Page 149 of Secrets on Ice

“It will be like the slumber parties we used to have when we were kids. Let’s get into our pajamas, and we can watch a movie or something in bed.”

She leaves the room, and I get changed. I pull my phone out of my bag and realize it’s dead. I leave it like that, enjoying the peace. I know it will be filled with concerned text messages and I’m not up for that.

When Cassidy comes back, we’re both in old T-shirts and thick socks. She puts on some quiet movie neither of us watches and for a long time we just lie there in the dark.

Then the questions start in my mind, and I have to know more. “What happened?” I ask.

Cassidy answers carefully, trying not to re-traumatize me. She explains it was Sully who noticed first something was wrong. He ran after the man before crash tackling him, then proceeded to beat the shit out of him. I listen and try to fit the pieces into the black hole where my memory should be. It doesn’t help. The gaps stay empty and somehow that feels worse.

“Apparently, this man has done it many times before.” My eyes well thinking about how those poor women must feel. They didn’t have a lucky escape unlike me. Where are they now? Are they okay? Are they alive?

“And now he will never do it again,” Cassidy reassures me.

“But what if next time …”

“There won’t be a next time,” she says firmly. “You never have to worry about that man, he’s going to jail.”

I try to put a brave face on as we continue to talk about the weekend. We talk until our voices go soft and the movie credits are long over. Eventually, her breathing evens out and she falls asleep still holding my hand. I stay awake longer, staring at the ceiling, the fears circling.

When sleep finally comes it doesn’t stay gentle.

One second I’m drifting, the next I’m back in the club—the lights smearing, the music turning into pure noise, a hand locked around my waist steering me toward a door I don’t want to go through. I try to pull away, but my body won’t listen. The hand tightens. A voice I don’t recognize is saying something low and urgent against my ear. Panic explodes in my chest.

I jolt awake in the dark with my heart slamming against my ribs so hard it hurts. My skin is damp, the feeling of that stranger’s hand is still so real I can almost feel the pressure of his fingers. For a split second I don’t know where I am.

Cassidy is already sitting up, reaching for me. “Em. Em, it’s me. You’re home. You’re safe.”

I can’t catch my breath. She pulls me against her and holds on while the nightmare slowly loosens its grip, my whole body shaking.

“I’ve got you,” she keeps saying. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

It takes a long time before the trembling stops. Even longer before I can lie back down. Cassidy stays awake with me, one arm around my shoulders, until the first thin light of morning pushes against the curtains. I finally fall asleep.

42

SULLY

My mind is elsewhere, and my play is shit. The second I step on the ice for the first game after Vegas, and every game after that this week has been my worst. My timing’s gone, and my head’s two thousand miles away, back at home in New York. I haven’t been able to speak to her since that night because her phone is off, and it’s driving me crazy. I tell myself she’s resting, she’s recovering, she doesn’t have the energy for her phone. All of that is probably true, and none of it stops me checking the screen every twenty minutes like an idiot. Thankfully, Cassidy has been keeping me up to date, and that has eased my mind slightly.

I turn the puck over and I miss reads I’ve been making in my sleep for fifteen years. I take a lazy penalty in the second period of a game we should’ve won, and I sit in the box with my head down. I can feel the bench looking at me. By the middle of the week it’s not one bad night, it’s a pattern, and everyone notices.

The coach pulls me in. He’s not angry, which is somehow worse. He tells me Emmett’s already filled him in, that he knows it was Cap’s sister who was attacked in Vegas. He also knows I’m the one who saved her. He calls me a hero. Don’t fucking feel like one. He’s disappointed that I didn’t tell him I was struggling. Then he looks at me for a long moment and tells me it’s clearly affecting my game. He’s not saying it as a criticism. He’s saying it because he’s noticed and is worried. He thinks I might need to talk to someone before it gets worse.

“There’s no shame in talking to someone,” he says. “We’ve got people. Good people, and it’s confidential. Your team is worried, and I know some were there too. I can’t have you on the ice in the mental state you are in now, we need you.”

I nod, and I thank him, and I don’t take it, because I can’t sit across from some sports psychologist and tell him the truth. That it isn’t what I saw. That I’ve seen plenty of ugly things and shaken them off. That the thing wrecking me is that I’m in love with her, have been my whole life, told her so with her hand in mine while she was too far gone to hear, and now she’s gone silent, and I can’t reach her.

“I’m all right, Coach,” I lie. “I’ll get it together.”

I have to.

Emmett drags me out for food before the last game of the trip. Just the two of us, some quiet place near the hotel. I know he’s doing it on purpose, getting me away from the group, and I brace for the Vegas conversation, the one he said we’d have.

“You look like hell,” he says.

“Cheers.”

“You’re playing like shit, too,” he adds.