“What?” Now she had his attention.
“There was an accident. Liv is in the hospital.” She wished her words were fists. She wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp with each ragged syllable. Wanted him to bleed from the force of her vowels.
“Is…is she okay?” He almost sounded like he cared. His voice went soft, and the former cruelty of his tone vanished. Yet she didn’t feel any kinder towards him.
“No, she’s not okay.” Her grip tightened on the phone, and tears bloomed in her eyes again, trailing down her cheeks. She should have waited until she was calmer before calling him. Matt tended to set her off in the worst possible way. She choked back a sob.
“My God, Alice. How bad is it?” He was beginning to sound frantic, and she felt guilty for leading him to believe Liv was worse off than she really was. It wasn’t fair, but Alice wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to feel even half of what she’d gone through that afternoon.
“She’s stable.” The words she never wanted another person to say to her slipped easily from her lips.
Matt paused, and in his silence she was briefly reminded of her call with Alex the previous night. How strange that the distance of each conversation had been the same, but with Alex she wanted to fill the silences whereas she hoped the quiet was making Matt’s skin crawl.
“What do you need from me?”
What did she need from him? God, the list was endless. She needed more of his time, patience, consideration and, sadly, his money. She needed him to be there for Olivia more than once or twice a year.
And mostly she needed him to be there when Liv woke up.
“I need you to come.”
“Alice…I don’t know if I—”
“Don’t give me any of your bullshit excuses, Matt,” she seethed. “Did I say anything when you blew her off during training? No. You were in the same goddamn state, and you couldn’t make time for her. Fine. I didn’t call you, didn’t bitch at you about it. This isn’t the same deal, not by a fucking long shot. Your daughter is in the hospital, and I need you here. Do you get that? She needs you.”
He didn’t immediately say no again, making her believe he was at least taking her words to heart.
“Okay, look. I can’t leave now, it’s too close to game time. And it’s not easy, I mean management doesn’t know I have a kid.”
“Well, whose fault is that?” She refused to empathize with him because he’d lied to his bosses—and almost everyone else in hi
s life—about having a child. “I don’t care what you have to do. You asked what I needed, and I need you to be here.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Fine.” She hung up before he said anything else to make her angry, which was inevitable with Matt.
She stared at the phone, looking at Alex’s number in the call log. For a solid minute she debated making the call, but one glance at Olivia convinced her not to.
This wasn’t his mess.
Chapter Eighteen
Sometime in the middle of the night Matt woke Alice up with a soft hand on her back. She jerked awake at his touch. He looked exhausted and cranky, which was a fine match for Alice’s own demeanor. She’d fallen asleep next to Olivia’s bed, her neck at an awkward angle from leaning.
“Hey,” he whispered, his voice low and familiar.
Alice rubbed the dregs of sleep from her eyes and stared at him like he was a figure from a dream. He wore a wrinkled white polo and a pair of khakis, the pale colors making his dark caramel skin stand out in contrast.
“What time is it?”
“Late. Close to three, I think. I came on the first flight I could get after the game.”
She broke down then because she hadn’t realized until that moment she hadn’t believed he would show up. He knelt beside her, and instead of trading nasty barbs or being cruel to each other, he wrapped her in his arms, offering her a tight, comforting hug, something she’d needed desperately but hadn’t known how to ask for.
“How’s she doing?” he whispered into her ear.
“She’s okay. But she hasn’t woken up yet.”