33. Chapter 33

"I love you, too," I said. "I've fallen fucking hard for you, like face to the concrete hard."

His smile turned crooked. "That's quite a visual, Asp, but I'll take it."

All my hurt and pain washed away with the hot water from the shower as our mouths collided together. We kissed like it would be our last, not letting a moment longer go to waste. Our tongues danced and tasted, and our fingers clawed skin and hair. We pressed our wet bodies as close together as possible as our hard cocks tried to seek friction against each other.

When we came up for air, I pecked his lips. "Let's get out and dry off. I need you."

Cooper rested his forehead on mine and held me. "God, I need you, too, but… I'm not feeling so hot. I think I need to take something and lie down."

"What's wrong?" I asked, unable to hide the tinge of fear from my voice.

"I'm coming down with something. Probably a stomach bug. Let's dry off, and then I'll grab some medicine."

After we dried off, I forced Cooper to lie down while I went to the kitchen to grab some stomach medicine and water. When I returned, he took a dose of the pink gross stuff, wincing, then fell back into the pillows.

"Maybe I should sleep in my room. I don't want to get you sick," I said.

"Not on your life, and I don't care. After what we've gone through, I'm not letting you out of my sight now. Besides, we already swapped spit. We can be sick together."

He snorted a laugh. "Obsessive much?"

I gave him a big smile and waggled my brows. "Get used to it."

"I can live with that."

I crawled into bed with him as we slipped under the cool covers. Cooper reached for my face and traced my mouth with a finger. "You should always have a smile on your face. I love those dimples over your mouth. It's one of my favorite things about you."

"And your freckles are my most favorite things."

Cooper got situated in bed and winced before he settled down.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

He nodded. "I'll be fine. I'm sure it will pass by tomorrow."

We kissed longer before snuggling into each other.

Had it only been a week that we'd been apart, yet still in the same damn house? It had felt like an eternity. Each day dragged and dragged, and the longer we were apart, the more I ached for him. Now, he was here in my bed after telling me he loved me.

Cooper had already fallen asleep, wrapped in my arms, so I kissed his head and closed my eyes, finally whole again.

"I love you, Superstar," I whispered.

My eyes popped open from the coldness surrounding me. I reached for Cooper, but all I touched were the cold sheets and empty space in my bed. I sat up and looked around my room as my eyes adjusted.

"Cooper?"

Did he go back to his own bed?

I stood and saw the light coming from my bathroom, so I walked over there and knocked. "Cooper?"

Suddenly, I heard the sounds of vomiting and groaning.

Shit.

"I'm coming in, Coop." I turned the knob and opened the bathroom door to find him, still naked from our shower, slumped over the toilet. My heart palpitated as I rushed to his side and kneeled in front of him, ignoring the stench from his stomach contents in the bowl. "Did you have that much to drink, Superstar? You didn't seem too drunk tonight."

He shook his head before lifting it to look at me. Redness rimmed his stormy eyes, and his freckled skin looked pale. "I don't feel so good," he said weakly with a hoarse voice.

My hand rested on his back, which was burning hot. Fuck.

"You're running a fever, baby."

Cooper sat up and threw up again, but not much came out from his dry heaving. How long had he been in here, throwing up?

"It hurts… so much."

"What does?"

"My… my stomach. Right here." He pointed to the right side of his stomach. Instincts told me he had appendicitis, but I was no doctor. Regardless, in case it was, he needed to go to the hospital immediately.

I stood and helped Cooper to stand. He was incredibly wobbly on his feet, and he groaned from the pain. "We need to take you to the ER, Superstar."

"Fuck… yeah, I think so. You… need to call my parents. They have my insurance crap. It… fucking hurts to… even talk."

"They don't let you hold on to your own paperwork?"

He shook his head and groaned again as we moved back into my room.

Controlling assholes. "Okay, I'm going to help you put clothes on, then I'm going to drive you to the hospital. Good thing it's not far."

After I helped him get sweats and a hoodie on, he told me his code so I could open his phone and call his parents. But my primary concern was getting Cooper to the hospital before I dealt with his parents.

I helped him up, and we made our way out of the apartment, locking it up. We struggled to walk down three flights of stairs, but we finally made it, and I shoved him into my small car.

After getting him buckled up, I climbed in, put my seatbelt on, and drove off, trying not to speed too much. My heart was in overdrive, and I kept glancing at Cooper, who winced and curled into himself every time we hit a pothole, a bump in the road, or had to turn.

"We're almost there, Superstar," I said, reaching for him. He nodded with his eyes scrunched shut.

A few minutes later, we parked, and I helped him inside the emergency room. My poor guy couldn't even stand straight as we walked, hunched over and groaning.

Fuck, I hope he hadn't ruptured his appendix, if that was what it was.

It didn't take long to get him back there, and they let me go back with him. Once they took his vitals, they took him away to get a scan of his abdomen. After Cooper left, I called his parents. Fuck, it was after three in the morning.

They didn't answer the first time around, so I tried again. This time, a tired woman, who I assumed was Cooper's mom, answered the phone.

"Hello? Cooper?"

"Hi, is this… Mrs. Summers?"

"It is. Who is this? It's very late to be calling."

"Uhm, this is Aspen, Cooper's roommate. He's… in the hospital."

"What?"

"Cooper's in the hospital. I, ah, don't know what's wrong yet. We just got here, but he's really sick. They're doing scans now. Uhm, he needs his insurance stuff." Based on what Cooper told me of his parents, talking to them felt intimidating as hell.

