Page 54 of Body Check

My brain doesn’t separate the difference, and I spend the entire drive back to Boston analyzing every word that Tory said and applying it to my own life. Do I carry the same passion for photography that Jackson does with hockey? I love my business, I love my employees . . . but am I fired up about it? Did I simply latch onto the very first thing I seemed good at when faced with Jackson’s magnetism on the ice? Just how Tory fell into computer programming by accident?

By the time I climb into bed around one in the morning, I’m no closer to figuring it out. Confusion roils through me, pulling me apart at the seams and making me question everything. I toss and turn the whole night until sometime around four, I reach for my phone and type my name into Google.

I study every image of myself that I come across—noting my smiles and excitement over whatever award I’m being given—and when I’ve seen as much as I can handle, I look up old photos of Jackson and me together.

The way I’m positively glowing in the first picture, taken after his first game with the Dallas Stars, tells me all that I need to know. Photography fills me with pride for all I’ve accomplished.

But photography, and all of its accompanying material and financial successes, has never made me smile the way I am in this picture with Jackson, with my hand on his chest and my head thrown back in laughter. I wantthatagain—the love, the knowledge that I’m standing next to my best friend, my other half. I just don’t know if it’s possible to reclaim what’s been lost . . . or if it’s even worth the possible risk of failing all over again.

I fall asleep with my nose kissing the glass screen, my arm thrown out to the left side of the bed, reaching for a man who isn’t there.

18

Jackson

It’s not every day that I feel ancient, but today . . . today I feel two steps from the grave.

Tightening my core, I bring the heavy-as-shit bar down to my chest. Push the weight back up in the air. Once. Twice. Thrice. With each press, my pecs and biceps protest vehemently. My head, jam-packed with tunes from System of a Down, throbs with an unyielding ache that hasn’t eased since our away-game stretch two weeks ago.

Fucking Fitzgerald.

Both ESPN and Sports 24/7 have yet to stop replaying that clip of my helmet colliding with the Plexiglas, and each time I see it on TV, it feels like I’m getting pummeled all over again.

Sweat beads on my brow as I heft the bar back onto the rack. I focus on my breathing as I stare up at the training facility’s ceiling.

Captain or not, veteran or not, I’m not the same NHL rookie that took to the ice a decade ago. I can admit that, even if only in my head, but I’ll be damned if I allow myself to skip this season and retire too soon, too early, when I know we’re in a prime position to take what I want most. There’s an instinctive feeling in my gut that this is our year to take the Cup home—a first for the Boston Blades.

What will undoubtedly be my last run for hockey’s holy grail.

I’m thirty-four.

That’s 238 years old in dog years.

At least four-hundred in hockey years.

The muscles in my neck relax as I sink into the bench’s padding, then throw my legs over the side so I can sit up. My head swirls like I’ve put the damn thing in a blender and flipped the switch just for shits and giggles.

Makes sense, since the team doctor told me that Fitzgerald bulldozed me hard enough to hand-deliver a concussion like I haven’t felt in years.

As I lift my weight off the bench, the heavy metal blasting in my ears drowns out the dull thudding in my skull. I’m the only one in the training facility—have been since I arrived earlier for an extra workout before our next stretch of games—and I’m thankful for the solitude when I step forward and my body sways with nausea.

Fuck.Not again.

I’ve pushed myself too hard the last two weeks, refusing to take it easy with so much at stake. The guys look up to me. To them, I’m damn-near invincible. Seeing me as I am now would be more than cause for concern—swaying like a drunk, blinking rapidly against the bright lights as though I’m taking a turn in the nextTwilightmovie, right hand tingling with pins and needles as it always does when the headaches return.

And they always return, more frequently than not in the last year.

With slow, even steps, I gather my car keys and energy drink where I left them, and then head for the parking lot. It’s dark out already, the time eclipsing somewhere past eight, and not a single office door is open as I pass them.

That’s because most people have a life outside of hockey.

I used to.

Back when Holly and I were married, I had that life. Fuck, I had the wife, the beautiful house, and a body that didn’t feel like it might crash and burn at any moment. Although it ended up crashing and burning anyway—my marriage, I mean.

On a normal night, I’d give myself a healthy dose of a reality check. Tonight, I feel weak at the knees, literally and figuratively. Tonight, if I were the kind of guy who slept with one woman while dreaming of another, I’d head downtown and meet up with the guys at The Box, our regular hangout, and flirt with a woman who isn’t Holly for the first time since I was twenty years old.

Wedding ring or not, though, my ex-wife has me by the balls and no one will do but her.

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