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I counted the minutes and fought the urge to crawl off the stretcher and into the locker room to find my phone, but I was pretty sure that would fuck my knee worse. And there would be a line of guys ready to murder me for being a dipshit.

So I waited. And I waited.

And waited.

“Hey. Talk to me. Are you conscious?” A rough but kind voice jarred me out of my half-daze, and I realized the lights were bright enough that I could see him looming over me.

I didn’t know Quinn well, but I knew he was a former NHL player who had lost his career to a very similar injury. He had a very soothing tone too, which allowed me to relax as I returned to full consciousness. And full pain.

“Yeah.”

His warm hands began to carefully pull at my pads, and it wasn’t long before my knee was exposed to the elements. I heard him suck in a breath, and I opened my eyes to find the room lit up.

It wasn’t bright enough for me to see everything, but I could make out his profile and his salt-and-pepper hair. Then he turned to look directly at me, and I could see his dark eyes and full lips.

He was very good-looking.

So good-looking I might have said something I’d regret later if I didn’t know he was engaged to the newest rookie on the Glaciers. But I liked Ferris, and I would never, ever step on his toes like that.

“Did you get anything for the pain?”

I grimaced. “Uh…no. They just kind of left me here.”

“Fuckers,” Quinn spat.

He walked away, and I turned my head so I could see his limp. Would that be me? I couldn’t remember exactly how badly he’d been hurt or the precise injury he had, and I didn’t want to ask.

He turned back and took a seat on a rolling stool beside me. “Here. Think you can swallow these?”

They were big and white and chalky-looking, but I nodded and managed to choke them down against my dry throat with all the water in the cup he’d handed me. I lay back and tried to ignore the burning throb crawling up my thigh and cascading down toward the bottom of my foot.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

He hummed as he grazed a gentle touch over my knee. “I’m not a doctor,” he warned.

“No, you’re a hockey player who’s been through this shit.” Fuck. My fucking mouth.

Luckily, he just laughed. “Fair. And it’s pretty bad. It’s swelling up, but from what it looks like to me, you have a torn meniscus. Maybe torn menisci.”

“Uh…”

“That means both sides.”

Pressing a hand over my face, I took a breath. “That means I’m in the shit, right?”

“You might be. You need to get to the hospital, and I’m pretty sure your GM has already called for an ambulance.”

Wonderful. That was just fucking wonderful. Not how I wanted to end the goddamn playoffs this year.

And not how I wanted to possibly end my entire fucking career.

The best part about drugs was that they took the pain away. The worst part was that they also made it impossible to see anything. Inside the tunnel of sight that remained looked like a goddamn kaleidoscope, so when a person with a soft gait entered the room, I had no hope of figuring out who it was.

In my medicated haze, I remembered it couldn’t be Boden because they were also in the playoffs and currently at their away game. It wasn’t Tucker because no matter how much he loved me, he wouldn’t be able to get away from the arena for at least two or three hours after the game ended.

It wasn’t Jonah. He was defending our net. Or…maybe in the shower? Who fucking knew what time it even was. Had the game ended? But I was pretty sure it was someone who knew something.

“Did we win?” Why was that my first question?