Page 119 of Rookie Recovery

Hockey was life, and skating this game meant everything. But there was a reason Jamie didn’t want me risking it. Even if he was, perhaps, being a little overzealous.

I headed straight to my cubby, collapsed on the bench, and took out my phone.

In the Google search bar, I typed James Sullivan, Boston Bears, Hockey. My near empty stomach churning over itself.

I didn’t even reach the bottom of the first results page before I shut the thing off.

Boston born hockey star hospitalized with recurring knee injury

Doctors warn Bears’ defenseman, Jamie Sullivan, may never skate again after final game ends in catastrophe

Fears the Boston Bears will lose the champs with Jamie Sullivan still out on IR

Disaster as Bears’ Sullivan still not recovered after third surgery to knee

The headlines were all the same. Some came with pictures, some with YouTube videos. Only about Jamie’s injury and his fallout from hockey. Nothing about his actual career, or him.

I got it now. He didn’t want me to risk everything the same way he did.

I had assumed he’d quit the sport. Had reached his limit. How wrong I was. Jamie had played to the end. He’d received the injury. Got the diagnosis. Played anyway. Kept playing. Still kept pushing it. Time and time again until his body screamed enough.

And he hadn’t listened.

That was how much the sport meant to him. He’d destroyed everything for it. Had the doctors told him to rest? Had the doctors warned him the risk of damage was high? Permanent? If they did, it meant Jamie hadn't listened to them. Who knew? Maybe he even went over their heads in his desperation to play just one more game.

It’d be too painful for him to watch it all happen again. With me.

No wonder he hadn’t skated in a decade. No wonder he hid his scars. No wonder he snapped at me and shut down.

He cared about me. Loved me even. He didn’t want me to go through the same thing as him.

But Rowan was right. We were different people in very different situations.

And he had to see that. He had to stop living in his past. Had to understand that what happened to him wouldn’t possibly happen to me.

Because of him. Because he’d made it so.

He’d made me strengthen and condition. Got me stretching, lifting, swimming. He’d massaged me, encouraged me, talked me through the tough parts, and showed me how much he cared.

If Jamie’d had his own Dr Sullivan to tell him not to skate, would he be as strict as he was now? If Jamie’d had someone to care for him the way he cared for me, would he have even become a PT?

I let my head fall back against the shiplap wall. People said to think with your head and not your heart, but what was I supposed to do when my head was doing jack shit, literally none of the real thinking, and my heart was pulling me in two separate directions?

Listen to Jamie and rest my shoulder for two or three games? Or more. Miss the opening game of the regular season. Give the world another few weeks to forget about me. Make it a bit more difficult to prove myself when I finally got back in. Because I would get back in. That much, I was sure of.

Or play.

Do what Turner wanted, what the team wanted, what the public wanted. What I wanted. Show them they needed me, that I belonged. Rowan would have skated—did skate—and he was fine.

I needed to be objective. Assess the facts. Make a decision based on logic.

Permanent injury from one game was unlikely.

But every time I closed my eyes, Jamie was there.

Swimming at the lake, rolling his eyes, stripping off his T-shirt, revealing his sexy bad boy tattoos.

Squished against me at the trolley museum, his breaths coming out quick and hard, mixing with mine.

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