Page 147 of Blindside Sinner

I don’t add that neither can I afford one, thanks to the Bloodhound and his new interest rate.

“But I’m sure Mr. Daniels will be happy to find one for me. Much the same way he found you for me.”

He nods again, that little motion saying way more than his words do. “I’m sure he will.”

His gaze lingers a little longer, still seeing more than I’d care to show. Then he claps, spins around, and types a couple things into his computer. When he’s finished, he stands and smiles. “I’m going to recommend you find someone to speak with, that you let yourself relax and let go of some of the stress and that if you need to come back, you come back. But I don’t think your issues with fatigue and illness are physical.”

“Roger,” I squeak quietly.

“Get plenty of rest and fluids and I think you’ll find that everything is going to work itself out.”

When he walks out of the room, I send Beck a text.Dr. Ramsay said I’m just dandy. Recommends water and sleep. Nothing to worry about.

He’s at practice so he shouldn’t answer, but a couple seconds later, my phone tings.I’m always going to worry about you, Sloan. I take care of what’s mine.

I don’t want the words to mean something to me. But how can they not?

Mine.There’s no other way to take it. That’s all that’s required to get my heart thumping like I’ve just run a marathon.

Because I want him. No matter how much I deny it. No matter how much I don’twantto want him.

And I have a bad feeling that it’s a bug I’m never going to get over.

73

BECK

“Sit the fuck down, Daniels!” Coach isn’t having any more of my shit today. I’ve been a healthy scratch the last two games because of practices like this one. Turns out that, without Sloan, I’m a bastard.

To be fair, I’ve always been a bastard.

But this bastard sucks at hockey.

“Fuck you!” I snarl.

Coach and I do this on a semi-regular basis, but this time, we really might end up beating the shit out of each other. I’m ready for it. I want to spill someone’s blood. Mine, Coach’s, some random fuck off the street—I don’t care. I have pent-up rage and nowhere to aim it.

“Fuckme?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know who you think you are, Daniels, but every game you sit out, your asking price goes down. You want to end up washed up and out before you’re thirty?”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?”

Walker was a player once. Could’ve been great, but he liked to fight, and he started a bar brawl after a bad game. He lost his temper on a fan who’d said something nasty about his mother, and when he went to swing on the guy, he tore about ten ligaments in his shoulder and arm. His career died a pale, pasty death in an alley behind the Rusty Nail in Dallas, Texas.

The sad part is that he hasn’t even done anything to piss me off. I’m just in a perpetually shit mood.

No prizes for guessing why.

“I miss the days when your head wasn’t firmly planted up your own ass, Daniels,” he sighs.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Me, too.”

Then I storm off the ice and back to the locker room. I’m seriously considering cleaning out my whole damn locker and saying fuck it all. Who needs hockey?

I rip off my helmet and use it to punch the cinderblock wall. One, two, three times in quick succession,WHAM-WHAM-WHAM,until the concrete and the helmet both crack simultaneously. I drop the ruined piece of equipment in disgust and collapse to a seat at my locker.

I sit there for a while, heels of my hands pressed into my eyes until I see red stars behind my closed eyelids. My sweat dries. My breathing slows. Eventually, everything is quiet, and for one blessed moment, the thoughts in my head are, too.

Then I hear footsteps.

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