"What's your name again?"

"Aspen, I'm Cooper's roommate."

I heard someone talking over the phone, and suddenly, a man's voice came on. "Which hospital is Cooper at, son?"

"St. David's in Austin."

"We'll be there as soon as we can."

They hung up, so I turned off Cooper's phone to wait for him to find out his results. It would take his parents a while to arrive, since they lived an hour and a half away.

After twenty minutes, I started pacing in the tiny closed-off area with only a curtain giving any sort of privacy, gnawing on my lip as my stomach kept clenching.

Suddenly, someone pulled aside the privacy curtain, and I was met with a doctor with brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and wearing purple scrubs. She looked way too young to be a doctor.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Carmichael. Are you Aspen Harper?"

"Yes."

"Cooper has a ruptured appendix. It happened recently, so he's being rushed to the OR and requires more invasive surgery to clean out the infection. He was lucid enough to give his consent and sign some paperwork. He also gave us permission to speak with you on his behalf."

I tucked my shaking hands in my armpits. "Okay. Is… is he going to be okay?"

"The outlook is good, but there's always a risk with this type of infection. When the surgery is done, I'll have someone come out for you. In the meantime, please have a seat in the waiting area."

"Thank you, doctor."

By the time I got to the waiting room, it was nearly four in the morning, so I went through Cooper's contacts and sent a group text message to his friends Ronnie and Bryce to let them know what was going on. Then I texted Lisa, Mac, Zayne, and Ethan.

I curled up on the uncomfortable couch in the waiting area, relieved very few people were there. I tried not to pace and stress out the people that were in here, but fuck, the worry consumed me. Having appendicitis was one thing. Having a ruptured appendix was another. I knew enough about it to understand how much more at risk Cooper was of getting seriously ill or even dying. Then he had sepsis to worry about, too. Godfuckingdammit.

An hour later, a dark-haired man in his mid-twenties, wearing green scrubs, walked in, looking around the waiting room. I instantly recognized him from Cooper's photos. It was his brother, Ben. I stood and waved him over.

He rushed over to me and shoved his hand my way. I took it, and we shook. "You must be Aspen," he said, eyeing me up and down.

"Yeah. You must be Ben."

"Mom and Dad called to tell me what had happened to Cooper. I work at a hospital in Westlake and came as quickly as I could. I've been talking to a nurse here to get more details. He's still in surgery, but they said the prognosis looks good. They're cleaning out his stomach and will stitch him up as soon as they're done."

"He'll be okay?"

"Yeah, he should be as long as he doesn't get sepsis or anything. He'll be here in the hospital for a while to make sure there are no more infections."

"For how long?"

"At least ten days."

I sat back down and ran a hand through my tangled curls. "So long? God, he's going to be so upset to miss the Sugar Bowl." Not only would he have to spend ten days in the hospital, but recovering from this type of stomach surgery would take a while. There was no way he'd be able to play.

"I know. He'd been so hyped up for this game."

Ben sat next to me and patted my shoulder. "So you're the infamous Aspen."

"Huh?"

"Cooper told me about you and his interest in you."

"Yeah, I… overheard your conversation with Cooper about us. Sorry, I hadn't meant to."

"I'm sorry. I guess you two really like each other, but it's for the best."

Between my exhaustion from not sleeping, worrying about Cooper, and all the shit we'd gone through the past week, anger filled me. I rarely got angry, but who was he to say what was best for Cooper? Only Cooper had that say. No one else. He was a fucking grown adult.

And he chose me. The reminder nearly knocked the wind out of me.

I took a calming, deep breath so I wouldn't lash out at Ben because I understood he was only trying to protect Cooper, but it felt like he was becoming as bad as their parents, with everyone having a say in Cooper's life but Cooper himself. It was ridiculous. I kept my voice as steady as I could but firm.

"Cooper is an adult who makes his own decisions. You know that, right? He's smart, kind, open-minded, and fucking talented at football. He's an amazing man, but he has dreams, hopes, and goals. Why can't you all let him live his life and make his own decisions and mistakes? Sometimes, we need to fall in order to pick ourselves up again without help. How else are we to grow? If he wants to date me, he should be able to. I know the risks. I understand what's at stake, and so does Cooper, more than anyone."

Ben rested his elbows on his thighs and stared at the floor. "I just want to protect him, Aspen, not control him."

"I understand that, but your protection is turning into control. Cooper just wants to make people happy and not let anyone down, but what about his happiness? When is someone going to fight for him? When is someone going to make an effort to not let him down?"

"Shit, you're right. He deserves it. He works so hard. I didn't mind following what my parents set up for me. I love working as a doctor." He looked at me with eyes that matched Cooper's. "Aspen, life is going to be hard if he's with a man. His teammates won't make it easy on him."

I shook my head. This wasn't the time or place to tell Ben that Cooper and I were together again. I'd let Cooper do that. But I said, "Let Cooper make that choice. Life is never easy. Life is about hard decisions. There will always be people who hate you for how you look, how you talk, what you wear, what you do for… whatever. People have a fucking opinion about every goddamn thing. We have to learn to adapt and cope."

He chuckled a tired laugh and nodded. "I see why he likes you. You're very passionate, I'll give you that. But my parents won't like it."

"Again, that's a choice Cooper has to live with or not. It's up to him."

He looked at me and gave me a small smile. "You really like him, don't you?"

"No, I love him."