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Ollie places the empty glass in the sink and walks around the island. My eyes fall to the large brace on his knee before darting back to his face.
“You went to the doctor?” I ask.
“Yep.” His tone is dull.
I hate this dispassionate version of him. I want to shake him until he yells at me again. Something—anything—other than this apathetic robot.
“What did they say?”
I hold my breath.
He pauses. “It looks like an MCL sprain. I’ll be out for a few weeks.”
“That’s good, right?” I naively ask. “I mean, a sprain is better than if you tore something.”
He scoffs. “A sprain is a torn ligament,” he says in that haughty tone of his. The one where he’s letting me know that he’s more knowledgeable on the subject than I am. “And I guess as far as injuries go, it isn’t the worst.” He takes another step toward the bedroom, but then stops to look at me. “But it would have been better if it hadn’t happened at all.”
I hold his hard gaze. “Are you talking about the injury to your knee … or us?” I tilt my head in challenge.
His jaw tics. A beat passes and then another. I stare into those deep blue depths that hold both my past and my present within them. He doesn’t answer. The pain in my chest is sharp and so sudden as I realize …
He’s completely shut down on me. I’ve already lost him.
I’ve always known that hockey was number one to Ollie. The ice is his true love. Everything and everyone else are a distant second. I was a fool to think that I might be different. That we might be special. I was an idiot to let him in so deep. I’m too vulnerable, too exposed. No one likes messy, least of all me. I push everything I’m feeling down as all my defenses go back into place.
The sadness I feel shifts as I grasp on to my righteous anger and hold on tight. It starts to build from within. It’s born from hurt. It begins in my stomach and spreads through my chest like a teapot gathering steam. I feel it start to boil as our stare holds.
“Just say it!” I finally spit angrily as my temper spills over. I already know whatever it is that we’ve been doing is over. But I’m begging him to give me a reaction. To give me something. “Just tell me the truth! That you blame me for your knee!”
He works his jaw for a second and then looks away. It’s the only reaction I get. He starts walking toward the bedroom. I follow him.
“Just tell me that everything is my fault!”
The heat in my words dies off as I look around the bedroom space. Folded clothes lie in piles with a suitcase open and half packed. Ollie’s things.
“What are you doing?”
I hate the note of panic in my voice.
I hate how transparent I feel.
I hate that seeing his suitcase feels like a punch to the gut.
“I’m packing.” He states the obvious, going right back to the task.
There’s no emotion in his movements while I’m dying right where I stand. I swallow hard. But then he sighs, and his shoulders slump. He turns toward me, and my tenuous hope surges when I think I see a glimpse of the Ollie from the past few weeks.
“I called the Hawks this morning. They want me to see their medical staff and get a second opinion. They want me to rehab in Chicago.”
My hope dies a fast death.
“So … you’re leaving now?” I breathe out. “Today?”
“I have a flight out in the morning.”
For the first time since the accident, I can see the trepidation in his eyes. The worry.
“Oh.” It’s the only thing I can manage to say.
