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Now it was the middle of the night, and my inbox was empty for one rare instance. I’d planned to excess, planned until I couldn’t plan any longer. No meetings to attend. No people to go see and check in on at three in the morning. Nothing to do except to sit in the dark in my desk chair, staring at that message on my phone, my thumbs wanting to move.
Iwantedto text back.
But it was terrifying, like stepping off a platform for a bungee jump, trying to look off into the distance because if I looked down, the terror would overwhelm me. It was too late, though. I’d glanced below my feet, had seen the gorge, the rocks and water and knew—justknew—that the collision was imminent, and it was all going to be terrible…and over.
So…my thumbs wanted to move.
They couldn’t, though. Because I was paralyzed.
Sighing, I chucked my cell onto my desk and pushed away, grabbed the basket I kept in the bottom left drawer, and stepped out of my office, moving down the hall, pushing out into the night air.
Then…I did something stupid.
Well, I’d done it from the moment I grabbed the basket.
From the moment I’d kept the keys.
But I’d had them for a long time because I showered here, something the owners had offered up right after the fire. Had offered before the trailers were set up in the parking with more permanent bathrooms—though not showers…which was why I wasstillshowering here while everyone had moved onto their temporary housing and their own bathrooms.
So, the showershereweren’t being used with regularity—except by the hockey players.
And by me.
Because I hadn’t relocated from the trailer.
Because I’d kept the keys to the rink.
Because…I’d needed to keep close to a certain hockey player, to be in his space, even without him knowing that I was. Being here had given me some of the peace I’d found in his arms, in his bed, wrapped in his scent on my couch.
I carded in through the player’s door, winding my way through the corridors with the confidence of having done it dozens and dozens of times before. I could navigate by the faint light of the occasional recessed exit sign, the dotting of fluorescents that never turned off. But I could have navigated my way without even the least bit of light.
It was muscle memory now.
It waseasy.
Taking a path I knew the players did, past offices and conference rooms and a large weight room stocked with exercise bikes and free weights and yoga mats, beyond which was another long room where the athletic trainers worked on the guys and the myriad of injuries they received being in the line of fire of pucks and sticks and skates and big ass hockey player bodies.
But I wasn’t going to work out—no fucking way.
I got my exercise by hoofing it from one end of River’s Bend to the other, tearing washi tape with my bare hands (okay, fine, it was designed to tear easily, but sometimes those glitter rolls weredifficult). I could also tolerate the occasional hike.
But I couldn’t get behind lifting dumbbells or riding one of those fancy bikes or, even worse, running on a treadmill.
It was an awful idea.
Whoever invented it should have all their planners taken away and burned.
Anyway, I hustled past the gym, the training suite, and kept moving.
To the locker room.
There were double swinging doors there, ones that were locked, and ones I had the keys to as well. A brief pause, making quick work of the lock, pushing into the space.
It had changed when the season had started. More equipment coming in, nameplates suddenly appearing in the little holders screwed into the wood that framed each spot where the players sat to get dressed.
But my eyes only went to one spot.
Joel’s name.
