Page 167 of Pucking Sweet

White lights dancing in my vision.

Screaming.

Who the fuck is screaming?

Oh, it’s me.

“Novy!”

“Nov!”

I can taste my own blood in my mouth. Fucker just stepped on my fucking face with his goddamn fucking skate blade. I blink, eyes burning. Oh god, is that sweat or blood? I can’t open my right eye. It stings.

Wait—I can’t open my fucking eye? No, no, no. This is a career-ender. You can’t play hockey with one fucking eye.

Cole drops to his knees by my side, his hand on my shoulder. “You’re okay, Nov. Don’t fucking move.”

It’s bad. I can hear the panic in his tone. It has to be bad, right? Colton John Morrow III doesn’t panic. He’s the steady rock on which my life is now built. He knows everything about cabinets, and escrow payments, and accessorizing your wardrobe. He’s the reason I have lamps, and now he’s panicking.

I reach up, trying to unbuckle my helmet, but I’m fumbling, still wearing my damn gloves.

“I said don’t move,” he cries, grabbing my wrist. “Leave it on. Doc is coming.”

“My eye,” I mutter. “Cole—my eye—”

The other guys talk over my head.

“Fuck, he’s bleeding so much.”

“Oh god, I’m gonna be sick—”

“Did it get his neck?”

“Wait for the medic—”

“Apply pressure if it’s his neck—”

“He could fucking bleed out!”

“It’s not his neck, just his face,” Cole assures them.

The ref’s face floats in my vision. “Hold on, Novikov. EMTs are right here.”

My wound has its own pulse, pumping all my red-hot blood out of my body, all over my face and neck, dripping down onto the ice. “Coley…my eye,” I say again.

He’s down on all fours, his gloved hands pressed to the ice as he puts his face right by mine. “It’s not your eye. Okay, bud? The cut goes up along your jaw to your ear. You’re split open real good, and theblood is getting in your eyes because of how you’re lying. Just be still. Doc is here now—”

“Novy, don’t move,” comes Doc’s panicked voice. Her face replaces Cole’s in my limited vision. “We’re gonna get you to the hospital, okay? A plastic surgeon is gonna fix you up real nice and pretty.”

“Good,” I mutter, words slurring as I give in to this drop of adrenaline. “I want Poppy to think I’m pretty.”

61

“Out of the way,” I shriek, racing down the escalator as fast as these stupid heels will carry me. “Move, before I run you down!”

I watched Lukas’s hit from my box seat, wedged between the two reps from the Finnish Ice Hockey Association. I think they could hear my scream from the International Space Station. I certainly put in the effort. My glass of iced tonic water with lime shattered at my feet as I leapt up at the sight of Lukas’s blood spilling down his face.

Now I’m racing to get down into the tunnels. They’re taking him off the ice on a stretcher.MyLukas. He’s currently being strapped down and transported to a hospital. How badly is he hurt? Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick—

---