Jude finds us in the hospital. Or me, rather. I'm in the ER waiting room while Cole's inside having his numerous injuries tended to.He rushes over when he spots me. I get up too fast and a sharp pain travels through my abdomen. If he didn't wrap his arms around me at that moment, I would have fallen back into my seat."You are okay. You are okay." He says the words like a chant to reassure himself that I'm indeed okay. But I don't think I am. I mean, I thought I was until I got up a second ago. It must have been the adrenaline masking the pain, because now, I feel like something in my abdomen is broken. Or squashed. Jude pulls back, and without his arms holding me up, I crumple back into the chair like rubber.Panic crisscrosses his face and he reaches for me. "What's wrong?"I place a hand over my stomach and wince. "I don't know."I do, though. He reaches for my blouse and pulls it up a bit. He doesn't like what he sees. He whirls, looking around. "Hey, someone's hurt," he yells

My day turns out to be nothing like I’d expected. First, Brent Harvey mentions that even though our current contract ends in a weeks’ time, he’d like to keep working with me. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that I might have just landed myself a very enviable work opportunity. Landing such a huge sports star as my first client as a personal trainer is almost impossible, but it’s happening. The best part is that I can still work for a team or consider becoming a full-time personal trainer because having Brent Harvey on my portfolio is the biggest endorsement I could ever get. Second…I get the news that I have less than twenty four hours to hand in a pending research paper. Which was due for another week but my professor thought it was totally okay to bring the deadline forward by an entire week.So after my session with Brent, I head to the campus. I hole up in the library for the rest of the day, only taking a short thirty minute lunch break. By the time I finish the paper and l

Back to Jo’s POV“This means you are not working with him anymore, right?”I look up from the container I’m filling with leftover food and over at Jude, who’s standing in front of the TV holding the remote. “What?”He gestures to the screen with the remote. “Him.”My eyes rise to the screen, where footage of Brent Harvey from today’s game is playing. It was his first game back after his injury, and he performed quite well. “Um,” I mumble, switching my eyes back to the container. When I turn to stow it in the refrigerator, I say, “I might still be.”Might? I’ve already accepted the offer, it’s just that I’ve not signed a contract yet.And yes. I haven’t mentioned it to Jude yet. “What?” he asks, his voice full of confusion. “He’s fully recovered, right?”I turn back around to find him raising his brow at me. “Yes. But he offered me to become his full-time personal trainer.”That brow raises further. “What?”“I accepted.”“Why would you do that? You said you would only work with him f

“Jo, let me go.”I shake my head and squeeze my arms tighter around Jude’s middle, fighting against his attempt to remove them. “No.”“Do you want me to miss my flight?” he asks.“Yes. That’s exactly what I want,” I reply. “You are not going anywhere.”“I’m fine, I swear.”I shake my head. “You are not.”The last thing I expected when I woke up this morning was to find Jude getting ready to leave for work. He was in a daze when we got back to the condo last night. In bed, he tossed and turned all night. I was too worried to sleep, but the fatigue caught up with me around four in the morning. Thank heavens I woke up when I did because I would have lost my shit if he’d been gone.“I know what happened last night must have been scary,” he starts.I huff. “You think?”“But it’s perfectly normal,” he continues.Yeah, and he must be out of his mind.“I mean it was a perfectly normal reaction to that kind of thing rushing into my brain out of nowhere,” he adds. “It blindsided me. T-boned m