Page 58 of Penalty to the Heart

“It should have been me. I wish it had been me.”

In a flash, Caleb snaps his hands away from mine and quickly crawls backward as fast as he can, staring at me in complete horror. He then stands up, forcing me to do the same.

“Caleb—”

“No, It’s fine! It’s fucking fine!” he hollers manically.

“Caleb,” I try again, needing him to calm down, but the sound of my voice only seems to make him more erratic.

“I… um… I gotta go, Doc. This… this… yeah, I just… I have to go.”

And without further word, he races out in a furious dash, leaving me to wonder if he’ll ever walk through my office doors again.

Chapter 10

Roxanne

“So, is it true?” Lenny asks, throwing me a peculiar glare over the cards in his hand.

“What is?” I ask absentmindedly while fixing my cards.

I’ve got the worst hand imaginable, but then again, the reason for playing gin with Lenny is not to win but to make him feel comfortable enough to tell me what’s on his mind.

“That your new patient is none other than Caleb Donovan?”

“Where did you hear that?” I ask, surprised.

“People talk.”

“They do, huh?” I laugh. “I swear you, hockey players love to gossip just as much as playing with their sticks,” I tease.

“What can I tell you? There’s not much to do around here apart from gossiping.” He smiles sheepishly. “But you’re evading the question. Is Donovan your client or not?”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” I say before grabbing a new card from the pile.

“In other words, he is.” He frowns, grabbing a card of his own. “Just be careful with that one.”

“I’m a big girl, Lenny. I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, I’m sure his brother thought the same thing,” he mutters.

“That isn’t fair, Lenny. What happened was an accident. No one is at fault,” I retort, unsure why I feel the need to defend Caleb so passionately. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I haven’t seen him for a week and feel somewhat responsible. So much so that I haven’t even told Trent that Caleb has gone MIA on me.

“When shit happens, there is always someone who’s at fault,” Lenny continues on with his rant, pulling my attention back to him. “My money is on the jackass. He was always up to no good. It was just a matter of time before his brother got caught in the crosshairs of his mess.”

“I’ve heard that Jack was… I mean, is quite the guy,” I say in my efforts to change the topic of the conversation since anything I say won’t change Lenny’s mind regarding Caleb’s character.

“He was. Is,” he corrects sullenly. “The best, in my opinion. Always had an encouraging word to give. Never one to bullshit anyone. Always on his game. Athletes like him don’t come around often. Fuck. Even men like him don’t.”

“You admire him,” I interject observingly.

“Everyone admires Jack. Like I said, he is the best of us. He would walk into the locker room and always knew what to say to get us pumped. He just has this way about him, you know? He believes we can accomplish anything if we put our hearts and souls into it. Most of us gave it our all on the ice, not for the team, but for him. We didn’t want to let him down. It is just bad fucking luck that he has that idiot as a younger brother, always being a chain to his ankle and bringing him down. A fucking albatross.”

Hearing Lenny put it like that, I can only imagine what kinds of lies Caleb is telling himself. How self-deprecating it must have been to walk in the shadow of someone like that.

“Maybe Jack didn’t see it that way. Maybe he saw in his brother the same thing he saw in everyone else. That everyone has the potential to be great.”

“Not that it did him any good,” Lenny mumbles.

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