Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Talia
“Isaac’s down!”
I’m not sure who’s yelling from the bathroom in the locker room—it’s a player, but not one I talk to often. Melina and I are sanitizing equipment in her room, and she immediately sets down the bottle of sanitizer in her hand.
“It’s probably his vasovagal syncope,” she says, rushing for the doorway. “Come on.”
I set down the towel I’m holding, following. The guys are showering after practice, and I don’t really want to go in the bathroom, but I follow Melina in.
Carter is outside one of the stalls, down on one knee.
“Don’t,” he’s saying. “Let Melina check you over.”
They are in the white-tiled space, which is thick with humidity from the showers. Lucien stands next to me as Carter talks to Melina.
“He’ll be okay,” he says. “This happens a lot.”
I glance at him, my gaze locking onto the defined muscles of his chest, which has a light coating of dark hair. Kyle always had his chest waxed; I like that Lucien’s has hair.
“Thirsty?” he asks, smirking.
I roll my eyes, ignoring the question. “Did he lose consciousness?”
“Probably, but just for a little bit. That’s why he falls off the throne. Wasn’t wearing his helmet either.”
I gape at him. “His helmet?”
Lucien nods. “We got him a helmet to wear when he shits. The crap cap. He blows it off, though.”
“Keep his head and neck as still as you can,” Melina says.
Carter pulls Isaac from the stall, his hands hooked under Isaac’s armpits.
“I’m fine,” Isaac is griping. “Show’s over, fuckers. Ouch! Fuck.”
“Shut your piehole, Isaac!” Melina snaps. “How many times have I tried to get you to use a fiber supplement?”
Isaac’s pants are around his ankles and even though I didn’t mean to, I got a one-second glance at his midsection, and his penis is absurdly large—like the size of my forearm.
“I’m fine! Get your goddamn hands off me, Stanton!”
Carter ignores him, dragging Isaac across the floor and setting him down. Melina is trying to hold his head in a stable position. Bash brings a towel for Melina to put beneath his head and the floor.
“Does anything hurt?” she asks, kneeling beside him.
“I’m f—ah!” He cringes. “My neck.”
Lucien blows out a breath next to me. Quiet settles over the room. The team has turned their losing streak around, everything going so well that they’ve all stopped shaving their faces out of superstition. As their starting goalie, Isaac is a huge part of that.
“Call Caroline,” Melina tells Carter. “And get Coach Turner.”
“No!” Isaac barks. “Just give me a fucking minute, I’m fine.”
“It’s his neck,” someone murmurs behind me.
Lucien is tense beside me. There’s a palpable sense of dread in the whole bathroom about Isaac’s condition.
“I’ll get a C-collar,” I say.
News of Isaac’s fall has already spread around the locker room. The team had just finished practice, and many of us were planning to go out for lunch. The mood was light.
Now it’s almost silent.
I find a cervical collar in the training supply closet. By the time I get back to the bathroom, my dad is kneeling beside Isaac, too.
“Be still and listen to her,” Dad tells Isaac, his tone stern. “Melina and Caroline will tell you when you can move. I better not see you even blink until they tell you to.”
“Without moving anything else, can you wiggle your toes for me?” Melina asks him.
Isaac complies, wiggling the toes on both his feet.
“Okay, good.” She looks up at me. “Talia, will you grab a backboard and a blanket?”
I go grab what we need, and when I get back, the room has been cleared of everyone but Isaac, Carter, Lucien, Dad and Melina. A towel has been placed over Isaac’s midsection. I set the board, which will keep his back immobile until Caroline can examine him, next to him.
She instructs Carter and Lucien on how to help her lift him onto the board. I did internships with two minor men’s league hockey teams and a women’s college track team, and I learned that it’s important to not just treat a patient’s body, but also to keep them from panicking.
Isaac’s teammates are doing a good job with that.
“We’ve got you, man,” Lucien says. “Just breathe.”
“I think I’m okay.” Isaac isn’t agitated anymore. “But I get it, and I’ll stay still until Caroline gets here.”
They lift him onto the board, Lucien’s defined biceps flexing with the movement. I’m probably a bad person for admiring his body at a time like this, but at least I’ll be a happy woman while I burn in hell.
“Does anything hurt?” Melina asks him.
“Just my pride.”
“Shit, man, we’re all used to it,” Carter says. “That’s why we got you the seat belt and crap cap.”
I move out of their way and stand next to my dad, who’s off to the side with his arms crossed.
“I thought that seat belt and helmet were ridiculous, but I guess not,” he says.
“How does he seat belt himself on a toilet?” I ask.
He runs a hand over his short salt and pepper hair, scoffing. “You should see the damn thing. He has to put the big loop around his chest and it attaches to the back of the wall in one of the stalls. So if he passes out, the loop keeps him upright. It’s kind of ingenious.”
“He needs a padded toilet stall,” I say softly. “And yeah, a fiber supplement. Like Melina said.”
Straining on the toilet can cause vasovagal syncope in some people. It starts with lightheadedness and can lead to passing out. I learned about it in school, but I’ve never seen an actual case.
“We’ll see what the doc says,” Dad says.
