“Slight concussion and bruised ribs,” Sam said.

“Take me to him.”

She understood the sentiment. She just wasn’t sure Wade was going to appreciate it.

Chapter 23

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

—Heywood Hale Broun

Once Wade was released from the hospital, Gage drove him back to the Heat’s facilities. Wade moved slowly and carefully into the clubhouse, greeted by his agent and trainers. He heard Gage give a quick statement to the press, and wondered why Sam hadn’t done it. He told himself it didn’t matter that she hadn’t waited to see if he was okay.

Didn’t matter at all.

She had Tag to worry about, and . . . and hell, he’d been alone for most of his life, he didn’t need anyone to hold his hand just because he hurt like a mother. At his locker, he picked up his things including his phone and noticed the twelve missed calls.

“Hey.”

Wade very carefully turned around, wincing at the movement in both his ribs and head, and found Pace sitting in one of the leather chairs, sprawled out comfortably. But after four years of being together, Wade knew that the lazy pose was deceptive. “Hey yourself.”

“Word is you’re going to live.”

“Apparently so.”

Pace pushed to his feet and came closer, looking him over carefully.

“I’m not circling the drain,” Wade said. “At least not yet.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“Gage has a car out front for me.”

“I have a car, too.” Pace grabbed Wade’s duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder, adding it to his own bag. He opened the front doors of the facility for Wade and waited for him to go out first.

“You know something I don’t?” Wade asked him, bemused.

Pace tossed their two bags in the back of his car. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Aw, that’s sweet.”

Pace didn’t look amused. “I don’t want to pitch to anyone but you, Wade.”

“Is this going to end in a marriage proposal, cuz I’m not sure Holly—”

“God, you are such a dick.”

“Don’t be mad. I love you, too.”

“Laugh all you want,” Pace said. “But I need you to remember exactly how much you love me when you feel the need to kill someone later tonight. I want you to also remember that if you’re in jail, I can’t pitch to you.”

Wade’s smirk faded. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Pace didn’t answer as he drove them out of the parking lot and hit the highway. Night had fallen. The moon was sitting on the horizon, a few inches above the Pacific Ocean, casting a blue glow over the rugged mountain bluffs.

“You going to tell me what’s going on?” Wade asked.

“You access any of your messages yet?”

“No.”

“Your father’s in town.”

Wade shook his head. “No, he’s not. He’s still in Oregon.”

“He bailed.” Pace pulled up to Wade’s house. “And here’s the biggie—he’s here. As in inside.”

Wade stared at the car in his driveway.

Sam’s.

The sight of her car gave him a rush, but his brain was feeling a little sluggish from the hit it’d taken earlier. Pain from that, mixed in with the news from Pace, suddenly blossomed into a full-fledged migraine. He opened Pace’s passenger door and started to get out but Pace snagged the back of his shirt. “Remember what I said. Remember I’ll only pitch to you, and that if you do anything stupid, I can’t do that. Plus you don’t want to go to jail. You’d hate being Bubba’s bitch.”

“Bubba?”

“Probably he’s three-hundred-fifty pounds and would expect you to squeal. I mean you’re not really my type, but he might think you’re pretty.”

Wade just looked at him. “You need help,” he finally said.

Pace turned off the car and started to walk Wade to the door. Wade blocked his way. “Go home to Holly, Pace.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m getting the feeling I’m not going to be alone. Go home,” he repeated. “I’ll deal with whatever’s waiting for me.”

Pace stopped and sighed. “Call me if you need me.”

“Yeah.” Bells were going off in Wade’s head. Hard to tell if it was his concussion, or just a general sense that his life was about to go straight into the toilet.

He was betting the latter.

Sam was sitting on Wade’s couch holding her breath when his front door opened.

He walked in wearing a T-shirt and washed-out Levi’s. Hands on hips, he looked at the group in his living room. His gaze touched first on Sam and Tag, softening on both of them before locking in on his father.

The softness vanished and the air crackled with tension as he turned and tossed his bag aside with slightly more violence than necessary.

“Hello, son.” This from John. “How are you?”

Wade just looked at him.

“I guess you’re surprised to see me, huh? Samantha was kind enough to give me a ride.”

Wade sent Sam a look that made her squirm before turning to Tag. “Hey, man,” he said.

“Hey. Your head okay?”

“I’ll live.”

Tag waited a beat. “You going to start drooling or anything? Cuz that’s what happens sometimes with head injuries.”

“This is more of a brain problem,” Wade said, and looked right at Sam. “It’s on overload and might explode.”

She winced.

And John sighed. “Always was dramatic,” he said to Sam.

Tag looked back and forth between father and son. “So . . . you guys in a fight or something?”

“No,” John said.

“Yes,” Wade said at the same time.

Tag was playing with the basketball that John had gotten from Walmart, trying to twirl it on his fingers as John had taught him. The guy might be a drunk but he was incredibly athletic. Not a surprise really, considering Wade’s abilities.

Wade watched Tag fumble with the ball a moment, then slid a look at his father. “Your doing, I assume.”

John nodded. “It’s just not quite as impressive to twirl a baseball, sorry.”

Wade just shook his head. “Tag?”

“Yeah?”

“I got a bunch of new equipment delivered. Bats, gloves, athletic shoes. Want to look through it?”

Tag dropped the basketball. “Yeah!”

“Second room on the left at the top of the stairs.”

“You rock!” Faster than lightning, Tag was gone.

