False Start - Jessica Ruddick Page 0,83

own legs.

As I walked toward the tunnel, my gaze found Becca’s in the crowd. Shit. Tears were streaming down her face, and I could tell that she was shaking. Blake’s arm was around her shoulders, which should have pissed me off, but I was just glad she wasn’t alone. Look at me—maturing and shit.

In the locker room, shit got real as I was handed off to Dr. Flores. After a brief inspection of my arm, he wanted an X-ray.

“How long will this take to heal?” I asked. “A few weeks?” That sucked, but at least we had a bye week coming up. So at most, I was looking at missing two games.

Dr. Flores’s mouth pressed into a tight line. “You see that bump on your arm there?” He pointed to the misshapen part of my forearm. “That’s your bone.”

Well, shit. I’d suspected as much, but hearing the doctor confirm it was sobering.

“Can you push it back into place or something?”

The doctor stared at me for a moment and shook his head. “This isn’t like a dislocated shoulder. I won’t be able to confirm until I’ve seen the X-ray, but I suspect this is a displaced fracture.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

The doctor held his hands out flat with his fingers touching. “This is what a normal bone looks like. See? All together. And this”—he pulled apart his hands and held each one at an odd angle—“is a displaced fracture. With any luck, there’s just one fracture. But your bone has shifted so that the pieces aren’t touching.”

I appreciated him dumbing it down for me, but he still hadn’t told me what I wanted to know. “How long until I’m back on the field?”

“It’s starting to swell. Surgery can’t happen until the swelling goes away.”

I gritted my teeth. “How long?”

Dr. Flores shook his head sadly, and I knew before he said the words. “You’re not getting back on the field this season.”

CHAPTER 21

Becca

I WAS A wreck, sobbing in the uncontrollable way that also caused snot to run out of my nose. It was an ugly, ugly cry. To his credit, Blake didn’t leave my side until he’d deposited me in the care of Roman and my parents. Then he took off. I couldn’t blame him. I was hysterical and nonsensical, but I couldn’t rein it in, not until I saw Carson. In my gut, I knew he wasn’t okay.

Despite the chill in the air, I insisted on waiting outside the players’ entrance. My mom wrapped her arms around me, providing the comfort only a mother was capable of. “I’m sure he’ll be fine, honey. Yes, he’s hurt, but he’ll recover.”

Her words made sense and were exactly right, but they didn’t make me feel any better.

My father’s cop eyes narrowed as a loud group of kids strode past. They were totally wasted, and my dad probably wanted to give them hell, but he was obviously out of his jurisdiction. As a general rule, he didn’t arrest kids for underage drinking, but he did like to scare them into thinking twice about their actions. He was one of the best cops around despite the fact that I was biased. My mom kept pressing him to get a position in one of the local high schools as a school resource officer. So far, he’d resisted, but he would end up there eventually. He was good with kids.

Jake exited the building, and I pounced, wrenching out of my mother’s arms. “Did you see Carson? How is he?”

“Strangely calm,” Jake said, not seeming unnerved by how I’d grabbed him. “I expected him to be pissed.”

My shoulders slumped in relief. “Then it must not be that bad.” Carson got pissed whenever he had to sit out, even for a few plays. So if he was calm, then I must have overestimated the severity of his injury.

Jake grimaced. “His arm is broken. He wouldn’t tell me much else, but that much was obvious.”

I closed my eyes as my chest tightened.

“Shit,” Roman said. “That’s at least six weeks out, right?”

Please say no. But I knew it was a fruitless hope. Bones took time to mend, and it wasn’t worth the risk for Carson to play before it was better.

“I couldn’t say,” Jake said. “But yeah, probably.”

The exit door flung open, and Carson came out with his arm in a sling. I flung myself at his other side, trying not to jostle his arm. I inhaled his scent, but the tightness in my chest didn’t relent.

He chuckled. “Sorry to worry