Until You Loved Me

“I wouldn’t have to know that if you’d been yourself out there today. I still don’t understand how you let the game get away from you. What was going through your mind when you threw that last pass, man? What did you think you were going to be able to do while you were falling backward?”

He’d been trying to take control of something—trying too hard, in retrospect—because he couldn’t control what was happening to Aaron, couldn’t even be with him when the boy needed to go to the hospital. “We all have bad days.”

“Yeah, well, give me a heads-up when you’re out of sync next time so I can bet on the opposite team, will ya?”

Hudson promised himself he’d never self-destruct in another game, especially one Aaron was watching. The boy needed something to smile about. Instead of giving him that, he’d panicked and let fear undermine his concentration. “You’ll never get a call like that from me, because it’s not going to happen again.”

“Good. So when will you be home?”

“Team’s flying out tonight at eleven-fifteen.” They had a chartered flight via one of the major airlines, with the Boeing 757 reconfigured to contain half as many seats as usual. It even had eighteen beds to fit the large bodies typical of football players, plus massage therapists, big-screen TVs for gaming and a smorgasbord of food catered by a local restaurant.

But since they’d lost, the mood on this evening’s flight would be subdued. Hudson wasn’t looking forward to spending five hours cooped up in a plane with his teammates, especially since he was to blame for today’s loss.

“Hey, are you going to get showered? The bus is waiting.” Bruiser was back, all six feet eight inches and 370 pounds of him. No one else would dare try to roust Hudson. The fact that Hudson had done his interviews before he’d even taken off his uniform told them he was in no mood to be bothered.

“Be there in ten,” he muttered.

Bruiser looked as though he was tempted to stay until Hudson proved his words by heading for the showers, but he didn’t. After giving him a skeptical once-over, he left.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Aaron asked on the phone.

Hudson returned to the conversation. “Yeah. I’ll come by the hospital.”

“No need. They’re going to release me.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Doctor said so. I’m gonna be okay, Hudson. For now, anyway. So quit fretting like a little girl. It was just a bad reaction to the meds.”

Chuckling at the “little girl” comment and ignoring the “for now,” Hudson finally stood up and pulled off his shirt. “Then I’ll come see you at New Horizons.”

“Will you be up for the drive?”

The town of Silver Springs, population five thousand, was between ninety minutes and two hours northwest of LA, but once he broke free from the big-city traffic, the drive wasn’t too bad. Hudson made it often. Ojai, where the hospital was located, wasn’t much farther—if, for some reason, Aaron wasn’t released as planned. “’Course I will.”

“Maybe you should stay in the city and get some rest. You were hit pretty hard at the start of the game. I saw how slow you got up. And you don’t have a lot of time to recover. You’ve got the 49ers next weekend.”

Fortunately, that game was at home. The travel during the season was the biggest nuisance of Hudson’s job. “I’ll be fine,” he said and believed that would be the case, as long as Aaron was, too.

After saying goodbye, he hung up and hurried over to the showers.

When he eventually boarded the bus, Hudson was mildly surprised that so many of his teammates made an effort to rally behind him. Once he’d returned from his interviews, they’d given him space, quietly showered, dressed and left the locker room, allowing him time to cope with his frustration and disappointment. But now they were offering their support.

“Anyone can have a bad game... No loss is due strictly to one guy... Hey, it’s a team effort... We’ll get our groove back... That was just four quarters. We still got plenty of season ahead of us... Don’t worry about today, man. Next time, huh?”

As Hudson nodded at each encouragement, he promised himself he’d never let them down again.

5 (#u479e3e12-4eb2-523e-abf2-99cfeffe4e63)

The next seven weeks were every bit as difficult as Ellie had feared. Initially, Don had been penitent enough to smile or try to speak to her as a friend might when they passed in the halls or had to interact at work, but he quickly grew resentful that she wasn’t doing more to help his family adapt to his new lifestyle. Apparently they were still having a problem with his sexual orientation or they didn’t like Leo or something. But Ellie wasn’t trying to subvert him. She didn’t feel it was her place to get involved. She had her own problems, was struggling to get over the rejection and adjust to a very different future than the one she’d planned.

