Page 31 of Sweet Temptation (Love & Legacy #1)

LUCKY

T he sound of Cooper Sinclair arguing with a nurse has become white noise, he’s been doing it for so fucking long.

He wants to see Lexie, but they won’t let us back until they’ve finished running her tests.

She’s not in a room right now, and the hospital is apparently so slammed tonight, there’s no extra rooms for her.

They’ve told him in every way imaginable they’ll get her into a room as soon as one is available, but in the meantime, we have to wait out here.

Hospital policy.

So here I sit in the waiting room of Kroydon Hills Hospital with my elbows on my knees and my head hung low. Listening to him fight with the nurse for the hundredth time over the past hour, wondering how the fuck did we go from her saying yes, she’d marry me, to this.

Carys sits between Linc and me, quietly crying as Cooper argues and I pray.

My parents are Catholic. And not just the Christmas and Easter kind.

The kind who woke us up every single Sunday to go to mass.

Wear slacks, nice shoes, and sit in the front row, Catholic.

I spent years only half-listening to sermons and readings and prayers.

But right now, I might as well be channeling a priest for the way I’m praying to a God who hasn’t heard from me in a long damn time.

A bolt of lightning might just come crashing through the ceiling, aimed for my head for how long it’s been since I’ve prayed.

But I’m willing to take that risk because right now, I’ve got everything to lose.

Everything.

The swoosh of the locked door opening has me looking up to find Dr. Bunton walking into the waiting room and looking right at us.

Carys squeezes my hand as we both stand on shaky legs.

Cooper comes over and wraps an arm around his wife, and the look in his eyes fucking guts me.

Especially when it’s mirrored in her doctor’s voice. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this?—”

My body has been the thing that’s set me apart my whole life.

It’s my instrument. My tool.

I can run harder, faster, and more accurately than 99 percent of the world.

But right now, my knees threaten to give out.

In the tenth of a second it takes him to finish his sentence, all the things we were supposed to do together flash before my eyes. A beautiful kaleidoscope of color and happy memories that we haven’t had a chance to make.

A lifetime’s worth.

“Lexie’s lungs are failing her.”

Failing.

Fuck. She’s still alive.

“And this is putting a strain on her heart.”

“Fix them,” Carys pleads.

“We’re going to try, Carys.” Lex has been seeing Dr. Bunton for most of her life, but that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference right now.

“How?” Cooper’s voice wavers as I stand here, feeling like I’m standing in the middle of a bad dream. A fucking nightmare.

“We have a plan. We need to place Lexie in a medically induced coma to give her body time to heal without having the added stress?—”

“Added stress of what?” Carys cries. “The stress of living?”

Dr. Bunton’s eyes soften, but it’s there, right there in front of me. He doesn’t know if this will work.

How did my girl go from fine to this?

“We’re going to do everything we can for her. I’ve been here with your family before. You know I won’t give you false hope. But I will tell you we feel confident that this new treatment should clear up the infection her body’s been battling.”

“The same one you’ve had her on three different rounds of three different antibiotics for?” I ask, ready to rage at the world. No one ever tells you that fear will do that. Make you rage when you’re too scared to do any other fucking thing. “If none of them worked, why should this?”

“We don’t know whether it will, Lucky. The next forty-eight hours are critical, but we’re hopeful.”

Hope.

We’ve been reduced to hope.

It feels like a joke.

“When can we see her?” Cooper asks, his voice a hell of a lot shakier now than it was when he was giving the nurse grief.

“I can take you back now, but she’s in ICU. Two people, max.”

“We need three, Jim. You know Cooper and I will stay out of the way, but Lexie would want Lucky there too. They just got engaged. Let him talk to her. It could help,” she pleads, and I swear to God and on every single Sunday prayer I know, Carys Sinclair just became a saint in my eyes.

I started this football season thinking the only thing that mattered was earning my position on the team. I never wanted to doubt that I deserved to be there. Never wanted to wonder whether my family owning the team was the only reason I was there.

I’m not a big enough dick to believe it wasn’t part of the reason.

But I needed to prove to myself it wasn’t the only one.

To prove I deserved it. That I earned it.

If you had asked me in August if I’d miss a single game so long as there was breath in my fucking body, I would have said no way.

But twelve hours after Lexie told me she’d marry me, I thank my aunt, the GM and president of the Philadelphia Kings, and end the call, not giving a single shit that I just asked her to put me out on medical leave for this week’s game.

I lean back against the wall outside of Lexie’s door and close my eyes for a minute. Trying to pull my shit together before I go back in.

“You scared me.” Cooper’s voice is clear as day as he walks up beside me. “When your dad and I decided it was better for Lexie if you stayed away, it was because you scared me. When she was with you, she was reckless?—”

I open my eyes and look at the man who’s aged ten years in the last twelve hours. “I swear to you, Cooper, I took her to the doctor myself a week ago?—”

“Just listen to me, Lucky, because this isn’t easy for me to admit.

” He leans his head back against the tile wall and stares up into the fluorescent light above us.

“She was reckless with you because we held on so tight, she didn’t feel safe to be herself.

To find herself. So she tried to do that with you—because you let her.

She felt safe with you. You were just a kid.

You both were. You couldn’t have known she’d get sick back then, the same way none of us knew she’d be sick right now.

