Page 83 of Playmaker

I’d get to see Sabrina before and after games, but only briefly. She’d be flying back and forth between Pittsburgh and Detroit for alternating games. If Pittsburgh won that series, then it would be another week or more of the same with another city. It could be a solid month before the season ended.

I wanted Pittsburgh to go all the way. If we could—iftheycould hoist the Cup in our first season, that would be amazing.

But I wouldn’t lie—I would miss my girlfriend.

Worse… a month or so of barely seeing each other when we’d only been dating for a few weeks? Would she even still be interested in me after that?

Fuck. That was just what I needed. Lose my career and my girlfriend all at once.

The thing was, hockey was Sabrina’s life. And professional hockey kind of made itselfeveryplayer’s life anyhow. The schedule was intense. The travel was constant. It was well-known throughout both the men’s league and ours that being a hockey spouse was hard because of that. Some people thought,oh boohoo, you’re the wife of a millionaire pro athlete—cry me a river. Not that anyone was a millionaire in our league, but even the spouses of the highest paid players in the men’s league had to sleep alone more often than not for most of the year. Giantrocks, enormous houses, and piles of money only made up for so much of that.

Most of them made it work. I didn’t know how happy they were, but they usually stuck it out one way or the other.

It probably helped that a lot of them had been together since high school. They had history. They’d made it through the U16 and major junior and college years. The pro hockey life had all the bullshit of those years with a sweet paycheck to make it all worthwhile.

Sabrina and I… we didn’t have history. Not as girlfriends, anyway. Not even friends.

Burrowing deep in my gut was a cold fear and a miserable resignation that Sabrina wasn’t coming back.

Oh, she’d be back in Pittsburgh. When the team came back, so would she.

But how much time would she spend with me?

She could be training. Skating. Working out. Running. Flying out. Flying back. Living her damn life.

Where was there room for the prickly asshole who’d thought the worst of her, grudgingly let her in, and given her a few short weeks of sex and togetherness before being laid up?

“Okay, someone’s getting up in her own head.” Faith’s voice pulled me back into the present, and I peered up at her as she stepped into the living room. “What’s wrong?”

“Besides everything?” I replied testily. Then I felt bad for snapping at her. “Just… this all sucks. My leg. Not playing hockey.” I sighed. “Being away from Sabrina.”

Faith watched me sympathetically as she eased herself down on the couch beside me. “Yeah. It does suck.” She inclined her head. “And isn’t it time for you to take another painkiller?”

I made an admittedly pathetic noise. My legwasaching, as were all the other muscles that didn’t like sitting still this long. “I hate what they do to my head.”

“I know you do. But you need to stay ahead of the pain.”

“It isn’t that bad.” Not entirely a lie. “I’m good.”

“Don’t try to power through it. It’ll just make your recovery longer.” She paused. “Take half a pill now? See how you feel?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, then nodded. “Okay. Half a pill.”

She picked up my pill bottle off the coffee table and disappeared into the kitchen.

Rubbing my forehead, I exhaled. She was right and I knew it, but I still didn’t like taking these stupid things. I was also scared to death of getting hooked on them. Nobody wanted to talk about how often that happened in hockey, but I’d watched it play out with my own eyes before. I didn’t want to go down that road.

The cushions shifted beside me. “Lila. Look at me.”

I turned to Faith, eyebrows up.

She reached over and squeezed my arm. “I know why you don’t like taking them. But you should manage your pain.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I think I just overdid it a little yesterday.”

“That’s on-brand.”

I managed a laugh, if a halfhearted one. Truth was, I hadn’t done much yesterday, but I was supposed to be doing a lotless. Getting up and walking around on my crutches was good, especially to avoid blood clots and other unwelcome things like that, but I’d probably done more moving around than I should have. I couldn’t help it—I was restless. I was a hockey player. I didn’tdositting around waiting for something to heal.

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