“Scarlett,” I called out, my voice thick with pain.
She came running, her cheeks red, eyes still streaming with tears.
“Oh my God, what happened?”
“It’s my knee. Fuck, my fucking knee.”
I glanced down at the floor and saw I had inadvertently stepped in a dollop of rainbow buttercream. “Can you help me up?”
She did, but as soon as I tried to put weight on my injured leg, I nearly passed out from the blinding pain.
“Jesus Christ. Call Becca. I need her.”
“What?”
“I said, call fucking Becca.”
The only person I wanted to see right now was my wife, because I knew what this meant. This was probably the end of my career. This meant I’d be lost with nothing to do. No identity. Or even worse. I’d be benched, and I’d sit and waste away while younger, more fit men played. I would lose her if that happened. I couldn’t lose her.
21
TAYLOR
My phone rangas I sat on the back porch, my knee throbbing right along with my head. I was so tired of hurting. This time around, my recovery was slower, but I didn’t want to take the meds. I didn’t want to risk becoming dependent on them, even though Becca reminded me time and again that if I couldn’t sleep, my body wouldn’t heal. I’d seen the ugly side of painkillers far too many times. I didn’t want to get up close and personal with it.
“You know, answering the phone is part of the equation here, Hook.” Even Becca’s teasing use of my nickname didn’t make me smile.
My wife came out next to me and placed a steaming mug of tea on the small table between the two chairs. The phone continued to buzz, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Least of all Ethan Byrne.
“You have to talk to them. They’re just checking on you.”
“Why, so I can tell them I’m an old, wrung-out, useless teammate? That I might never get better? That this was probably the end of my career? Hell, I should probably just move back to Scotland and be done with it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. It’s that or get traded or benched. If I can’t skate with as much power for as long as I used to once the season starts, I’m no good to them. This was our first winning season. This team is building something. I can’t bring them down. They’ll let me go, make a trade with a different team for someone they can build up.”
“Retiring is pretty extreme. The doctor said—”
I scoffed. “The doctor said a lot of things.”
He told me I should be on my feet in six weeks, that I’d likely regain full range of mobilityifI was careful. That was a big difference from the last time. The last time they told me I would be one-hundred percent, that I could skate like nothing had ever happened. But that had been years ago. And I was an older man now.
I sighed, my anger and frustration landing squarely on her shoulders. “Quit harping on me. Let me deal with this on my own.”
“We’re married. You don’t deal with anything on your own anymore. That’s what I’m here for. Sickness and in health, right?”
“We never said those vows.”
She sucked in a tight breath, then set her jaw and trained her attention out into the backyard. My phone rang again, and she picked it up before I could ignore it.
“Hello?” she said, answering the call.
“Becca, hey there, darlin’, this is a surprise. I was calling your husband.” Maverick Wilde’s voice rumbled through the line as she put it on speaker.
“Well, my husband is being a stubborn ass. What do you need?”
“I was just checking in on him. Wanted to make sure he was doing okay. See if he needed anything.”