” When he turns back to me, he looks like he’s seen a fucking ghost. “But she’s my little girl, and you scared me, so you were the easiest target.

I wanted to keep her safe. I wanted to believe I could keep her safe.

But I couldn’t. None of us could. I’m not proud of myself, but I can’t change it either. ”

“I kissed her forehead today when she was sleeping. I didn’t think she had a fever.

I should have checked. I should have made her take her temperature.

..” The fucking what I should have dones are killing me because if I stop focusing on them, I start thinking about the what-ifs again. And the what-ifs without her are worse.

“Take it from a man who tried to rationalize his baby girl’s illness her whole life. There is no making sense of any of it. Don’t do it to yourself. It will drive you insane.”

“Then what do we do?” I ask, needing to do something because just sitting here watching a machine breathe for her isn’t making her better.

“We talk to her. We tell her we love her. We make sure she hears us and that she knows she has to come back to us. We do that until the doctors tell us it’s time to wake her up. We do that because it’s all we can do right now.”

He grabs the back of my head in his hand and pulls me against him. “We fucking pray, Lucky. Because I don’t know how to live in this world without my daughter. Your kids are supposed to bury you. You’re never supposed to outlive them.”

“ H oney,” my mom walks into the hospital room early the next morning with a cup of coffee and a bag of bagels. “Have you eaten anything?”

“I’m not hungry,” I murmur as I hold Lexie’s cold hand between both of mine. “Her hand is so cold. She hates to be cold.”

“I can go ask the nurse for another blanket,” she offers and hands me the cup of coffee.

“She already has an extra one on. They brought it earlier.” I kiss Lexie’s knuckles and adjust the engagement ring I slid back on her finger after a nurse gave it to me last night.

“Lucky, have you slept at all? You’re not doing yourself or anyone else any good if you don’t get some sleep,” she pushes as I pull the lid of the coffee back and take a sip, hoping it gives me the kick I need.

I haven’t slept. I’ve barely closed my eyes.

How can I when I’m sitting here next to Lexie while a machine breathes for her?

Mom presses a kiss to the top of my head. “I’m here if you need me.”

T hey lower the medication slowly after two days and take her off the vent, but by the end of day three, she still doesn’t wake up.

Dr. Bunton promises this isn’t abnormal, but it feels fucking wrong to me.

Everything about this feels so wrong.

Cooper presses a kiss to Lexie’s forehead late that night and offers Carys his hand, but she sits across from me, scared to leave. And I get it. The fear is real.

Why would we leave when we’re not going to be able to sleep at home either?

She shakes her head, and brushes hair away from Lexie’s face. “You go, Coop. I want to stay here.”

“Carys. We can’t all stay here. The house is ten minutes away,” he pleads with his wife, and I don’t know what’s worse—the fear in his voice or the devastation in hers.

“What if ten minutes is too long?” she asks on a gut-wrenching sob.

“It won’t be. Our girl is too stubborn to give up when she’s finally gotten me to approve of Lucky.” He forces a grin my way. “Did she tell you she came to see me a few weeks ago? It was before you came and told me you were marrying her with or without my permission.”

“No.” A sad smile pulls at my lips. “She didn’t mention a thing.”

“She came in, all pissed off. She was mad that I was rude to you after the game. Said I wasn’t being fair or nice.” He kisses the top of Carys’s head and brushes a hand through Lexie’s hair. “She told me you were a good man and she was in love with you.”

My smile isn’t even sad anymore. “She said that?”

Not like my girl didn’t just agree a few days ago to marry me, but it still feels good to hear.

“I believe her exact words were, But Daddy, I love him . One day, I hope you have a daughter, and some young little shit, who might just turn out to be a good man, shows up on your doorstep and tells you he’s going to marry your daughter.

And when you want to kill him, you come get me because that’ll be my granddaughter we’re talking about, and I’ll help you.

” He tugs on Carys’s shoulders, pulling her up.

“I know I’m not going to get you to go home, right? ”

I shake my head. “No. I’m not leaving.”

“Lucky will be here with her all night, Carys. Let me take you home. Get some sleep and come back in the morning, then you can let Lucky do the same.”

Cooper looks at me over Carys’s head, knowing full well there’s no chance I’m leaving tomorrow. But he gets his way, and Carys agrees. She kisses Lexie’s head, then rounds the bed and runs a hand over my hair.

“She loves you.”

“She’s my whole world,” I tell her, trying not to let her see the agony I’m in.

“She knows.”

And fuck if those words don’t eviscerate me. Because if there’s one thing I want to do right in this life it’s love this woman. If at the end of my days, I can look back, I want to know I loved her enough for a lifetime.

I rest my head against her chest and listen to the beating of her heart.

The nurses brought blankets and pillows earlier for me to use on the couch, but I can’t touch her from the couch.

“You’re supposed to be in our bed, Lex. Snoring, even though you’ll never admit you do.

How do they expect me to sleep on that couch if I can’t touch you from there?

If I can’t feel you breathing or the beat of your heart?

” I murmur sometime around two in the morning and drop my head to her hand.

Careful not to catch any of the wires attached to her IV.

“You know, this used to be our time of night. I’d give anything to be standing in the kitchen with you right now. ”

“If you want me to make you an omelet, all you have to do is ask,” she rasps, and it’s the best fucking sound I’ve ever heard in my life.