The Penalty Box - Teagan Kade Page 0,55
smile, but even that hurts. “It’s okay.” I bring a hand up to the side of her face. Something attached to the back of my hand stops it going any further. “We’re okay.”
She wipes her cheek and holds my hand against her. “The print was from his bodyguard, probably the guy you’re talking about. Rex is going to have far bigger problems than salvaging a merger and trying to marry me off now.”
“How long have I—”
“Been out?” she finishes. “Twelve, maybe thirteen hours?”
“The surgery took a while, sorry.”
I look behind Linnea to the doctor who’s entered the room. He stands beside her but addresses me. I’m pretty sure it’s the same doctor who patched me up the first time. “They made a real mess of you, but we’ve managed to stop the bleeding in your side there. You’ve got a nasty concussion, might feel like you’ve been swallowing razor blades for a few days, but it looks like you’ll pull through.”
“He is going to make it. There is no ‘probably’, not for this one,” says Linnea, with more conviction than I’ve heard her say anything, even ‘I do’.
I smile at that. “I wouldn’t dream of denying you,” I tell her, the doctor taking his cue to leave.
“I’ll be in later,” he says.
I squeeze Linnea’s hand back. “You heard the man. I’m going to be fine. Plus, I’ve got you to nurse me back to health, don’t I?”
“Don’t know if you remember, but I make a really shitty nurse.”
“No Jell-O and sponge baths?” I laugh but it hurts like an absolute bitch, and I fall into a coughing fit instead.
Linnea takes a glass of water from the table next to the bed, directing the straw into my mouth. “Here.”
I sip, letting the straw fall from my lips. “I feel like an idiot.”
“You look like a racoon.”
I can’t find a mirror to confirm, but two black eyes seems about right.
I catch Linnea looking at my side where the knife went in. “It was pretty serious. I thought…”
I bring my hand back to her face. “Hey, hey, I’m right here, aren’t I? It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than your father and his goon squad to get rid of me.”
The laugh that follows is short-lived. She takes my hand away. “I’m worried you won’t be able to play hockey anymore.”
I hadn’t considered it, or even thought about hockey. I’d be lying if I thought there wasn’t irritation at the idea. “I love hockey,” I tell Linnea. “But if this injury costs my career, even if I could have avoided it by not meeting you, it will still be worth it. I’ll still have no regrets. You hear me? None. You are everything to me.”
She’s wiping away more tears. “Here I go gushing away again like Old Faithful.”
“All these tears over me. It’s enough to give a guy a big head.”
She laughs. “I think your head is quite big enough already.”
“You have met my brothers, right?”
“I don’t think any of you King boys have self-esteem issues.”
I get back to hockey. “There are other roles to play in a successful hockey team, you know.”
“I don’t think you’re cut out to be a water boy.”
Even I can’t help smiling at that. “You know I don’t play football, right? That’s Peyton King.”
She taps me on the chest and rolls her eyes. “I think I know my husband by now, thank you very much.”
“But I haven’t shown you my collection of human skulls, or the gimp I keep in the attic.”
“Whatever skeletons you’ve got in your closet, dear husband, they’re our skeletons now.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Any surprises I should know about? Crazy exes, weird fetishes?”
She raises an eyebrow. “All in good time, but for now you need to rest.”
“Do I?”
Followed by another eyeroll. “You’ve been freaking stabbed and still all you can think about is sex?”
I shrug, and again, it’s like someone’s jammed a poker into my side. “I’m male.”
She wags her finger. “But being a male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of choice.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And with that wisdom I’m off to drown myself in trans fats and sugar from the hospital canteen. You want anything.? To look at, that is. I don’t actually know what you can and cannot eat.”
“I’ll survive,” I reply, watching her strut to the door, looking back over her shoulder.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“And you’re fine as hell, wife.”
She walks away laughing.
The doctor comes back later in the evening. He says he doesn’t believe