Page 88 of Body Check

She laughs softly, the sound merging with the crashing waves and the squawking seagulls circling like ruthless scavengers above us. “Yeah, it was. Do you remember what you told me when we got home that night?”

I search through the memories, shifting through that time period like a slideshow of events, and come up blank. My first instinct is to lean into the panic that’s sprouting to life in my chest before I shove the fear so far deep in my soul and clamp a heavy, wooden lid over it. Loads of people can’t remember things from their past—and what’s memorable to one person might not be so to someone else.

Easy. Simple as that.

It has nothing to do with TBI or CTE or whatever Dr. Mebowitz wants to call it.

At my silence, Holly clasps her hands together and lets them dangle over the stone wall. “You were barely given any ice time. You vomited in the locker room. And yet, we met in the parking lot at my car afterward, and you said, ‘I’ve never felt such an adrenaline rush.’ I teased you about turning into a junkie.”

“That’s exactly what I am.”

Funny how I’ve thought the same thing for years but never really put it into exact words. A junkie. Hockey is my vice: the thrill of a goal, the high of faking out an opponent and nailing the puck to my teammate, the satisfaction that thrives in my veins with every good play that’s made.

“Trust me,” Holly says lightly, her shoulder bumping mine, “I’mfullyaware.”

The soles of my tennis shoes scrape along the stone as I turn to stare at her profile. “What’s brought this on?”

Sunlight kisses her features. Already her nose is turning pink, despite the fact that we’re now long into fall. She shields the top half of her face from the sun, which is directly overhead, and I miss the chance to get a full read on her now that I can’t see her blue eyes. “I don’t think I have that same rush with photography.” She says it with no hint of frustration in her tone, and I’m struck momentarily speechless.

Which I guess works fine for her because she keeps talking anyway.

“Please don’t take this in a creepy way or anything, but I couldn’t help but watch you over the last month thatGetting Puckedhas been filming. I’m not even sure if you realize it or not, but you light up when you’re on the ice.” Her hand falls from its spot at her temple to gesture through the air in that Holly way of hers that I know so well. “You’re alwayson. Even when you’re not playing, you’re talking with the team, keeping everything in line.”

“It’s my job, Holls. Everything you’ve just said . . . I mean, I’m paid to be that guy. As captain, I lead the pack.”

She shakes her head. “You’re not paid to go out of your way to sit at hotel bars to keep the rookies from partying too hard. You’re not paid to stay so late at the rink that you’re there past the security guards’ clock out time. It isn’t like I’m realizing any of this for the first time. I mean”—she sends me a quick, furtive smile—“weweremarried for eleven years. I guess that it’s just . . . I love what I do, and I’ve always thought that it truly fulfills me. It does, to a certain degree. But I’m missing the high that hockey gives you.” Almost shyly, she tucks her hair behind her ears. “I’m no junkie, I guess is what I’m trying to say, not when it comes to taking pictures.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that my junkie days may be over soon enough. But she’s opening up—baring her soul—and this moment is hers alone. The fact that she even trusts me enough to talk about it? Damn, but it feels so good.

So right.

“Do you trust me?”

The question comes at her from left field, but she doesn’t waste a second in answering. “Yes.”

I’ve seen enough signs along the Cliff Walk to know that this is against the rules, but I promised Holly that we would change the game this weekend.No time like the present to make it happen.My hands skim along her sides until they’re tucked under her ass and I’m lifting her up onto the stone wall.

There’s no guardrail behind her, nothing to stop her from tumbling down to the beach below.

Except for me.

I loop my arms around her back, one hand nestled between her shoulder blades and the other above the curve of her backside.

“Oh, sh—”

The rest of her sentence cuts off as I tighten my hold, proving without words that I’ve got her back. I won’t let her fall.

“There are different types of adrenaline highs,” I tell her, raising my voice just enough to be heard over the gust of wind whipping through her blond strands. The tips smack me across the face, sticking on my mouth, and she’s forced to shake her head in order to free me again.

A flirty smile on her lips, she urges, “Go on, O Captain my Captain.”

I laugh hard at that.

Then I loosen my hold, just enough for her eyes to grow round in her face and her nails to claw into my biceps, holding on.

“There’s the adrenaline that comes from tumblin’ into the unknown.” My fingers bite into her back as I lower her, inch by inch, until she’s nearly reclining horizontal, her hair dancing wildly in the breeze. My hips press into her pelvis, her legs looped around my waist, as I hold her in place. Keeping her safe. “I could drop you, let you fall, but it feels freeing in that space where you’re almost lettin’ go but still holding on.”

She lets her head drop back, the column of her neck completely elongated, and I know she’s taking in the expanse of the ocean. It’s bigger than her, it’s bigger than us. “My heart is racing a mile a minute.”

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