Wrapped Up: A Triple Threat Sports Romance by Lexi Cross Page B

me. I jumped up to grab it and before I landed, I had a defensive lineman’s shoulders in my ribs. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever been tackled, but I couldn’t remember ever being hit that hard in an actual game before.
     
    I hit the ground and a sharp pain shot up my leg. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth against the bright white bolt that shot through my body. I was afraid to move. I let go of the ball and grabbed my leg to make sure it was at least bent in the right direction. I had seen some pretty nasty leg injuries over the years, and I didn’t want to be one of those guys getting carried off with a leg bent completely backwards.
     
    Under my hands, my legs felt fine, but my right leg was killing me. I opened my eyes when Coach and a couple of other guys came out to grab me.
     
    “Coach, I’m sorry,” was all I could say.
     
    “Don’t worry about it, kid. You’ll be fine,” he assured me as they checked my leg and lifted me onto a board to carry me out.
     
    The crowd was silent as they watched one of the team’s star players get carted off the field.
     
    “Coach, tell my fiancée to go on home after the game. Tell her I’m going to get the team physician to look at me and I’ll meet her there,” I told him at the sideline before the guys carried me inside.
     
    “Got it. I didn’t know you were engaged,” he said.
     
    “Yeah, it just happened. I’ll tell you about it another time.” I winced. Even talking was painful. Every movement just made my leg hurt much more.
     
    It was starting to feel cold, it hurt so much.
     
    “What’s the word, doc?” I asked the physician after he looked at me.
     
    “It’s not broken, but it’s not good either,” he said.
     
    “Are you sure it’s not broken?” I asked.
     
    “Yeah, the bone seems to be fine, but I think you tore the shit out of your muscles. It could heal on its own, but then again, it could be bad enough to need surgery.”
     
    “Surgery?” That sounded like a career-ending injury, and it made me wonder. Had I been targeted for stepping away from the network? There was no way. I was one of the heads of the network.
     
    The team physician hooked me up with some pain killers and a pair of crutches. He then told me to sit out at least the next three games to see how I was healing. He said I definitely needed to seek further medical attention if I wasn’t ready to get back on the field in three or four weeks.
     
    Being off the field for that long was a terrifying thought. Realizing that my injury could easily have been threatening to my career was even worse.
     
    On the ride home, in the back of the car, I had some time to think about what it would have meant to be out of the game for good. I had a marketing degree, but I didn’t have any real marketing experience. I had to start thinking of a backup plan, because being out of the game would have meant being out of the network, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the network and the injury were related.
     
    As coincidental as it seemed, it also didn’t seem right, not even for us.
     
    The pain meds kicked in, and by the time I hobbled in the door, I wasn’t feeling anything.
     
    “Oh my god, Jake, are you okay?” Brooke was up and running to the door as soon as my driver opened it for me to enter the house.
     
    “Right now, I’m fine. When these meds wear off, I’m going to be hurting.” I laughed.
     
    She took my face in her hands. “I saw what happened. I was so worried,” she said, and then it happened.
     
    Our lips finally met, for the first time in over ten years. My hands on the crutches at my sides, unable to grab her, I was completely at her mercy while she kissed me. She held my face to hers in her thin hands and worked my lips over with her own. Our tongues met and reacquainted themselves with one another, and I could feel myself drifting towards her.
     
    She pulled back and I could feel her lips curl into a smile against