Page 22 of Puck Struck
His voice cuts through the quiet. “I can help you tape your shoulder if you want.”
I freeze, my fingers on the zipper of my bag. After a deep breath, I glance over. “I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He doesn’t sound smug. Doesn’t sound like he’s gloating.
That makes it so much worse.
Pity pass. Pity fucking pass!
“Don’t play medic, Foster.”
Cam pushes up onto his elbows, brows raised. “I’m not playing anything.”
“Yeah? Then what the hell would you call last night?” I turn to face him now, the ache in my arm drowned out by the burn behind my ribs. “You passed me the puck when you had a clean shot. Why?”
Cam blinks, shock seeping into his features. Seconds pass and they stretch into hours before he finally answers. And then, with maddening calm, he says, “Because it mattered more to you.”
He’s not wrong. But the truth of it impales my pride.
I tear my gaze away from him.
Terse silence falls over us for a second too long.
Then he asks, in a softer voice, “You ever think about what you’d do after the glory days are over?”
I shake my head. “No.”
Lie.
Because sometimes, I do.
I think about what happens when the game is done with me. When I’m not useful anymore. When there’s nothing but deafening quiet, no rink, and no fanfare.
But I don’t have any idea what’d happen next. It scares the shit out of me, too.
Cam stretches, his hoodie falling off his head. “You’re a hard guy to like, you know that?”
A shudder rattles my insides. “Good.”
“But you’re harder to hate,” he mutters, “and that pisses me off more.”
I don’t respond to that because how could I? Part of me is glad he said it, but the bigger part of me wants to tell him to get the hell out now before it gets any harder. Because I don’t know how I’d handle that. If I could handle it.
I wait until he’s in the bathroom, singing again, loud and off-key, before I sink onto the edge of my bed and reach for the bottle of painkillers in my bag.
Just two. I swallow them dry. No big deal.
But as I close the cap, I catch my reflection in the mirror across the room and all I can think is…
You used to be a machine, Shaw. Now you're just a man trying not to fall apart in front of the wrong person.
EIGHT
cam
The white collarscratches my neck, another reminder that I’m not made for fancy shit like this. I’m more ink and scars than cufflinks and tuxedos, and it shows. Especially with Tate laughing his ass off while I fumble with the bowtie knot for the thousandth time in the men’s room.
