best friend idles by a shadowed row of seats, briefly hanging on to my worry for me.
Muscles rankled and tongue thickening in my mouth, my heart rumbles in my chest like a cloven-hooved stampede. Putting one foot in front of the other seems to be out of my wheelhouse at the moment.
“Mrs. Burke?” I squeak out into the emptiness of the room.
Her head of voluminous hair whips up to pinpoint my meek voice as instant relief darts across her expression, her impassive grimace transmuting into a smile. I’m kind of surprised that she isn’t glaring daggers at me.
“Oh, Merit! How are you doing?” she asks, abandoning her work to heel-clack over to me, and catching me off guard when she wrangles me into a hug. She smells like vanilla and hazelnut, and her gingham sweater is unequivocally soft.
“I’m okay,” I say, patting her back a bit awkwardly.
My stewing worry, however, seems to be retreating into the dungeon depths from which it crawled. A mindless, shapeless, bone-thin creature held back by corroded chains, completely blind, moving purely on sound and the ker-thump of my heart. It has no jurisdiction here in the light.
Mrs. Burke pulls back so she can rub her hands up and down my arms, the gentleness of her words forged into a maternal quality that I was never privy to before. “Everyone was so worried about you.”
They were?
Unfortunately, my gratefulness is superseded by guilt, and a messy collage of words hurtles out of my mouth before I can stop it.
“I’m so sorry for ruining the fundraiser.
I let my emotions get the better of me when I should’ve left them at the door.
It was unprofessional. I had one job, and it was to run the auction as smoothly as possible.
I completely understand if this affects my overall grade, and I completely understand if you don’t want me to be your teaching as?—”
“Slow down, sweetheart,” she coos. “You didn’t ruin anything.
It was an accident, and accidents happen.
The most important thing is that you’re okay.
You were a fantastic auctioneer for the night, and your grade is going to reflect that.
As for me needing a teaching assistant, the spot is all yours.
I’ve seen how hard you worked to give this project your all—your leadership and interpersonal skills, your organization, your passion, your perseverance.
The fundraiser was a huge success, even if there was a small bump in the road. ”
“Fundraiser” and “success” in the same sentence? I don’t believe it.
If the hospital hadn’t given me some happy drugs, I’d probably be knee-deep in my own tears right now.
“It was?”
“We raised thirty thousand dollars. It was the second most successful fundraiser MU has put on in all its years. With your absence, someone had to take your place, and surprisingly, Mr. Mulligan was more than ecstatic to continue things.”
Knox was my replacement? As in, the man who almost showed his junk to an entire room of MU’s most prestigious donors?
The shock on my face must be crystal clear because Mrs. Burke just laughs, dropping her hands by her sides.
“Hard to imagine, right? But Mr. Mulligan had a comedic effect that the audience loved. I don’t know if I personally would’ve picked him, but I’m glad that he volunteered anyways,” she explains.
I guess I owe Knox a huge thank you .
I melt further into my hoodie as embarrassment warms my cheeks with the subtlety of a funeral pyre. “I’m glad everything worked out. Again, I’m really sorry.”
Mrs. Burke flaps her hand. “Don’t be. Just remember to prioritize your mental and physical health first, okay? I know school can be stressful, but in the long run, it’s your body that needs to be taken care of.”
“Thank you. For being so understanding,” I murmur, running my thumb along the mismatched fringes of the schoolwork tucked in my binder.
“Of course. It’s hard to remember to be kind to ourselves sometimes.”
When I step out of the old, brick building, the sky’s maw has opened wide, pattering the ground with a light drizzle. Irelyn flutters her fingers in a goodbye before speed walking to her next class.
Without warning, I feel two arms slither around my sides and pull me backwards, where I collide with a hard body that I’ve definitely felt pressed against me on more than one occasion. My binder clatters to the ground.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” Crew whispers.
“We’ve seen each other every day this week.”
“It hasn’t been enough. I was dying over here without your attention.”
He ghosts his lips over my carotid, and his mouth teases me with a segue into Makeout Metropolis. Mind-numbing lust curls complacently in my belly, extending an invitation to the lower half of me that wants nothing more than to partake in some after-school activities .
Turning around in his arms, I’m flush against his chest, and the softness of his gaze is impossible to deny.
“Feeling better?” I ask.
“Much.”
“You know, you don’t have to try and win my heart anymore. It’s yours. It’s always been yours.”
His chest puffs with pride as he slides a smirk my way. “Can you say that again? Into my phone’s microphone please? I’m going to make it my voicemail greeting.”
Knowing Crew, he’s serious.
“You’re ridiculous,” I chuckle, feeling the heat of a blush embellish the high rise of my cheeks. I think I’ve had some kind of character growth because I don’t feel the need to hide it anymore.
Fuck it, I’m in love. Hopelessly in love.
“Yeah, ridiculously in love with you,” he says before launching an attack on my throat, tickling me with a fusillade of kisses that make me squirm and giggle.
I never thought I’d be one of those people who partake in public displays of affection. In fact, there was a time in my life where I was this close to throwing rocks at happy couples that I’d see on the street, but Crew Calloway is the change I didn’t know I was searching for.
We’re not in a hurry to seek solace underneath an awning. He releases me with anticipation cloistered in his eyes, the tip of his nose splashed in a red hue from the dropping temperature.
“How did it go?” he inquires, slipping a strand of hair behind my ear.
I uncork a sigh of relief. “Surprisingly well. Mrs. Burke was actually really understanding.”
A smile crawls across his lips as pure happiness overflows in the crinkles by his eyes. There’s a tranquility about him that’s been exhumed—one that I never thought I’d see again, and one that I’m so honored to be a part of.
“I knew she would be. You did amazing with the fundraiser, Princess. You should be proud of all your hard work.”