Sadly, Don and Leo didn’t see it that way. They shot her pouty, sullen looks whenever they were in the same meeting together, and they were in a lot of meetings since the entire staff gathered often to go over recent progress, set current priorities and discuss the merits of outside projects. Others in the room could feel the tension between them and would shift nervously—or worse, begin to whisper. Ellie always felt as though they were talking about her, because they probably were. Poor Dr. Fisher. Can you imagine what it would be like to find your fiancé in bed with another man?

To make matters worse, with her parents away, she had nothing to do in the evenings. She was used to spending most of her leisure time with Don, Don’s family or his cat (if he was “golfing” with Leo), and now all those people, as well as his pet, were out of her life. Although Amy invited her to go clubbing almost every weekend, so far she’d refused. She’d enjoyed that night at Envy—probably too much—but she wasn’t looking for a repeat. She wasn’t really the kind of person who did things like that, and she didn’t want to leave herself vulnerable to what could go wrong if something similar were to happen again. She knew she was unlikely to enjoy another fairy-tale ending like the last one.

Instead, she tried to ignore the emptiness of her personal life by chasing her dream of finding a safe and reliable method to protect transplanted insulin-producing islet cells, so no one else would have to suffer the way her aunt had. As it stood now, without harsh immunosuppressant drugs, the immune system saw the cells as foreign and destroyed them. Finding a way around that was important if transplantation was ever to become a routine solution for diabetics.

So she told herself she didn’t mind spending longer and longer hours at the lab. Not only did the challenge keep her focused, it gave her a purpose.

But on a Saturday evening at the end of October, she hit a wall. Too exhausted to continue, she forced herself to knock off at six. She was planning to treat herself to a grilled cheese sandwich and some chocolate-chip cookies while watching the first season of Outlander. Diane DeVry, who headed up the fund-raising entity that supported the BDC, had brought in the first two seasons to share with her. And if Outlander didn’t “sweep her away” as Diane promised it would, she had several medical journals she’d been meaning to read.

Content with her plans, she almost didn’t answer the phone when Amy called as she was driving home. She was afraid her friend would once again try to press her into going to a club, and she wasn’t interested.

She let it ring four times before she knocked over her purse trying to catch the call. She figured she’d be a fool to alienate Amy. Amy was the only friend she had left—other than her colleagues at the BDC, almost all of whom had families they went home to at night, worked the same crazy hours she did or sided with Don.

She turned into the driveway of her rental house as she answered.

“What are you doing tonight?” Amy asked.

Ellie thought it was terribly nice of her friend to continue to reach out. She probably would’ve given up by now were she in Amy’s shoes. But Amy was far more persistent than she was. Thank goodness. Even if she didn’t see Amy often, hearing from her brought Ellie some comfort. “You wouldn’t approve,” she said.

“You’re still at work.”

She pressed the button that activated her garage door. “It isn’t quite as bad as that. Just got home.”

“Wonderful. At least you can’t tell me you’re too busy saving the world to go out tonight.”

“I don’t want to go to a club, Amy.”

“I was going to suggest a movie.”

“You’d miss dressing up for Halloween to go to a movie?”

“I’ll celebrate Halloween tomorrow night. Since it’s on a Sunday, this is kind of a weird year, anyway.”

“Then how about an Outlander marathon at my place?”

“You have Outlander?”

“Someone at work lent it to me, promised I’d like it.”

“I’ve seen a few episodes and I’ve been meaning to watch the rest. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the actor who plays James Fraser.”

“That should be safe, then. I can’t get hurt by a fictional character, right? Why don’t you come over?”

A slight pause indicated that Amy was still trying to decide. “Do you have any food?”

“I’ll soon have homemade chocolate-chip cookies.”