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All in all, it wasn’t too bad. Hurt like hell, but it had been more of a graze than a direct hit. Not enough to loosen any teeth or break any bones. Just enough to split my lip and give the ice crew a nice pile of red snow to clean up.
“Hopefully no one orders a cherry snow cone tonight,” Bens had said to me as he’d helped my shaky ass off the ice.
“Very funny,” I’d muttered behind the towel I’d been holding against my face. Now that my mouth was numb and the adrenaline had mostly subsided… okay, it was kind of funny.
“All right.” Jack, the team doc, sat back and inspected his handiwork. “That should hold your face together while it heals.”
“Great,” I muttered.
He clapped my shoulder. “Let me get you some ice.”
After he’d brought me an icepack, he left to give the powers that be an update on my status. Alone in the small room, I sat back against the wall, closing my eyes as I pressed the icepack to my freshly stitched face. I was still jittery from the adrenaline and the endorphins, but mostly I was pissed at myself for getting here.
I mean, there hadn’t been much I could do to avoid the puck. They moved so damn fast, if one wanted to connect with a face or a knee or—in those especially cringe-inducing moments—an athletic cup, then there wasn’t a whole lot to be done. If anything, at least it got my distracted ass off the ice so my team could try to win without me screwing everything up. We were playing San Diego tonight, and there was a reason they were in first place in the Western Division by a significant margin. The last thing Pittsburgh needed was a player who couldn’t focus. They’d be down a forward for the rest of the night, but Aston would be able to move up from the third line to take my spot. He’d be happy to have some second-line minutes tonight.
So, the team would be fine. My lip would be fine. Eventually, my pride would be, too.
And I would take it to my grave that I’d been a mess tonight because of a perfectly benign message from the faceless man I’d been dying to meet.
If I was this much of a mess over him, then meeting him would either be better than I could possibly imagine, or it would be a fucking disaster. Somehow, I knew to my core that there’d be no in between.
Or maybe I was just being dramatic. That happened sometimes when I was drunk on endorphins after an injury.
I was steady enough on my feet to wander across to the locker room, and I dug my phone out of my jacket before returning to the room where I’d been sitting. Alone in there, still icing my face, I pulled up the chat app where Ian had suggested us meeting. I chuckled as I read through the conversation we’d been having earlier—it was so fun to have someone who got my sense of humor and liked to stir things up as much as I did. Nothing beat lively political discussions in between sharing memes.
I scrolled farther back, reading the messages we exchanged. It was almost constant, too. Obviously not when he was working or I was skating, or when either of us was driving, and we both did have social lives. But the last four years of my life had had a steady stream of messages ranging from jokes to venting about our daily lives to just chatting about whatever.
I paused on one conversation from a month or so ago.
Nick:How was your day?
Ian:Eh. Some family issues.
Nick:(frowning emoji) Sister again?
Ian:How’d you guess?
Nick:Ugh. What’s she salty about this time?
Ian:My niece’s birthday is next week and she’s mad I won’t make the drive.
Nick:It’s a few hours, isn’t it?
Ian:Yep. And I absolutely can’t get time off, so I’d have to drive out Friday night and come back on Sunday. I told her I’m coming home for my niece’s graduation. I can’t do it twice.
Nick:I’m sure your niece understands.
Ian:She does. I sent her a gift, too, and I’ll call her. My sister just gets super mad whenever anyone doesn’t prioritize her kids over literally everything.
Nick:OMG my brother’s ex was like that.
Ian:Yeah?
Nick:God, yes. The world needed to stop for her son. I mean, I adored the kid, but I was traveling abroad for something really important the same week he graduated from sixth grade. I’m not cutting that trip short to come, you know?
Ian:For a sixth grade graduation? Yikes, that’s seriously over the top.
Nick:Exactly. She cold-shouldered me for like three months after that.
