Page 122 of Rookie Recovery

Tonight, I couldn’t sit still. The players hadn’t even hit the ice for warm-ups, and my legs wouldn’t stop bouncing, fingers drumming my thighs. Guns n’ Roses blared out over the arena as the zam made its final lap around. Ten thousand people sang along, murmured, laughed, shouted, danced, drank.

Ready to scream and cheer, exalt and boo, swear and slur and celebrate.

And before me, the ice yawned wide and white, a calm, arctic ocean lit to a blinding glow by the fluorescents far overhead. Full of promise, potential. Hope and fear. A dramatic stage set for passion and blood and fury.

Hockey was life, and every fucking person in this arena knew it.

Felt it.

Breathed it in with the sharp tang of cold, the grease of cheap hot dogs and nachos, sour spilled beer, the faint pillowy sweetness of old sweat baked into worn padding. The smell of the game. Of hockey.

I pulled a heavy breath into unsteady lungs. Remembered back to that first time I’d watched him skate. He hadn’t even been trying—it had been some silly non-practice with the rest of the boys, all of them fucking around just to be out there. And still, against that backdrop of nothing, he was magnificent.

Here?

Fuck.

I could do this. Sit here. Watching him fucking dominate this arena, because that’s what he would do. What he was meant to do. What he was born to do.

Hockey was his gift, and it was time he shared it with the world.

I could do this. For him.

“Well, if it isn’t Dr. James Sullivan.” The female voice reached up from the ground floor a moment before Katie’s dark hair appeared, followed by wide brown eyes and a mouth that played at teasing, though it was bound by the ties of sobriety.

“Katie.” I managed a nod. I clamped both hands down on my knees, trying to stop the jiggle. She’d probably seen it. “You think our boys got the win?”

“Course they do.” She folded down into the seat next to me, set her sneakers up on the unoccupied chair one row down, right on the glass. Behind said glass, locker room attendants lugged equipment out onto the Bobcats’ bench.

I tried not to stare as they stacked pucks, lined up extra sticks and water bottles, laid out towels. As the coaches piled on to inspect. As the athletic trainer poked around in his medical bag, prepared for any emergency that might arise. That settled in my stomach like a cold knot.

“Jamie?” Katie’s voice cut through the buzzing in my head. “You all right?”

“I cleared Bowie to play.” The words tumbled out of my mouth without my permission. I hadn’t even had a drink since that bender at the sports bar.

Katie hummed a noncommital note as she studied my face. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Good. Terrified. Wrong. Right.” I dragged a hand through my hair before I remembered I’d styled it. I felt like a hollow shell, but that didn’t mean I needed to look like I’d spent a night on the bathroom floor, mourning the loss of someone who hadn’t technically been my—anything.

“Jeez, Jamie. What are you, a moody teenager?”

“Asshole.” I bumped my shoulder against hers, but she’d made me smile. She always did. Until I sobered again. “My aching joints say otherwise.”

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Katie’s gaze stayed on the ice, where a couple of kids in skates were scraping off the excess with shovels, “Everybody thinks you did the right thing.”

I nodded, studying all that extra snow piling up beyond the zam’s door. The shovelers hopped off. Zam doors closed. Fuck, it was almost time. My knees started bobbing again, and I pulled in a max-capacity breath to locate my inner calm.

I couldn’t find it.

“He’s gonna be okay.” Katie leaned into me, shoulder to shoulder. “You’re a good—great—PT, and I think, deep down, you know that. He’s twenty-five. They’re made of rubber at that age.”

“Right,” I said, and then the lights dimmed.

“Get on your feet,” the announcer boomed over the arena as the roar of applause climbed towards its peak, “for your own Bringham Bobcats!”

The roof nearly blew off as the crowd screamed and stomped and shouted. Clapped, waved, whistled. The door below my feet swung open, and Bobcats rushed down the hallway. Aaron, of course, was the first on the ice. Racing top speed the moment his blades hit. Zac followed him out, then—

I tore my eyes away.

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