“Think of it more along the lines of making sure you were not dead and bitten by something venomous.”
“That right?”
“Yeah, and there wasn’t a commercial flight to get to LAX in time for the next trip out to Brisbane, so I had to charter one.”
I stopped short, my eyebrows shooting high. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
While words to keep up the banter were at the tip of my tongue, knowing he’d done that for me blew me away. I locked on to his deep brown eyes, my stomach doing a weird-ass flutter. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Holy shit, alert the press. Jayden Moore has been rendered speechless.” His tone was dry, humor flickering in the depth of his gaze.
Lightness settled in my chest, chasing away the flips in my gut that I was keen to ignore, that earlier reaction too confusing. “And it’s passed.” I quirked my brow, and we continued strolling along the track, the warmth of the sun pressing against us. “You know, while the circumstances I could do without, it makes a nice change doing nothing, being forced to relax.”
Sutton hummed at my side.
“I can’t remember the last time we did anything like this. Just chill.”
“We’ve never done anything like this,” he said. “Every off-season, if we’re not catching up with family, you’re dragging me to some dodgy-ass place, doing shit Coach would have palpitations about.”
My grin was immediate. “Come on. You wouldn’t have it any other way.” I side-eyed him, curious about his reaction, considering that none of that had happened in the past six months or so.
With a tilt of his head in my direction, he caught my gaze. “I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?” I looked more fully at him, my expression a picture of innocence, which, truth be told, I was terrible at. In the past, Sutton had told me more than once that my “innocent” face resembled a constipated marshmallow. Since I had no clue what that even looked like, I’d accepted it with good grace and spent a week buying bags of pink and white marshmallows and emptying their contents in the most random of places.
Of course, those random places were items he owned or used, like his bedside table, locker, and glove box. I even filled up several pairs of sneakers. How could I have known that it would be an unseasonably hot day when I did? Marshmallows melted grossly. He may have had to ditch a favorite pair of his Nikes.
“You’re fishing,” he finally answered.
I totally was. The past six months had been all levels of shit with the distance he’d put between us. Miserable didn’t come close to my general state of being. At times, I’d been annoyed that not having him by my side, in my life, all up in my business, had hit me so hard. It was all kinds of pathetic. None of that had meant I’d missed him any less.
“You saying it’s possible to reel you in?” I bounced my brows up and down before snapping my attention away. Why the fuck did that sound like I was flirting? I frowned and tried to loosen my muscles, my head deciding to remind me at that moment to stop making sudden movements.
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped until I opened my eyes a fraction to find Sutton before me; his brows dipped with concern.
“Your head?”
The thought of nodding or moving my head made me feel sick. “Yeah,” I said quietly. Even at that volume, a fresh wave of pain slammed into me.
“You’ve overdone it.”
My usual sarcasm was swallowed, knowing he was right and not having the energy to banter.
“Let’s get you back.”
His hand gripped mine and held on tight, the feel of his palm a steady comfort that perhaps should have surprised me. But that was the thing. Sutton and I were tactile as fuck, so his touch was grounding and precisely what I needed.
We made slow progress back to the rental, my head alternating between a groggy spin and a steady pound. Once I leaned against the warm metal, I closed my eyes. “I don’t have any pain meds with me.”
“It’s a good job I do.”
I managed a smile, because of course he did, and lifted my eyelids a little as he opened the door and ferreted around in the glove box.
“The water’s not cold.” He passed over the bottle, along with a couple of pain pills.
“Thanks.” I swallowed the pills, flushing them down with tepid water. “What would I do without you?” As I spoke, my gaze caught on his, a clear thread of seriousness behind my words.
