Page 51 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
“I appreciate your honesty,” she said. “I actually suspected there was something going on. There was a complaint last year that got hushed up rather quickly.”
“Daria.”
Dr. Gunning frowned. “I never got briefed on the specifics.” She sighed. “Well, I appreciate your information and your honesty. And your timing is actually fortuitous.”
“It is?” I tried to repress any feelings of optimism. Life hadn’t given me a lot of reasons to think the universe was working in my favor lately.
“It is if you’re interested in joining the grant-funded sleep performance lab team.”
“Sleep performance?”
She smiled. “A slight offshoot from psych, to be sure, but related. There’ve been interesting studies lately in sleep extension in high-performance athletes, and we’ve just gotten funding to do one of our own.” She told me more about the physiology of sleep and how psychology had direct impacts on the success of study protocols. “This is the kind of study that gets funded once in a career,” she said. “And as a first-year, you’re perfectly positioned to see it through.”
I nodded, afraid even to tell her how exciting that was.
“And the best part?” she added with a smile.
I waited, curious.
“I’ll be the lead on this one.”
I grinned, relief flooding through me.
Ethan might have tried to paint me as a cautionary tale, but I’d turned the tables. It might have been too late to solve anything with Shepherd, but at least Ethan wouldn’t be ruining anyone else’s career.
CHAPTER 23
SHEPHERD
Traveling with the team was a special kind of torture.
Watching them play, sitting the bench, seeing where I could have helped… it all ate away at little pieces of my soul. And when they lost? I swear my teammates were looking at me like it was my fault.
Could I have helped win the game? Fuck, yes.
Was there anything I could do about it?
Not a goddamned thing.
Griff had been spending a lot of time out of the apartment lately, and I didn’t blame him. I was sitting on the couch in sweats and a hoodie, my protein shake abandoned on the kitchen counter. What was the point?
Shades drawn, windows shut. It was dark and stale and gross inside, but I didn’t care.
I was watching Firehawks footage from last season. Back when I used to play hockey. Back when I mattered. When I still had a future.
The guy on the screen was a version of me I didn’t even recognize anymore.
Without thinking, I pulled my phone in front of me and scrolled messages again. Nothing. Not from her… not from anyone. I used to feel important but now? Invisible. Even to myself.
The apartment door swung open as I dropped my phone to my side, girding myself for Griff’s awkward presence, but it wasn’t him. It was Blake, the brother who refused to leave. I still didn’t really know why he’d come, but he’d been crashing on the couch for the weekend while I’d been traveling, and was still here when I got back.
Now he strode in like he owned the place, sweating after his run, wearing an old Coldwater hockey hoodie and gnawing on a protein bar he must’ve swiped from my cabinet. I glanced at him and returned my attention to the screen.
“Smells like regret and desperation in here, man. You eat anything?”
I kept my gaze fixed on the television, watching my ghost skate like his life depended on it.
“Reliving the glory days?”
