Jay’s POV
I was halfway home when I realized I'd left my phone in the locker room.
The realization hit somewhere between traffic lights—that familiar weight missing from my pocket, the absence of something I reached for a hundred times a day without thinking.
I'd been distracted after the game, my mind churning through everything that had happened with Summer, with Xavier, with the mess I kept making worse every time I tried to fix it.
“Shit.” I turned the car around.
The arena was dark when I returned, the parking lot nearly empty. The main entrance was locked—game night protocols—so I used my player access at the side door, the one that led directly to the locker rooms.
Too quiet, the thought registered as I moved through the corridors, my footsteps echoing off concrete walls that usually absorbed the chaos of dozens of athletes.
This time of night, there should have been cleaning crews, security making rounds, the ambient hum of a building settling into rest. Instead, there was nothing but silence and the uneasy feeling crawling up my spine.
Then I saw the shadow—someone moving fast toward the far exit. Not running, but close to it. Heels clicking frantically against concrete, the particular rhythm of someone fleeing rather than leaving.
A woman. I couldn't make out features in the dim light, just the desperate pace, the tension in the silhouette, the way she didn't look back.
And then I saw Summer. My heart stopped for a whole second.
She lay crumpled at the bottom of the stands near the medical office—a short flight of concrete steps that looked harmless until you saw someone broken at the bottom of them. Motionless. Blonde hair fanned across the floor, catching what little light reached this corner of the arena.
And beneath her head, spreading slowly across the concrete, something dark and wet that made my stomach lurch with recognition.
Blood.
My legs carried me to her before my brain caught up. I was falling to my knees beside her, hands hovering uselessly over her body, terrified to touch her wrong, terrified to make something worse.
"Summer." Her name came out strangled, desperate. "Summer, wake up. Please, wake up."
Nothing. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths—alive, thank God, still alive—but her eyes stayed closed, her face slack and pale in a way that spoke of something seriously wrong. The blood matted her hair at the back of her skull, and when I carefully lifted her head to see the source, my hands came away red.
Panic consumed me. I'd felt fear before—on the ice, in the final seconds of championship games, in my father's office when he laid out the terms of my future.
But this was different. This was terror so absolute it threatened to shut down every rational part of my brain, leaving nothing but animal desperation.
"Okay." I forced myself to breathe. "Okay. You're going to be okay. I've got you."
I gathered her as carefully as I could manage with shaking hands, cradling her against my chest the way I had years ago at that party—lifting her from danger, carrying her toward safety.
Except this time the stakes were infinitely higher. This time I knew exactly who I was holding. This time, she was everything.
Her head lolled against my shoulder, a soft sound escaping her lips that might have been pain or nothing at all. I moved through the arena as fast as I dared, terrified of jostling her, terrified of waiting too long, every second stretching into eternity.
St. Caroline's was the nearest hospital. I didn't consider Xavier or the complications or any of the tangled history that made that particular destination loaded with meaning. I only thought about distance, about time, about the blood soaking through my shirt where Summer’s head rested.
I drove like a man possessed. Red lights became suggestions, speed limits became obstacles. The car ate up miles while Summer lay across the back seat, her breathing growing more labored with every passing minute.
"Stay with me." I kept talking, unable to stop, needing her to hear my voice even if she couldn't respond. "You're going to be fine. They're going to fix this. Just hold on a little longer, okay? Just hold on for me."
The emergency entrance blazed with light as I screeched to a stop. I didn't bother parking properly—just threw the car into neutral and ran around to gather Summer from the back seat, bursting through the automatic doors with her limp body in my arms.
"Help! I need help—she's hurt, she's bleeding, please—"
The response was immediate.
Doctors and nurses swarmed like they'd been waiting for exactly this moment, hands reaching for Summer, voices barking orders I couldn't process. Someone pried her from my arms, the clinical efficiency of their movements said they knew what they were doing.
