Chapter 17—Emma

We were exhausted after having so many sex sessions in one night. I lay in his arms and didn’t want to move; I felt as if it was exactly where I wanted to be at this precise moment in time.

“I don’t want to get up,” I sighed as I stretched out my arms and pulled him in tighter.

“Let me call room service, and Sophia too.”

“Why Sophia?”

I lifted up my head and saw a big smile across his face.

“Emma, I have you now; I’m not letting you go. We’ll head home together.”

“Oh!”

I put my head against his chest as he stretched over and picked up the phone. His words took me aback, it was as if he was claiming me and I’d given him permission to do so. How did one night change everything that we’d held onto for so long?

His attraction to me was there from when he had been a kid, but now he was a man that just happened to be my best friend’s brother, and I was supposed to be his doctor.

Everything felt so wrong, but at the same time it all felt so right.

“Sophia, Emma’s coming back with me.”

Then before I knew it he’d hung up and laughed to himself.

“What’s so funny?”

“One minute; I need to go to the bathroom. Then I’ll call room service, what do you fancy eating?”

I didn’t want him to go, but I reluctantly let him move to the other side of the bed. The bed no longer felt warm without his body heat.

“Everything!” I blurted out as my stomach confirmed that I was starving. During dinner my mind had been on Sebastian and I had picked at a few things, but I hadn’t really eaten much and anything I’d eaten before that felt like a million years ago. The whole day had consisted only of worrying about packing and getting ready to leave for Vegas.

“I think that she was in the middle of something.” Sebastian chuckled as he slowly headed toward the bathroom, which made me feel that I wasn’t the only one aching this morning. The whole idea of even moving my legs felt as if it was going to be a chore. One that I didn’t want to undertake in a hurry.

“Yes,” he continued. She was out of breath and when I told her about you coming with me. I wasn’t on the phone long; she was dying to get off it. What do you want again?”

“You choose. I’m so hungry that I could eat the bed.”

He laughed. “Sure, I’ll order some burgers and chicken to go with it.”

I nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

Then he went into the bathroom and I was alone in the room, lost in my thoughts as the door closed behind him. This was Vegas, the place where people got totally freaky and did things that they wouldn’t do back home.

Maybe that’s what had happened between Sebastian and me?

None of this was real; we were just getting lost in the moment.

That must have been what had happened between us the previous night. I started to wonder if the real reason Sophia was desperate to come was to hook up with Mason. She made out that it was because of Sebastian, but now I was starting to think differently about it all. She didn’t spend enough time with Sebastian to be acting like the troubled sister. Or maybe she was leaving it to me? She wanted me to make Sebastian feel better?

She wouldn’t have done that. Would she?

God, this whole thing was driving me mad. I grabbed one of the robes that was on the side of the sofa. The one I put on after we’d finished in the shower. I needed a shower, because my mind was working overtime and I had to wash all my bad thoughts out of my head and only concentrate on the good ones, which involved spending time with Sebastian. The little boy who had turned into a man and knew how to make me wet with just a look. Just a touch. He didn’t have to do anything really to make me feel more of a woman than I’d done in years.

***

I hated eating when I was this hungry, which was why I was kind of strict about my eating schedule. It all went to my hips if I binge ate.

“I don’t even know where to start!” I said as I tightened my robe and sat down at the small wooden breakfast table that was at the side of the room.

We were both sitting down as he lifted up the silver covers and revealed the fries, chicken, and hamburgers that he had ordered for us to eat. It felt like lunch and dinner rolled into one, but I was so hungry I felt that I could eat it all in one sitting.

***

“Things have been difficult for me,” he sighed as he stared at the remains of his burger on his plate. I was tempted to ask him if I could have the rest. Even after the chicken and fries I was still hungry. He really had worked up my appetite and I had a feeling that after the food had settled he would work it up again.

“What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath as he took a swig of his beer. “I missed ten games last season and didn’t play for around half of it.”

He stood up and stretched. “I’m not even sure how long I’m going to last next season.”

I shook my head. “But you look fit enough to me.”

He laughed, keeping his distance. “I had a left trapezius torn which meant that I was out of the season for eight weeks, three years ago. Before that I had completed eighteen out of twenty eight passes for over two hundred yards in one season and I’d had two touchdowns. Since then, nothing’s been the same, including being ranked thirty out of the top hundred players. That was back in 2013. Since then it’s just been one injury after another.”

I shook my head; he was trying to make out that he played golf or something. “You play a high-impact sport. What do you expect?”

I regretted the words escaping my mouth as I said it. The look that he gave me let me know that I said the wrong thing.

“So, it’s okay for my body to feel as if it’s a broken glass all the time?”

“No.”

I couldn’t find a way to describe it; he was so damn defensive. It was clear that this wasn’t the way to talk to him about it.

“The back injury that I had last year and resulted in surgery. Yet again. I should just suck it up and take it as part of the job?”

He was raising his voice and I felt like leaving. This was a bad decision, not only to spend the night with him, but also to have this conversation with him. He had this obsession that he was going to break. That his football career, which he loved so much, was over. I should have been more sensitive when it came to discussing it with him. I had so many patients, and I knew their mindset when they had been through the amount of procedures that Sebastian had been under. Eventually they started to believe that they would get sicker by the minute.

“Oh, I nearly forgot about my two fractures in my transverse process which resulted in me missing two games.”

I decided I had heard enough, as he tried to recall every single injury that he had ever had. I needed to distract him and have this conversation when we were not in our robes. Not after we’d had sex, or made love or fucked. Or maybe all three. Either way, this wasn’t the time to discuss it.

I took a deep breath, gave him another bottle of beer and said, “Don’t waste your energy you’ll need it for later.”

I winked at him and his eyes locked on mine. I stood up and then dropped my robe on the floor. I knew exactly what he had on his mind and it had nothing to do with his injuries; only me and my body.