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“It was a playoff game,” he said, the words coming out clipped. “I was in the net. There was a collision. I got cut.” He kept his voice steady even when Astrid’s expression changed from confusion to horror to sympathy. “I had surgery that went well enough I can walk but not good enough for me to ever play again.”
There. He’d said it. His asshole could unpucker now.
“I heard Blackburn was with you at the hospital when you were rehabbing,” Jones said.
“Yeah.” Cal tore his gaze from Astrid and over to the goalie whose head was too far up his own ass to do the best job in the damn world. “Now I can’t get rid of him.”
The goalie’s chin went up an inch as if he was itching for a fight. “Blackburn can’t stand me.”
“True,” Cal said, too fucking tired all of a sudden to placate a pampered hockey superstar.
“People used to like me,” Jones muttered, almost to himself.
“I find that hard to believe, but stranger things have happened,” Cal said with a shrug, his gaze going back to Astrid.
She stood there in front of the bench, her knuckles white as she clutched an ugly-ass clipboard to her chest, looking not at Cal but at the spot just over his left shoulder. It wasn’t the first time people had that reaction. People either figured they had the right to ask about every gory detail or they kind of froze, but eventually they acclimated to reality just like he had.
“Is it true you never passed out?” Jones asked. “Not even when they cut your pads off and tied the tourniquet around your leg?”
“Not until they got me off the ice and into the ambulance.” And he hadn’t woken up until the next morning in a hospital room where his mom was crying quietly in the corner.
“Do you miss it?” Jones asked, his tone hushed as if he was breaking hockey code by asking about the unthinkable.
“Every fucking day,” Cal said, omitting the mostly, kinda, sorta because he was beyond done with this trip down shitty-things-happen road. And anyway, what was the point? It wasn’t like he had the skills to do anything else in life, and the money he had tucked away from his playing days wasn’t going to cover the rest of his life. He had one option: make hockey work. If it didn’t? He was just some guy with a pity job at his sisters’ autoshop and a leg that hurt like fuck every time the weather acted up. “Now get in net so we can get started.”
Jones hesitated as if he wasn’t sure if he should push his luck with another question or go back to being a pain in the ass with a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Superior. For a second, Cal figured the asshole was winning out, but Jones had what was probably a rare moment of good decision-making and skated back to the goal.
Cal glanced over at Astrid, who was looking down at what was on the button-covered clipboard. He hadn’t seen her since the lobby. Hadn’t talked to her since they’d texted. She was almost all he’d thought about since he’d woken up this morning, and he’d worked on a million things he could say when he finally saw her.
And now? Well, his leg had fucked up all that, hadn’t it?
Ignoring the pain in his thigh and the twist in his gut, he skated out onto the ice, allowing himself to look back only once. Astrid was sitting on the bench watching him like she was trying to answer a riddle. He lifted an eyebrow in question, and she smiled in response, the kind of soft, mysterious curl of her lips that made him wonder if she was thinking about the incident or their text exchange last night. That’s when his skate hit a chip in the ice, jerking his attention away as he bobbled for half a second.
“You sure you’re up for this?” Jones called out as he pulled on his mask.
The asshole had returned.
“Middle-out T-push drill,” Cal shot back.
“Are you kidding me?” Jones bitched, obviously annoyed at going back to the fundamentals.
Too bad because it’s exactly what needed to happen. He wasn’t going to move past this until he rewired his brain so everything was like muscle memory again. “Let’s go, asshole.”
Jones mumbled something about “those who can’t do, teach” before going to the top of the crease and setting as if a shot was coming. Cal snapped his fingers, and Jones T-pushed to the right post, slid back to center, and pushed off to the left post. It was half assed, and he barely rotated his hips, but it was a start.
Cal pulled to a stop in front of the net, more than ready for a throw down if that was what was needed. “We’re gonna do this until you get fifty perfect in a row, so do it right this time.”
“This is stupid,” the goalie grumbled.
“Whine to someone who cares, Jones.” He snapped his fingers again.
Jones used his hips, ready with his glove hand, and moved from the center to the right post to the center to the left post again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