They transferred her to a gurney. Medical terminology flew over my head—head trauma, possible hemorrhage, CT scan stat, page neuro, get me two large-bore IVs—and then they were wheeling her away through double doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
I tried to follow. A nurse stopped me with a firm hand on my chest.
"Sir, you can't go back there. The doctors need room to work."
"I can't just… she's—I need to…"
"The best thing you can do for her right now is let us do our jobs." The nurse's voice was kind but unyielding. "There's a waiting room just through there. Someone will come update you as soon as we know anything."
The doors swung closed. Summer disappeared behind them, and I was alone.
The waiting room was aggressively mundane—plastic chairs in muted colors, magazines no one ever read, a television mounted in the corner playing news no one watched.
I stood in the center of it like a man who'd forgotten how to sit, blood drying on my hands, my shirt, everywhere I looked. Summer's blood on my skin, under my fingernails, soaking into fabric that would never come clean.
My hands shook as I stared at them. The tremor started small and built until my entire body was vibrating with delayed shock, with terror that had nowhere to go now that the adrenaline was fading.
The shadow fleeing the arena, heels clicking against concrete, a woman running like someone who'd done something unforgivable.
Who had been in that building? Who would have had access this late, would have been near the medical office, would have had reason to run?
The questions circled without landing on answers. My mind was too fractured to piece anything together, too consumed with the image of Summer lying broken at the bottom of those stairs.
Had she fallen? Had someone pushed her? The blood, the angle of her body, the desperate flight of that shadowy figure—none of it made sense, and all of it felt terribly, impossibly wrong.
I'd find out who did this. Once Summer was safe, once I knew she'd survive, I'd tear apart every corner of that arena until I understood exactly what had happened.
And whoever was responsible would answer for it.
I realized that my phone was still in the locker room, but there was a payphone near the restrooms that looked like it belonged in a museum. Nathan. I needed to call Nathan.
The number came from memory—his cell, the one he kept on him always. The phone rang twice before he answered, his voice groggy with interrupted sleep.
"Hello?"
"Nathan." My voice cracked on his name. "It's Jay. You need to… There's been… Summer's hurt. She's at St. Caroline's. I found her at the arena, she was bleeding, I don't know what happened but someone—"
"What?" All sleepiness vanished, replaced by the sharp focus of a man whose worst fears were materializing. "What do you mean she's hurt? Jay, what the hell happened?"
"I don't know. I went back for my phone and she was just lying there, at the bottom of the stairs near the medical office. There was blood, so much blood, and I saw someone running but I couldn't—"
The words tumbled out fractured, barely coherent. "They took her back for scans, they won't tell me anything, just please get here."
"I'm coming." Nathan's voice had gone hard, controlled. "Don't move. Don't leave that hospital. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
The line went dead.
I stood there with the receiver in my hand, listening to the dial tone, trying to remember how to breathe. Then I walked back to the waiting room and sank into one of the plastic chairs, my legs finally giving out.
The television droned. The clock on the wall ticked. Somewhere beyond those forbidden doors, doctors were working on Summer—cutting, scanning, trying to undo whatever damage had been done to the woman I loved.
Loved. The word surfaced without permission, but I didn't fight it. Didn't try to qualify or minimize or explain it away.
I loved her. Had loved her, maybe, since that night at the party when I'd carried her out of danger and felt something shift in my chest that I'd spent years trying to ignore.
I loved her, and she was bleeding, and I was sitting in this sterile room unable to do anything except wait.
And pray.
I wasn't a religious man. Hadn't been to church since childhood, hadn't spoken to God since I was old enough to realize my prayers rarely got answered. But I prayed now—formless, desperate pleas directed at whatever force might be listening.
Let her be okay. Let her wake up. Let me have the chance to tell her everything I should have said from the beginning.
Please. Please. Please.
The doors stayed closed, the clock kept ticking. And Jay Callahan sat alone in the St. Caroline's emergency room, covered in the blood of the only woman he'd ever truly loved, waiting to find out if she'd survive long enough to hear him say it.
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