Page 1 of Zero Pucks

PROLOGUE

TUCKER

“That ishands down theworstidea you haveeverhad. And I mean that literally, Tucker. You have had some seriously dipshit ideas in the past four years, but this one…”

I couldn’t help but take that a little personally, though Ford was technically right on that one. Ihadhad some dipshit ideas, and that was putting it politely. I just didn’t think attending my twin’s wedding would be stuck in the same category as jumping off a roof into a pool or using my prosthetics as ways to block seats in a sold-out movie theater.

And listen, playing chicken with people who had their assigned seat tickets but didn’t want to tell the disabled guy to move his removable limbs from their seats was objectively fucking hilarious.

And it also helped that I wasn’t the nicest guy in the world.

Not that I ever claimed to be.

But I ought to be sanctified or whatever the hell it was called for showing up to this damn circus. I almost meant that literally too. My brother’s soon-to-be wife honest to God wanted her wedding at Circus Circus before Killian put his foot down about it.

He wasn’t wrong to say no. They weren’t Vegas Wedding people, and his fiancée would have lived with years of regret if she’d done that.

I knew that personally, considering that Delia was my ex, and once upon a time, she’d been wearingmyring. I had to give Killian credit though—he got her something much nicer than the diamond chip set in plated gold I’d found at a pawn shop two blocks from campus when we were eighteen.

Her ring now was at least a couple of carats and…I don’t know. White gold? Platinum? I was older now, but I still didn’t know engagement rings for shit. If my life had gone at least in a somewhat normal direction, maybe that would have been different. Maybe I’d be walking in Killian’s shoes.

Wife. Eventual kids. For me, a nice, comfy career in the NHL where I’d retire early because bad knees ran in our family, and I definitely got all the crap genes.

But instead of all that, I’d been a dipshit college junior a few weeks after signing my NHL contract and got invited to a party full of all the things I knew I should stay away from. But me being the rebellious and angry nineteen-year-old, I thought, hey—desert rave! Sounds fun.

Killian found out and followed me there to pick a fight. And once again, the golden boy with his golden hair—and yes, I might have had the same, but his had a fucking halo, I swear to God—and his golden smile made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of everything I’d been given.

He sneered at me, laughed at me, told me he wasn’t surprised I was attempting to waste my life. “What’s the point of accepting that contract if you’re just going to screw up before you set a single blade on the ice?”

Fuck him, I’d thought in that moment before taking a handful of pills. Fuck his shitty, holier-than-thou attitude. He didn’t want to save me. He wanted to rub it in my face that even after being drafted by an actual professional sports team, he was still better than me. Mom and Dad still loved him more.

Sure, I’d make some kind of NHL money, which was better than rotting away in a desk job or something, but he was accepted with a full ride to Stanford. My parents sent out a family newsletter where my NHL contract was the fucking PS.

So yeah, him telling me I was wasting my life back then hit me in all the wrong ways. There were more pills after that, and some booze, and my twisted brain that told me I was fine to drive. I was fine to put myself and others in danger.

So I did. It didn’t go as badly as it could have, but my life would never be the same again.

The first thing my dad said to me when I woke up was, “You’re lucky it was just you.”

I tried to cry that night, but that was the moment I found out my right eye was gone, and my left eye was so fucked to hell my tear ducts had stopped working.

Dry sobbing did not have the same cathartic effect.

It was a few hours after that I realized I wasn’t just down an eye and part of my vision in the other, but I was also missing most of my legs. I couldn’t see shit for the first few weeks, so I felt around the blankets to get some idea of what my lower half looked like.

My left leg stopped three inches down the thigh, my right an inch and a half longer than that. I no longer had feet. I no longer hadknees.

I panicked, my heart racing so hard it had the monitors all screaming. My doctor eventually came in to explain exactly what my future would look like once I was out of the woods and they had my infections under control.

I would walk again—with the help of prosthetic technology.

I would see again—with surgery and a miracle.

I would never be great at those two things though. And my career was literally in the toilet—a big, fat turd heading right down the drain, all because I couldn’t suck it up for a single night and let my brother feel superior.

I was pretty sure he thought I blamed him, and sometimes, when I was angry, I did. But I’d learned through therapy and joining the sled hockey team full of guys who actually understood me that I could be a big boy with big boy pants and big boy accountability.

I’d made my choices that night.

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