Page 42 of Body Check

“Captain? A minute before you get on the bus and head back to the hotel?”

Pain cleaves my head in two, but I signed a contract. I agreed to this. So I turn to face Fillmore with what I hope is a friendly grin. “Yeah, sure. Here?”

When I indicate the bench, he nods. “It’ll do. Yeah, sit just like that with your back to the stalls. We want to get a few quick moments with you for this week’s episode, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

Relief eases into my system when my ass meets the bench. Grounded. That’s how I feel, like if I wait only another beat, maybe two, the pulsing in my head will flick off and the shortness of my breath will soothe out. Get back to normal. For years, my “normal” seems to be constantly shifting into something new and, sometimes, something unrecognizable.

“You took a major hit out there, Carter,” Fillmore starts, dropping to his haunches behind the camera guy so that he’s at eye level with me. “How’s the head?”

Feels like a freight train collided with my skull and then backed up right over me for shits and giggles. “Normal,” I lie, looking straight at the camera, “it’d take a lot more than a bump like that to bring me down.”

Fillmore laughs, his palm dropping on his thigh. “I think that was a little more than a bump.”

It wasn’t how hard Fitzgerald hit me but rather the angle that my helmet hit the boards. After two-decades-plus of being on the receiving end of body checks like the one tonight, I know all about those bad angles. “Have you ever played hockey before, Fillmore?”

He trades a glance with one of his crew members. “Nothing more than a recreational pickup game back in grade school. Nothing like how you all play on the ice.”

“We grow up getting slammed into the boards,” I say, wishing that I had an energy drink or something else to replenish my electrolytes. It’s been a long day, more than a few hours since I last ate, and I played hard out there—even if we didn’t pull out a win. “It’s what we do. Wake up, get slammed or do the slamming. Then you get up and do it all over again.”

“Any concussions?”

“Two.”Officially. Two concussions that officially went on the records. As for the rest . . . who knows, really? Could be five, ten, thirty. For most of my career, the NHL has never required a checkup with a neurologist after having your bell rung. Ignoring the insistent, but low, ringing in my ears, I add, “The first one was back in my third season with the Bruins. Funnily enough, it came from Andre Beaumont when he still played for the Red Wings.”

Fillmore cracks a smile at that, clearly sensing a story there. “And how’d you feel when he was traded to the Blades years later?”

“Like I wanted to pummel his ugly mug in.” I set my palms on my thighs. “I was out for twelve or thirteen games after that hit.”

Fillmore glances over his shoulder. “Hey, Beaumont! Come over here a sec!”

Half-dressed in street clothes, Andre ambles over and plunks down next to me. “What’s up?”

“We were discussing that time you gave Carter a concussion,” the director says with the same glimmer in his eyes that he had when he raved about Celine Dion. Honestly, it’s a little disturbing. “How’d it happen?”

There are videos aplenty online, but Beaumont has never been shy about his role on the ice. He’s huge, bigger than me, with arms the size of tree trunks and fists the size of boulders. And that’s saying a lot since I’m easily over six-foot-four and close in at almost two-fifty.

Beaumont nudges me in the side. “I want it on the record that we’re best buds now.”

A chuckle reverberates in my chest. “That’s because I don’t have to worry about you busting my cheek anymore.”

“Breaking,” he corrects, meeting the camera’s lens with a wicked grin. “I clocked him so hard his cheekbone literally cracked and shifted out of place. Not that I meant to—wrong place, wrong time. Our Jackson isn’t a fighter, not like me.”

My stomach heaves as I let out a hard laugh. “That’s not saying much.Noone fights like you do.” As a right-winger on the front line, it’s not my job to fight or start shit and intimidate the other team just by existing. I score goals, not turn into the Hulk on Ice. “There was a brawl—both teams got in on it—and one minute I had Bear Rawley in a headlock and the next I was being carried off the ice on a stretcher.”

“Holly threatened me at the hospital,” Beaumont drawls, reaching up to tug on his ear, “told me that if you weren’t the same after that hit she’d personally cut off my dick and feed it to the wolves.”

I don’t remember that at all, but then again, I’d been put under as soon as we rolled up to Mass General. Still, the visual of petite Holly throwing down against the big, bad Andre Beaumont has me running a hand over my heart without even realizing that I’m doing it.

“What wolves was she planning on finding in the middle of Boston?” I ask.

“Hell if I know.” Beaumont thumps me on the shoulder, then turns back to Fillmore. “Anyway, Carter and I had to sort out our . . .differencesonce I showed up, but now we’re all good. It’s part of the game. You injure something and get right back up again. Like Cap, here”—he jerks a thumb at me—“no doubt he had his brains rattled out there on the ice tonight, but you’re fine, eh?”

I make sure to look in the camera directly when I lie, “Yeah, I’m all good.”

“See?” Beaumont, my best friend, slings an arm around my shoulders. “Nothing keeps Carter down—not for long, anyway. He’s center gravity for this team. We’d be fucked without him. Can I say fucked? Is that not kosher for TV?”

“We’ll bleep it out.”

“Fucking perfect, then,” he goes on, giving my head a pat, like I’m a good dog, before climbing to his feet. “Another thing about hockey? There are always shit nights, but it’s the way you approach the next game that truly makes the difference. No celebrating tonight. We don’t deserve all that.”

---