Sam watched Wade walk into his open kitchen. He pulled open the refrigerator door and grabbed a beer. He wasn’t moving with his usual, smooth easy stride. She knew he had to ache like hell, and when he put a hand to his ribs, she ached right along with him. She stood up, thinking he needed to be in bed, preferably with an ice pack for his ribs, since he hadn’t been given pain killers because of his slight concussion. “Are you really okay?” she murmured.

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“Wade—”

“Really?” John asked from the couch as Tag came back down the stairs carrying a new bat and glove. “No hello, Dad, great to see you? Not even a f**k you?”

Tag’s eyes got big at the forbidden F-word, and he opened his mouth to repeat it but Wade pointed at him, then twisted off the top of his beer and tossed it over his shoulder into the sink. “Watch your language in front of the kid,” he said to his father.

Sam moved closer to Wade and put her hand over his on the beer. “Wade, I think alcohol’s a bad idea.”

“Why, because I’m forty percent more likely to be an alcoholic since my father’s one? Well, guess what, Princess? My mother was a drunk, too, so I believe that gives me an eighty-percent chance.” He gestured with his beer. “Bottoms up.”

Sam’s heart constricted at the pain in his voice, the one that matched the pain in his eyes, and she realized there was a whole hell of a lot more going on between father and son here than she could understand. “I only meant it’s a bad idea because of your concussion,” she said quietly.

Obviously not caring, he tipped the bottle up to his lips, then lowered it before taking a sip with a softly uttered, “Goddammit.” He set the bottle on the counter with more force than necessary and drew a deep breath.

“Actually,” John said. “Your mother always was more of a social drinker than an alcoholic.”

Wade narrowed his eyes but didn’t speak. He didn’t have to, his eyes spoke volumes.

John patted his hands down his body as if looking for something. Like a flask.

No one spoke.

“Maybe I’d better go,” Sam said.

Wade turned to her for the first time, his eyes dark and dilated. “I’d like to talk to you first.”

She just bet he did. “Oh. Well, it’s late, and—”

He wrapped his fingers around her arm, his grip inexorable. “Now.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Okay.”

He pulled her out into the hall and pressed her back against the wall. His mouth was tight, his body even more so as he held her arms. “How?” he asked in a low, controlled voice. “Why?”

“He called your cell phone.”

“Yeah? So? He always calls my cell phone.”

Their gazes locked for a long moment while she considered how to reply.

“You answered it,” he said.

“It said Dadon the ID, and you’d just been hurt,” she said in her defense.

He blew out a breath. “I’m doubting he knew that.”

She didn’t tell him that was the truth. “I saw his name and I thought . . . I don’t know. I guess I thought family is family, and—”

“Hell, Sam. You should know better than anyone that blood ties don’t necessarily make a family.”

She stared up at him, knowing he was right, so damn right. “He said he needed a ride,” she whispered. “And I pictured a helpless old man—”

“That man is the opposite of helpless.”

“Well, I’m beginning to see that now.” She winced. “And he thinks he’s staying with you.”

He leaned into her, and over her shoulder thunked his head to the wall, which had to hurt.

“I realize he arrived without your knowledge or permission,” she said softly. “And I’m sorry if you’re upset that I gave him a ride from the bus station, but he would have found one here with or without me.”

“Don’t be so sure. There are plenty of bars between the bus depot and here.”

She’d seen Wade in tense situations before. After a bad loss. Before a big game. Having a disagreement with Gage. When Pace had needed surgery in the middle of last season.

But never once had she seen him be anything but cool and calm and unflappable about all of it.

He wasn’t close to any of those things now, and it was an entirely new side to him. “You’re furious with me because I invaded your privacy. I’m sorry, Wade.”

Still leaning on her, his head against the wall, he craned his neck and met her gaze, his brimming with hostility, and even worse, a vulnerability she knew he hated. It was that, more than anything else, that put her heart in her throat. “I screwed up, and I am sorry. But you can’t just ignore him.”

“Why not? He spent the first eighteen years of my life ignoring me.”

“Was it always just you and him?”

“No, it was him and his booze. I wasn’t really much of a factor. I’ve asked him for years to quit, he was never interested. Now he gets a health scare and is staring his mortality in the face, and suddenly he’s all about quitting. He has it in his head that he needs me in order to do it. He needs a relationship before it’s too late.”

Sympathy filled her, but the look on his face dared her to show a single ounce of pity or he’d toss her out the same way he intended to toss out his father. The way he’d challenged her not to toss out Tag. “He did mention the senior center was for the elderly,” she said. “Which apparently he doesn’t consider himself. I’m not sure I understand a lot about addiction, but I do know that just asking someone to quit is rarely enough motivation. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to. Or that he doesn’t love you.”

He stared at her for a long beat, but whether he was soaking that all in or planning her death, she didn’t know. “He’s timeless, you know,” he finally said. “Probably even immortal due to the fact that he’s spent so many years carefully and purposely pickling himself, preserving his parts for the next millennium.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his jaw, which had two days of stubble on it. But it didn’t escape her notice that he was still leaning on her, holding her against the wall, as if he were too tired to hold himself up on his own.

“Maybe if you help him out,” she murmured. “He’ll do this. Really quit.”

He let out a harsh laugh. “I’ve heard it a thousand times, Princess.”

He looked exhausted, his eyes lined with pain, so she was well aware that she was risking her neck by wrapping her arms around him. “You have nothing to feel ashamed of, Wade.”

“I’m not ashamed. I’m pissed off. Did you search him for alcohol?”

At the flicker of guilt she couldn’t hold back, he ground his back teeth together. “What?”