Lily’s heart was thumping in her chest when she put the girls to bed, poured herself a glass of white wine, and returned to her phone. She tapped a quick text. It’s kinda late. Still want me to call? Her phone rang almost immediately.
“It’s never too late.” Gage’s voice was low and gravelly.
“So you want me to sing you to sleep?” she squeaked. Part of her brain registered that he wasn’t out with one of his many admirers if he was on the phone with her, right?
He rumbled a chuckle. “Yeah, but first I wanted to find out how my girls are doing.”
My girls? Oh, that sounded nice. “You mean Daisy and Hobbes?”
“Hobbes. Right,” he snorted. “I worry about you way more than I worry about that cat.”
Lily lowered her drawbridge a few inches. “You worry about me?” A warm, sticky feeling enveloped her from her toes to her neck.
“Yeah. Not that you can’t take care of yourself, but I worry when I’m not around. So what’ve you been up to?”
Words caught in her throat. She cleared them out. “Getting Paige’s social media campaign up and running.”
Another warm chuckle. “I guess this means I’m second fiddle to Paige now, despite how much I value twittering out to the world.”
Lily let out a laugh. “It’s tweeting, not twittering. Speaking of which, have you checked Twitter in the last half hour, Professor?”
“No, why?”
“I might’ve posted your selfie.”
“What? Shit! That was strictly for you and Daisy.” Laughter lingered in his voice. “That’s the last time I send you a racy picture.”
“That’s racy?” She sipped her wine. “Don’t worry. I cropped it so your bare chest isn’t showing.” Although I’m enjoying the uncropped version.
He dropped his voice. “Well, maybe you should reciprocate.”
“Meaning?”
“I sent you a picture of my bare chest, so …”
If she hadn’t swallowed her wine, she would’ve sprayed it everywhere. “Have you been drinking?”
“I take it that’s a no? Damn.” His laugh rolled through the phone, long and low and sexed-up. A delicious flutter waved its way through her body before she could rein it in.
Okay. Now I’m talking to Sexy Gage. Yet another side of the same man. Did he flirt with other women this way? Maybe this was the Gage who got all the cards. The thought unsettled her. “Do you do this a lot?”
“What?”
“Ask women to send you pictures?”
A loud, decidedly unsexy sputtering noise was her answer. “No! Shit! I was only kidding.” He raced on. “Lily, it was a joke. A bad joke, obviously. I mean, if you wanted to send me a picture, any kind of picture, I’d totally be on board.” A noisy exhale. “Damn it. You’re not going to sing me to sleep now, are you? I could’ve used it too.”
The playfulness disappeared from his voice, and worry grabbed hold of her. “Why? What’s going on?”
Her heart squeezed when he sighed on the other end. “Grandma fell today.”
“Oh no! How?”
“Shit, I didn’t mean to bring this up and kill our fun conversation.”
“Gage, what happened? Please tell me.”
He told her how he’d gotten a call from his mother right before his pre-game nap. His grandmother had either lost her balance or tripped over something in her apartment and landed on her face. Nothing broken, but she looked as though she’d been hit by a car.
“Mom says they spent nearly eight hours in emergency,” he continued, his voice quiet. “My little scratch pales in comparison to what she looks like.”
Oh, how Lily wished she could bring his teasing tone back. Help him get his mind off a situation he was powerless to change. How well she understood that helpless feeling.
“Grandma was freaking out because she didn’t know where she was and she wanted to go home—her old home, where she lived when she was a girl. God, Lily, I should have been there.”
“There’s nothing you could’ve done, Gage.”
“I could’ve kept Grandma calm! I could’ve helped my mom. It all fell on her.” He followed this up quickly with, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
The regret and blame in his voice chiseled a little chink out of her heart.
“You’re not. You’re taking it out on you. Gage, you’re the best son I know, and you’re doing all you can, but you can’t control everything that happens. Your grandma could’ve fallen from a simple twist as she was sitting down or getting out of bed.”
When he didn’t respond, she went on. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Some things are just inescapable. I should know. I’ve spent the last five years telling myself the same thing.” The words slid out so easily it took a moment for her surprise she’d uttered them to catch up.
“You’re talking about Jack,” he said softly.
She tugged out her necklace. “Yes.”
“Lily, can you … Will you tell me what happened?”
God, this man was making her feel things she wasn’t ready to feel … like the urge to climb into the warmth and safety of his strong arms and cling to him for dear life.
Chapter 16
Spectral Visions
Gage settled more deeply into the mattress and folded an arm behind his head, trying to get as comfortable as possible. Though he’d grown up around women’s tears, they still flustered him. Hearing Lily cry would shake him up even more, so he braced himself for the potential storm. But beneath his concern, unease bristled. Though he was curious about Jack, he was also jealous. Hearing about Jack would only remind him Jack was first in Lily’s life. The anticipation inside him, prickly like sea urchin spikes, was akin to meeting someone you disliked face-to-face.
As Lily began to talk, he sucked in a breath.
“Daisy was six months old when she came down with her first cold. Nothing unusual, though the symptoms always seem amplified in a baby. Jack got sick about a week later. We’d been on an exhausting tour through Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma, so it didn’t seem strange that one of
