Page 34 of Off Limits PUCK

I barely listen to Kenzie talking about the next city she’s traveling to as a flight attendant. I get an email from Coach. It tells me he thinks the WNBA opportunity is in my best interest and he thanks me for my time working with the Eagles. Since their super star has been hospitalized, my services will no longer be needed. I will be paid out for the next two weeks.

“Allie, you look… strange. Like a ghost. Are you good?” Kenzie asks.

I can feel my shoulders stiffen. I have to be good. I can’t afford not to be okay right now. “Yes, I am great. You know those jobs I applied for? Well, there was one or maybe two I didn’t tell you about,” I speak slowly, not wanting to outright lie. “And one of them is with the WNBA. And it looks like I’ll be maybe working with them coming up here pretty soon.”

Kenzie’s bullshit meter isn’t terrible. So she looks at me and gets serious fast. “You are a terrible liar. If you are not going to be working with the Eagles anymore, that means you were fired, Allie. Don’t try to sell me this cock and bull story about a better opportunity working with the WNBA. I won’t buy it for a second.”

Then she’s sitting right next to me on the couch, her arm around me like a true friend. “If this is Jake’s doing, I swear to the gods…” she mutters.

“No! No, you can’t get mad at him. It’s not his fault. Or mine. Or maybe it is both of ours.” I feel sad, distraught. “But anyway, it’s for the best. Coach has made the arrangements. So, my resume isn’t dirtied by my time with the Eagles. Everything will be okay. As long as I take this job with the WNBA.”

No matter what—I have to take this job.

Chapter twenty

Jake

“What do you meanshe no longer works for us?” I say so loudly it makes my head ring.

I’m still in the hospital bed. It’s seven in the morning and I’m tired to death of laying still. My phone magically appeared last night, along with a bag of snacks. I thought Kenzie brought them, but I realize they are locker room snacks, and she doesn’t have access to that part of the arena. It couldn’t have been her, though she swears up and down that it was.

Coach looks at me as if I’m an annoying little kid. I hate when he looks like that. It’s like he can see into my soul and he finds it lacking in some way. I throw my head back on the bed. I take a few deep breaths. I can’t act like I care too much. That would give Allie away and she’d be fired.

But now I hear she voluntarily left for a better career in PT as a woman working with the WNBA’s local Charlotte team. What a mess this has become. I tried to call her this morning, but I think she blocked my calls.

“It’s done,” Coach says. “She’s left. We’re interviewing replacements.” He steps closer to me. “This is for her own good. So I expect you not to raise an issue here, Jake. Your recovery is going to be a full-time job, trust me. We’re going to get you back out there on that ice this season. And you’re going to take us to the Stanley Cup this season. Got it?”

I do want to do that. It’s what I want to do every season—win the Stanley Cup. And if I don’t lead my team to it this season, my value as a franchise player will drop significantly.

I look at my phone. It hurts me that every woman who has ever been in my life hit me up last night and this morning with condolences on my injuries and texts and calls… except for her. Except for Allie.

Then, she left her job for a different job. I think she’s sending me a message here. And I think I better shape up and take a hint. I was a good time for her, though I didn’t think she was that shallow, and while I built some feelings for her, she did not build any for me. Whatever I thought we had, I was wrong.

“Son,” Coach says gruffly. “Put it all behind you. All the things that happened the past few weeks. And focus on the future. You’ve got a few good years left in you. Make them count.”

I find the adrenaline surging through me at his words. He is right. I don’t have the luxury that a twenty-year-old player would have. I’m not twenty. I have to make this season count.

I open my phone, find my text conversation thread with Allie and swipe left, deleting it all. She’s made her choice. She doesn’t want me. She never did. It’s time to move on.

Something shifts in Coach then. He reaches out a hand and shakes mine.

“Good man,” he says, like I’m some brave soldier who just decided to sacrifice something he loves for the service of his country. Coach has the power to make us all feel that way—it’s what makes him a great hockey coach.

It’s only after he leaves to find the doctor so that I can be discharged from the hospital to start my rehab that I realize what I just thought—sacrifice something I love…

Desperately, I clutch my phone, a surge of emotion and desire flooding me. Then, I let it go. I let it all go. This was Allie’s choice. She left without a word.

By the time I’m discharged, I’m back to my single-minded focus the way I need to be. My life is hockey. There’s no room for anything serious with a woman. There’s no room for Allie. There’s no room for… love.

***

“How does it feel to be over halfway through the season?” an eager reporter asks me after a particularly grueling game. I can’t tell them that my shoulder is currently on fire. But I stopped being honest about my pain long ago. I don’t take anything for the pain. I just ignore it. My eye is on the prize and I won’t show weakness when the Stanley Cup is within reach.

I glance around me in the game day locker room we have at the Eagles’ arena. It’s luxury in every way, when compared to the general locker room we use on a daily basis. It makes it special. I see the guys still sweaty, like I am, from three hours on the ice. I see their grit, their determination. I feel their adrenaline.

I look at the reporter and I give her my trademark grin, the one that has come to define me as a confident leader over the years.

“It’s a team effort. That’s why we are here. And that’s why I can say without a doubt that I am proud to be here. Every game, every practice, we get better as a team. And that’s why we are going to win the Stanley Cup. That is why we deserve to win it. Our work ethic is incredible.”

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