Misadventures of a Rookie (Misadventures #11)(65)

The older lady glanced up at me and then paused before she looked me up and down. If I wasn’t stricken with worry about Bo, I would have been offended at having been checked out like a piece of chocolate cake. Okay, I probably wouldn’t have been offended, but either way, I was shaking I was so worried.

“Family member?”

“Boyfriend,” I answered. “I’m her boyfriend. Gus Persson.”

“Ah yes, she did have your name down.” I had to keep myself from fist pumping. Not only would it have hurt, but also I was pretty sure that would have been pathetic. “She’s behind curtain six. I’ll open the doors for you.”

“Is she okay?”

“You’ll have to see for yourself, Mr. Persson.”

Well, that wasn’t promising.

Rushing from her desk, I ran through the doors she had opened and realized that I was sweating profusely. My heart was going insane in my chest, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. What if her ankle was really broken this time? What if she was paralyzed? Shit, what if she was brain dead!

When I got to the hall that held all the waiting rooms with the curtains giving everyone privacy, I sped down it, counting the curtains, until I got to six.

Staring at the number, I looked around at all the open curtains, but no one was in them. I didn’t see a doctor. I didn’t see anyone, but I heard the beeping of a machine behind the curtain. Reaching out to pull it open, my hand was shaking so damn bad I almost didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to see her, hurt and broken, and not be able to tell her that she was my world.

“Grow a sack, Bus,” I whispered to myself before pulling the curtain open.

To my surprise, Bo wasn’t in the bed. She was standing beside it in a pair of leggings and a long shirt that was tied at the side. Her hair was up in her trusty bun, and she was wearing some makeup. She did have her boot on, but other than that, she didn’t look like a car had hit her.

A small smile curved her lips as she slowly shrugged. She was holding a piece of paper, but I was too freaked out to read it. “Gus—”

“Wait,” I said, holding my hand up. “Are you okay?”

She looked around, and I did the same. The room was a standard room, but it was full of candles, and then on the bed was a box of pizza and some beer. Wasn’t sure how she got that in here since they wouldn’t let us bring in beer in Malibu, but then maybe the rules were different here. Not that that mattered, since she was supposed to have been hit by a car!

“Yeah, I’m fine. We always said we should have date night here—”

I held my hand up again, stopping her. “My mom told me you got hit by a car.”

Her jaw dropped, and then she started to sputter with laughter. “What! I told her to tell you I twisted my ankle again!”

I inhaled hard, running my hands down my face. “I’m going to kill her.”

“You guys have a really funny relationship.”

“Yeah, they’re basically children and I’m the adult.”

Bo scoffed at that. “I mean, I wouldn’t go that far.”

I tucked my hands into my pockets and looked up at her. She looked back at me, her cheeks full of color as she chewed on her lip. I wanted to close the distance between us, kiss away all the lip gloss she wore, but I wasn’t sure what was going on here.

But that didn’t matter, because without thinking, I reached for her, pulling her hard to me before crashing my lips to hers. She kissed me back with just as much need as her fingers trailed up the back of my neck into my hair. Squeezing her in my arms, I heard the crunch of the paper she was holding, but I didn’t care because I wanted to cry out in elation. I parted only slightly and whispered, “I texted you.”

“I know,” she whispered back, moving her hands down my face, her thumbs resting against my lips. “I wanted to answer back, but I couldn’t do it over the phone. I wanted to do it in person.”

Swallowing hard, I held her gaze. “So what did you want to say?”

“That I was sorry,” she said as an exhale. “That I was an idiot, and that I can’t keep trying to make you pay for the pain that Jesse brought me. You aren’t him, and I knew that from the beginning, which is why I stopped hating you so quickly.”

My face broke into a grin. “You never hated me.”

She eyed me. “I did.” Moving my hands up her back and into her hair, I searched her gaze. She was just so beautiful. “But, um, I was talking to my mom today, and she made a good point, that I’m dragging around my past as if it’s chained to me. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to think of my past. I only want to live in the now, with you.”

I pressed my forehead to hers. “That’s all I want.”

“I don’t know what is going to happen.”

“It doesn’t matter, because the thing is, Bo, I’ll never finish loving you. It just keeps going on and on. I’ve finished a lot of things. A period during a game, a goal, and plenty of women that I shouldn’t really be bringing up, but oh well, it’s part of my point. With you it’s constant and I can’t… I just can’t finish. And all I want is for you to love me back and for us to be happy. The future will fall into place as long as we have each other.”

She sighed softly as she gazed up at me. She wiggled her arms up, and I pulled back some so she could hold up her piece of paper.