“What happened?” My voice is croaky. I should probably drink some water.
As though he read my mind, a straw pokes at my lips, and I take a long, slow drink of the cool liquid. Fuck. That feels so damn good.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Trying to recall memories hurts. It’s like the piece of my brain that knows what happened earlier is on fire. Shrugging, I dare to crack an eye open, just a bit. My stomach tightens. I’m definitely not in the hockey house. And August has somehow jerry-rigged a blanket over the window to block out some of the extra light. He’s nothing if not resourceful.
“I can’t, I don’t.” Ugh. I start to shake my head but nope, that hurts. “I…did we do the jail-and-bail?”
August nods. “Raised a shit-ton for the ASL charity you picked too.”
My sister in law’s going to be so happy. My niece was born deaf, and the whole family has learned American Sign Language. It was a slow process, especially for Dad—old dog, new tricks and all that jazz—but we pulled together as a family to learn how to communicate to our littlest member.
We do a fundraiser for a different ASL charity each year,and I roped my fellow teammates and friends at school into joining the cause this time. I’m glad we raised money, even if I can’t remember it.
There’s a prickle in my arm, an itch I want to sink my nails into and scratch like crazy. It’s right under where the IV is administering fluids. There’s a bright red firecracker tattooed on my inner arm, with a date—today, yesterday, last week?—inked underneath it.
“What’s this?” My speech is slow, heavy like my tongue’s too big for the inside of my mouth.
August shrugs. “No clue. You showed up to practice with it, smiling like a fucking idiot. No idea what it means. You don’t remember?”
Even a slow shake of my head makes it throb harder.
“I’m sure it’ll come back to you. Doc came in while you were sleeping. He couldn’t tell us much ’cause we aren’t fam-bam, but a quick Google told us all we need to know. We’re experts now.” He winks at me, and I try to laugh, but my body just says no.
“Memory loss could be permanent,” he continues, “but it also may just be temporary. It’s a waiting game.”
“So the game was yesterday?”
His turn to nod. “You don’t remember anything?”
“I don’t even remember my pregame bowl of cheese.” Closing my eyes, I rake through the spaghetti strings in my brain and come up empty. There’s nothing in there. The last thing I remember was dinner at the hockey house. “Cooper made lasagna?”
“Couple nights ago,” August confirms. “Probably best you don’t remember the hit. It wasn’t pretty.”
As I try to pull myself up to a sitting position, sharp pain radiates throughout my whole being. Listen to your body, they say. But I feel like I’ve just started my car and all the needles in the dials are going haywire and every light on thedash is on.
“Easy.” August pats my chest before helping shift me in bed to a more comfortable position. “You’re going back to sleep in a sec, okay? You really do need to rest. This concussion shit is nothing to brush off. It’s your fucking brain.”
There’s a joke about being a dumbass there, but it’s just slightly out of reach. “Who hit me?”
He winces. “Williams.”
Fuck. They weren’t lying when they said he hits like a bus. I could probably lie in an ice bath for a month and still have bruises from the tank that crashed into me.
“Clean hit?”
He nods. “I’ve watched the repeats a million times from every angle, I can’t see anything other than a clean hit. And believe me, I’d love nothing more than to go after him. But no one’s taking this worse than he is.”
He scratches his chin. “Dude’s fucked up. He stopped in this morning but you were out cold. Wasn’t sure how it was going to go—the guys were prickly. But AJ was on the verge of tears and so messed up everyone just gave him a wide berth.”
“He came alone? What if they mauled him?”
“Pretty sure Jeremy Lewis was waiting outside for him. They’re joined together at the hip. But he came in alone. Guess he figured if we kicked his ass he deserved it.”
Knives are stabbing into my temples, and there’s a constant blur on the edges of my vision. It’s probably temporary, but it’s scary as fuck.
“Close your eyes, rest. You did good.”
