Worth the Fall by Mara Jacobs

of him, and his father would surely follow. He didn ’t think he could take the constant hovering from them. That would have him reaching for painkillers for sure.
    “ Okay. Right,” Lizzie said, quickly coming up with a new plan. “Well, you’ll just come and stay with us. Annie’s able to do stairs now, so she can have Stevie’s room upstairs and you can have the one she used downstairs. Stevie will take the couch—he’ll love that, actually—and….” Lizzie was already planning everything. That was okay with him. Given the choice of kicking out a family from his house, grappling with the steps at his parents (both of those choices coming with his parents’ constant company), and crashing at Lizard’s….
    “ But, Lizzie, honey,” his mother piped in. “What about the baby? Is he even sleeping through the night?”
    “ Um, no, not entirely,” she answered, and Petey noticed for the first time just how exhausted his close friend looked. It could have been from the late night holding vigil in the waiting room, but it looked deeper than that. And he wasn’t about to add to her burden.
    “ Lizard, I can’t stay with you. Not with a baby in the house.”
    She waved a hand in dismissal. “It’ll be fine. We’ll just…um….”
    “ Lizzie,” he said in his best cut-the-crap tone, “it’s not an option. That damn thing squalling all night will seriously mess with my recuperative sleeping patterns.”
    Both Lizzie and his mother playfully swatted at him, but he noticed Lizzie didn ’t push the idea of having him stay in her already crowded household.
    “ I’ll just….” Shit, what would he do? And how much would it mess up his knee to fly back to Detroit and just hang out in his one-story condo for the weeks of recuperation? But now that he was done—really done—he didn’t want to be back there during the hockey season. Like he could go in to the rink each day. He hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he knew the day after the season was over, he’d be heading out of the D, most likely for good.
    “ Oh, well, here’s the perfect solution now,” Lizzie said as she stepped aside. Petey was shocked to see Alison standing in the doorway. “Alison, Petey will be staying with you for a little while.”

Five
     
    I watch a lot of hockey. There are some good hockey players and there are some awfully stupid hockey players.
    ~ Ted Lindsay
     
    She knew she shouldn’t have come to the hospital today.
    Standing in the doorway, she tried to play dumb. “How are you feeling?” she directed at Petey, like she didn’t hear Lizzie. “Looks like things went well.”
    “ That’s what they tell me,” Petey answered her while motioning to Scott and a physician she didn’t know. She nodded to them both.
    The two men made their way toward the door, and Alison reluctantly moved forward into the room to make a path for them to leave. “Dr. Thompson will check in with you later today. I’ll be back on Wednesday morning and we’ll see about getting you out of here.”
    “ You have to be here until Wednesday?” she asked.
    Petey shrugged, like it was no big deal. Alison didn ’t have a ton of experience with surgery, but she was pretty sure one like Petey’s was done outpatient most of the time.
    “ Once they got in there, it was more of a mess than they thought,” Lizzie explained. “Recovery time may be a lot longer than normal, too.”
    Petey visibly bristled at that. God, he must hate this. Having people hover around him like this. He loved attention, that ’s for sure, but not like this.
    She desperately tried to think of something to say to Lizzie to distract her from the train of thought she ’d obviously been on when Alison had come in. “Umm…you….” Shit. She had nothing.
    It didn ’t matter, because Petey’s mom chimed in with, “Alison, we were thinking that maybe Petey could stay at your place for a few days once he gets out of here. Just until he’s able to negotiate steps a