“You’re up awfully early.” My voice was hoarse and my head throbbed as I tried to sit up. Jason reached for the remote and handed it to me so I could raise the head of the bed rather than continue trying to make the pillows support me.

“Can’t be up early if you haven’t gone to bed,” Jason admitted. That made me feel like an ass. He shouldn’t have to be up here waiting around to see if I was going to live or die. And from what they’d told me, I was definitely going to live. With the amount of pain I was in, I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good or bad thing.

“Sorry if I freaked you out last night,” I apologized. Jason waved me off before I could say anything else. As comforting as it was to have him by my side, he wasn’t the one I wanted to see sitting in that chair. Perhaps Cam’s absence also had something to do with Jason not sleeping. “Have you heard from him?”

Even though I still didn’t love the idea of Jason and Cam being stupidly in love with one another, I had to admit Jason was better for my best friend than I ever could have been. He’d forced Cam outside of his comfort zone and into the opportunity of a lifetime. Cam would be here now, likely losing his fucking mind, if Jason hadn’t pushed him to go to an audition for A Cut Above yesterday.

“Yeah, he called last night.” By the wide smile on Jason’s face, I knew it had to be good news. “By now, he’s probably asleep in a hotel in New York, waiting to begin filming.”

A pit formed in my stomach. I was elated for Cam, but I wished he could be here. Maybe it made me a dick, but Cam was the only person I could really talk to about everything that was going on. I needed my other half with me, if for no other reason than to serve as a buffer between me and everyone who tried coddling me as I healed.

“You didn’t tell him about this, did you?” I figured he hadn’t since I knew Cam well enough to know that he would have thrown away whatever they were offering him if he knew I’d been beat up. Still, I needed Jason to confirm my assumptions.

“No, he called shortly before Eric called me,” Jason assured me. Wait, what did Eric have to do with this? Jason must’ve read the confusion across my knitted brow. “He’s the one who stopped that asshole from killing you.”

Bile rose in my throat and I seriously thought for a moment that I was going to hurl all over myself and Jason. I remember bits of the beginning of the attack, but somewhere along the way, I must’ve passed out. The next thing I knew, I was in the emergency room. Hearing Jason speak so bluntly freaked me the hell out. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t the overly dramatic type. If he said there was a chance I could’ve been killed, he meant it.

Jason reached for my hand, squeezing gently as I started to hyperventilate. “Hey, I shouldn’t have been so crass. Yeah, it was that bad, but you don’t need to be thinking about that shit right now. You’ve gotta calm down, man. Otherwise, the nurses are going to come running back in here and before you know it, they’ll be running all sorts of tests again. You don’t want that, do you?”

I shook my head. The only thing I wanted was to get the hell out of here. Well, and I wanted to talk to Eric. He might be able to fill in the huge blanks in my mind. “Sorry, you probably think I’m a colossal wuss right about now.”

Jason snorted in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m shocked as hell you’re doing this well with everything. You might not remember it, but from what I hear, it wasn’t pretty when Eric found you. It takes a hell of a man to bounce back from that.”

I looked all around the room, as if trying to show Jason just how much I hadn’t ”bounced back.” I was lying in a hospital bed, nearly desperate enough to offer him a blowjob if only he’d bring me something to fucking eat and give me a sip of his coffee.

“Thanks.” Jason sat back in his chair once my breathing returned to normal. “Were you the one who called my dad in the middle of the night?”

Jason had the decency to look a bit nervous at the curt tone in my voice. “Yeah, and I’d do it again if I had to,” he admitted. “Your dad wasn’t too happy about being woken up at one in the morning, but I figured he’d be even more pissed off if I hadn’t called him at all.”

I laughed because Jason was so right about that. Then, I nearly doubled over at the searing pain through my torso. “Man, and to think you’ve never met the guy. Yeah, he’d have stormed in here ready to kick some serious ass if he hadn’t found out pretty much right away.”

“Cam talks about your parents a lot,” Jason informed me. That wasn’t surprising, since they were the closest thing he’d ever had to decent parents. It surprised me that he turned out as well as he did, given the shitty hand he’d been dealt as a kid. Still, it warmed my heart to know Cam talked about my family to the guy he was in love with. “I think that helped last night, too, because I was able to tell them who I was to Cam and that way I wasn’t just some asshole calling in the middle of the night with bad news.”

I knew my parents had been here, but they were nowhere to be found. That was odd, because I’d have figured there was nothing that’d keep my mom from hovering over me until she was satisfied that I’d be okay. “Where are they now?”

“Eric took them back to your place to get a shower and some breakfast,” Jason told me. Man, I owed Eric big time. First, he basically saved my life and then he got my parents out of the hospital before they could drive everyone insane. I chuckled as much as my battered body would allow as I wondered if he was currently sitting on the couch regretting his decision. “He said they can sleep up in Cam’s room while they’re there. If the doctors hadn’t told your mom you’ll probably be getting out of here later today, I don’t know that she’d have left.”

“Probably not.” I loved Mom, but she was most protective over me. I was the baby of the family, their ”oops” child, and she hadn’t quite learned to let go of me once I reached adulthood.

“Don’t worry, they’ll probably be back within the hour,” Jason said, laughing when I groaned. Between the physical pain and the thought of a panicked mother when she got back up here, I suddenly wanted something much stronger than coffee. Like, maybe a bottle of scotch.

“Is Eric coming with them?” I wanted a few minutes alone with him to thank him for everything. It was completely inadequate but it’d have to do for now. I also worried about how he was doing in the aftermath of last night.

“Yeah, he’ll be here.” Jason looked uncomfortable, as if there was something else on his mind. Something he wanted to say, but wasn’t sure he should.

“Whatever it is, just spit it out.” I was never one for dancing around uncomfortable conversations, and I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood to start now.

“Is something going on between the two of you?” he asked after a long silence. “I mean, it’s totally cool if it is, but you have to know he’s not someone who’s good at fooling around. He might say he is, but he’s not.”

That was reassuring, not that it mattered. Eric and I had spent a bit of time together in the week since he’d been home, but never anything more than two guys hanging out. And even that was limited because he was trying to relax after a horrendous season for the Seattle Storm, and I was trying to stay focused in hopes of helping the Mavericks get to the World Series. Which hadn’t happened. Because of me. Fuck, as if I needed anything else trampling through my head, now I was back to thinking about that fucking game. Fucking Mark Butler. Jason was right about one thing. Mark was a cocky sonuvabitch who wanted to be the hero of the game. And I stopped him and screwed our team in the process.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Two reasons,” Jason stated, sitting a bit straighter in his seat. “First, Eric freaked the hell out last night, and I don’t think it was just because of what he interrupted. He was seriously worried about you. Second, a text message came in for you this morning.”