Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(162)

“Goddamnit, Don!” I hiss. “We’ve known each other for too long for you to pull this.”

“Landon, I’m doing you a favor, you know. With your board seats, you’re going to-”

“Fuck the board seats, Don! This is about more than that and you damn well know it.”

“Dad?”

I whirl around to see my daughter standing in the doorway, wide-eyed and holding the house phone out to me.

“It’s the hospital. They say Grampa Sam is awake.”





Chapter Thirty-Three





Landon




“Awake” is a relative term in hospital lingo. In this case, it means Sam showed enough brain activity that they partially brought him out of the medically induced coma, enough to see that things were looking good.

“He’ll be out for a while still,” Sam’s neurologist had said over the phone. “He’s out of the coma, but he won’t be awake awake for some time yet.”

“I’ll come down.”

“Usually we like to hold off on family visits until we can be sure he’s in the clear. Coming out of something like this is traumatic, as you might imagine, and patients can be easily confused or rattled - sometimes even back into a coma, by too many new stimuli. We even keep a bare minimum of medical staff in the room during this process.”

I’m in the car, roaring through Denver, but it’s not the hospital I’m heading towards. That’ll come later, with the neurologist promising to call me as soon as Sam was alert enough to see me.

So for now, I’m headed for the stadium. I’ve made a slew of calls from my car after getting off the phone with the hospital, calling Don back along with every single one of the board members. And Serena, of course. So that’s what I’m headed into - a boardroom full of cowards about to check out early from a fight just because it’s hard. That’s not the legacy Sam built.

In football, you know when it’s over, sometimes before it’s actually over. There are some score deficits you’re just never coming back from, some teams you’re just not going to beat - that rival quarterback that throws like a goddamn robot and that opposing receiver that’s untouchable. Point being, sometimes you just know.

This feels like that.

This feels like it’s the end, even if I’m about to barge in there ready for war. Because that’s also the game I love. You don’t just quit. You can be up against the toughest odds imaginable. You can have that feeling where everyone from the coach to the guy selling crackerjacks knows damn well that it’s over.

But you do not quit, and I sure as hell am not about to go gently into that good night.

Because I’ve got one ace up my sleeve. I’ve got one more hail mary of a throw I’m winding back on that just might save this team.

The only problem is, it’s going to destroy her.





Chapter Thirty-Four





Serena




I almost run right into him as I dash around the corner of the hallway leading to the boardroom.

“Oh!”

My hands go up to his chest, stopping myself from literally crashing into him as I come to a stuttered start. “Hi,” I say with a small smile, the events of the previous night instantly going through my head like a slow-motion replay. I blush, staring up at the man who’s somehow gone from enemy, to one-night-fling, back to enemy, to a rival of sorts, to a friend, to….well, much more than that.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that whatever this is, isn’t just sex anymore.

Landon doesn’t smile back, nodding stiffly. “Hey.”

My brow crumples. “They’re not really going to, are they? I mean this is insane.” He hasn’t filled me in much with the brief, gruff phone call about the board’s decision, but it’s enough.

He shakes his head and looks away before stepping away from me, my hands dropping from his chest. “I don’t know, not if I can help it.”

“Hey, we can do this.” I step towards him, but he moves back a hair.

I frown. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He brings a hand up, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sam’s out of the coma.”

“What?”

My hand flies to my mouth, my eyes going wide. “Oh my God, Landon, you should go!”

“No,” he shakes his head. “He’s not awake yet anyways, and I still…” He glances at the boardroom door and then back at me. “I have to do this first.”

“We,” I say with a small smile. “Hey, we have to do this.”

“It might be better if you stayed out here, actually.”

He swallows, his eyes flashing over mine - something or some pain being held back behind them.