For a moment, it was just air between us. There was no one else in the room with us, no doctor, no nurses, no interfering family members...just the two of us, and that was all we needed.
He stood in the doorway of my hospital room and it was as if his presence had sucked all of the air out of my body, and I wanted to cry with relief that he had finally appeared in front of me, almost like I had manifested his attendance at my bedside.
It didn't matter in that moment, everything that was pulling us apart, desperate to make sure these two halves of magnets couldn't connect.
I forgot about any self consciousness that might have been present had I not been so full and brimming with the best kinds of emotions.
His charcoal hair was clean cut and pulled back off of his face, black stubble crawling along his jawline in the most masculine and sexy way possible. I wondered why he hadn't let it grow out before...
Those eyes met mine, finally, after taking in my appearance before him with those eyes, with their striking cerulean hue. I wondered how I must have looked to him, fragile and broken in a hospital bed hooked up to machines with needles stuck inside of my skin, but then I remembered that he'd already seen me in this state, and had only left in order to go and win the Super Bowl, a fact that wasn't lost on me.
Everything was different. He was famous-more than famous, he was a celebrity. He had dated one of the most popular superstars in the country, and that attention wasn't about to go away easily.
I didn't care.
I'd have to give up my lifestyle...but I didn't care.
I had him in my grasp, finally, and I wasn't letting go.
His mouth twitched in a smirk and I pulled myself out of my self inflicted reverie, peeking around at everyone else who all of a sudden appeared out of nowhere, shattering the little world that was only ours for a split second.
"What?"
My voice was hoarse and breathless, but the blush on my mother's cheeks was evidence that I had probably just embarrassed myself, but I didn't care. Emmett was there.
"The doctor asked if that was okay with you, staying with Emmett."
"Oh."
Was I okay with that? Hell yes.
"Yes. Yes, I want to stay with him."
He breathed out a sigh of relief from across the room, and I was about to ask how he even questioned what my answer was going to be, but he broke the invisible barrier and crossed into the hospital room, not stopping to pay any attention to the rest of the people who were still in the room with us.
They didn't matter. It was only him, as he wrapped me up into his arms that felt just like home.
The tears slipped down my cheeks easily, relief filled, ecstatic and effervescent tears that were shed for the time we'd lost, for the time we'd use to make up for it and for how undeniably and purely happy I was in that moment.
Finally. He was finally holding me in his arms again and this was how it was supposed to feel the whole time. This was what happy felt like...had I ever felt that way before?
He was leaned down crouching next to my bedside, his hands on either side of my face and, god, how I had missed the feeling of his skin on my own.
How I had missed the tingles that erupted upon first contact with him, how I had missed the look in his eyes that held so much tenderness yet so much unbridled and barely held back intensity that communicated just how badly he wanted to devour me, body and soul, if only we were alone.
"Lydia, are you sure that's such a good idea?"
I didn't hear my mother, it was like her words were blending in with the roaring in my ears created by the blood rushing in my veins past my brain.
"Come on, mom, let's give them some privacy."
"But, I-"
"Adsila, now."
I didn't break eye contact with Emmett for what felt like hours, but the atmosphere changed when we were finally alone. I was pulled out of our trance when his phone rang, ruining the moment, but he never once left my side.
It wasn't like I was scared he would leave- it was almost like nothing more had to be said for us to realize that we were both done staying away from each other.
He reached for his phone in his pocket to silence it but when he realized who it was calling him, he gave me a guilty look and pressed the accept button, but he put it on speaker so I could hear the conversation.
"Coach. What can I do for you?"
"Scott. I know you left to be with your girl, but in a week we're going to need you for offseason activities and you need to get your agent to send us new contract agreements. I know you're going to want to renegotiate salary and bonuses."
"A week is exactly what I need. Thank you, sir."
"Of course. I'm proud of you, son."
An unknown emotion flitted across Emmett's face when his coach called him 'son' but he quickly masked it. Just one more deep conversation about his past that we'd have time to discuss, if he ever wanted to discuss it with me.
I still had so much more to tell him and I hoped that he trusted me enough to confide his past secrets with me. I only knew a little, but he knew more than just a little about me.
"Sorry," he said to me as he pocketed his phone once more after he ended the call.
"No need."
And then our eyes locked again and it was like everything that needed to be said was passed between us with just one all knowing look.
All I wanted was for him to bury his fingers in my hair and pull me towards him and kiss me until all I could see were blurry stars in my foggy vision, but the blood pressure machine went off in that moment and a nurse came in and broke our connection once more.
My family was eavesdropping as the nurse left the door open.
"Hmm," the nurse said.
"What are her vitals?"
I rolled my eyes at my mother's question.
"Her blood pressure is almost perfect. One twenty over seventy-five."
"Oh..."
My mother was upset because she was the one who had made my blood pressure skyrocket, and Emmett was the one to bring it down.
"Well, it must be because of that medicine they gave her a while ago."
"No, we haven't given her any Alprazolam since yesterday evening, it's almost been a full day since then."
That shut my mother up on the spot. I would've normally gloated over that fact, but being in Emmett's presence was the ultimate drug- a sedative and an upper at the same time, he evened me out while setting me on fire interchangeably.
At some point they'd all left the room after talking about my diet and restricted activities list and making sure that I knew what I could and could not do in the weeks to come, especially this next week.
Lucas coughed when the doctor listed sexual intercourse as a restriction but we didn't flinch. It was almost like his words were outside our own little bubble and anything that he said didn't matter. We absorbed the information but didn't let it affect us.
I halfheartedly said goodbye to my family as it was clear that we wanted to be alone together and once the fading light from the sun dipped below the horizon, I scooted over in the hospital bed and Emmett joined me, scooping me up within his arms, careful of the IV needle taped on my skin to make sure it wasn't going anywhere.
He rested his cheek against the top of my head and I settled into him, a knowledge deep within my bones that I was never leaving this man ever again.
"Emmett...I'm sor-"
"You don't need to apologize. You were doing what you thought was right at the time. It's me who should be apologizing for letting you walk away."
My heart fluttered in my chest, but for all the right reasons.
"Still, I was selfish. I chose my own personal agenda over us, and I'm sorry. I thought I'd be protecting you so that you didn't have to watch me become something that you didn't want."
He lifted my face up to meet his gaze with his finger underneath my chin and I was taken aback at the reverence I found in his eyes.
"There is nowhere you could go, nothing you could become, that I wouldn't love."
I choked back the breathless feeling in my chest and kept my eyes locked on his, the constant eye contact sending shivers racketing down my spine.
"Love?"
"I love you, Lydia."
"I love you, too."
And then he kissed me, and all was finally right in the world.
Almost.
There was still that pesky little detail of my failing health, my unsolved mental issues, him being a superstar in the spotlight when all I wanted was to be invisible, our uncertain future...but we'd face all of that head-on, together.
I fell asleep wrapped up tightly in his arms, his kiss still lingering on my lips as I thought of all the ways we could make up the time we'd missed together once my week long ban on sex was lifted, and damn could my imagination run wild.