Fake Dating My Ex's Hockey Star Brother (Maya Scott) novel Chapter 230

Chapter 90

JUSTIN’S POV

Three days.

Three days of watching the ceiling tiles change color with the light. Three days of nurses moving around me like I’m furniture, adjusting and checking things. Three days of Allison’s hand in mine and Katy’s red

eyes she keeps turning away so I won’t see, and Cooper standing by the door like he’s guarding it. Three days of not being able to ask a single question.

It hurts like hell even though they said it shouldn’t. That was probably true when the medication was still doing its job, but it’s been hours since the last analgesic and my body has had plenty of time to make its feelings known.

Katy’s been crying since I opened my eyes. First day it was constant, then it tapered into these smaller

waves she pulls back whenever she thinks I’m watching. She’s doing it now… sitting by the window with her knees to her chest, eyes too bright, and pretending she’s fine.

Allison hasn’t left and I don’t think she’s slept either. She’s been holding my hand every chance she gets, filling the silence with whatever she can find. She told me about the nurse on the night shift who does impressions and something about a disagreement between two orderlies that apparently has been going on for months. I don’t remember all of it. I just remember the sound of her voice moving through the silence and the fact that she never once asked me to respond.

“Hey,” Allison says softly. “Hey, you.”

I try for her. I really do. “Hey.”

My voice comes out wrecked and wrong. Still, she smiles anyway, and squeezes my hand so hard it hurts.

“How do you feel?” She asks, reaching out to softly touch my jaw. “Does it hurt?”

I nod slowly. “A lot.”

Dr. Nora comes in before either of us can say anything else. She pulls a chair to the foot of my bed, sits down unhurried, and opens a folder in her lap.

“Justin.” She looks up. “I want to walk you through everything I’ve observed for the past forty eight hours. I

need you to hear all of it.”

I nod. My throat won’t carry more than that.

She starts with the hematoma

–

surgery, pressure, we caught it in time. Then the shoulder, torn, reconstructive surgery pending. Then the knee, and she pauses before the knee, and I’ve been staring at that brace for three days so I already know the pause is going to be bad.

She tells me how bad.

1/3

8 Chapter 910.

Katy forces a watery smile that doesn’t reach her eyes but is still full of hope.

+25 Points

Finally, Dr. Nora rises to her feet and after smiling at each of us again, she walks out, closing the door

behind her.

Nobody talks for almost a minute after she leaves.

Then Katy starts, “Justin -”

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t have to -”

“Katy.” I say it gently as I can. “Please.”

She makes a small broken sound before crossing the room, and then her arms are around me from the

side, careful around the shoulder brace, her face pressed into my hair. She’s shaking a little.

?

I don’t hug her back. I can’t right now. But I don’t tell her to move either.

Allison reaches up and takes my hand again. She doesn’t say anything and I’m happy she doesn’t try to

talk me through it.

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