Melina leads the way out of the bathroom, Lucien and Carter carrying the board Isaac is now strapped to.
“I hate oatmeal!” Isaac is griping. “It’s mushy.”
“You don’t have to like it,” she counters. “Don’t tell me you’ve never eaten something gross. I’ve seen the women you date.”
I smile at Dad. “Hey, can I run something by you real quick? In your office?”
“Sure. I need to talk to Bruce for a minute. Meet me there in five.”
Dad’s office is more inviting than his home. The walls of his four-bedroom home have impersonal art chosen by an interior designer, every room looking like it belongs in Architectural Digest.
Here, though, you can see him everywhere.
There are photos of him on the walls spanning nearly the last three decades.
He’s grinning with teammates in some of the pictures, including one with Walter Denton, his former best friend and teammate, who died in a car crash a few years ago.
A recreational golfer, he’s shown posing with celebrities at golf tournaments and with pro golfers he’s become friends with.
A bookcase is lined with personal photos, his second wife Angie scrubbed from the collection after their recent divorce. She deserves it after what she did to him. He was the last to know about her and their contractor.
Dad has his arms around my stepbrother, Chase, and my stepsister, Chloe, in one of the photos of them on a ski trip. I’ve always gotten along well with both of them, but I don’t see them much anymore. Chase is a senior and Chloe is a freshman in college now.
In an older photo, Dad’s down on one knee at Disney World, a six-year-old me grinning on one side of him and Audra, who was four at the time, on his other side.
I smile as I remember that trip. He’d married Angie, and we were spending a month of our summer with them.
Dad went out of his way to make sure Audra and I felt included, and the trip to Disney World was just him and us.
He must have paid a bundle for the white-glove service we got, bypassing all the lines.
Audra got an ice cream cone with three scoops of ice cream covered with rainbow sprinkles on that trip, and before she’d even tasted it, her ice cream plopped onto the ground.
I shared mine with her. We used to be so close. Anyone who messed with one of us was messing with both of us, and Dad taught us how to stand up for ourselves.
I never imagined my sister would be the one to hurt me like no one ever has. It was Kyle who confessed their affair to me, and all I could think of as he told me about it was that Audra would never do that to me.
Not only did she do it, but they were hooking up in the apartment I shared with Kyle at the time. In our bed.
I hid away part of myself on the day Kyle told me. It was just too painful to feel it all. He told me they were in love and that he was sorry. Audra said they didn’t mean for it to happen.
Instead of the words sinking into me, I let them move past. I numbed myself with food and solitude. When my dad came to San Francisco in person to visit two months later, it was to break the news that they’d announced their engagement.
I cried for hours that night, Dad just quietly sitting on my couch with me. He’s the only one who’s seen me at my lowest. Mom sent both Audra and me an email telling us she loves us both and wouldn’t be taking a side in our “situation”.
Dad understood, though. My mom pulled the rug out from under his life with her affair, and then Angie did the same damn thing.
“Sorry, that took longer than expected,” he says as he walks into the office. “What’s up?”
I take in a deep breath and release it. “It’s about the wedding.”
He sits down behind his desk, waiting for me to continue. I remain standing because sitting across from him when he’s at his desk makes me feel like I’m in the principal’s office.
“I decided to go,” I say.
He nods, not reacting.
“And Lucien is going to be my date.”
His brows drop. “Lucien Beaumont.”
I smile. “That’s the one. How many Luciens do you know?”
“No.”
“No what?”
He shakes his head. “Not Lucien. He knew goddamn well he wasn’t allowed to touch you, and—”
“Dad, he hasn’t.”
“Talia, spending three days in Hawaii with your mother and Kyle motherfucking Macintire is going to be hard enough. I don’t need to be worrying about Beaumont taking advantage of you. You and I will go together.”
When he looks at me, he still sees a fifteen-year-old girl. Maybe he always will.
“You don’t need to worry about that, Dad.”
He stands up, eyes wide. “He already did, didn’t he? He’s fucking dead.”
I race over to the closed office door, pressing my back to it. Dad’s face is red now, fury written in every line.
“Stop it! It’s none of your business, but no, Lucien hasn’t done anything with me, Dad.”
He looks me square in the eye, trying to read me. “I know you better than that. I’ve seen the two of you talking during those stretching sessions. I’m going to stretch his nut sac off his fucking body. Get out of my way.”
He’s practically snarling. I can’t let him get out of this room like this.
“I’m twenty-five, Dad. Twenty. Five. You’re acting ridiculous.”
“Because I know him. What are you doing getting involved with another hockey player?”
“We’re not involved. He’s become a friend. A friend. Nothing more.”
Dad considers that for a few seconds, narrowing his eyes. “I know how it works. He’s paving the way.”
“I’m terrified of going to this wedding, Dad.” My voice wavers with emotion. “It keeps me up at night.”
His expression sobers.
“Not only have I gained weight, but everyone will be looking at me and talking behind my back.” I take a deep breath, resolving not to cry. “My friend is coming with me for moral support. And that’s the end of it. You know how hard this is going to be for me, so don’t make it even harder.”
He exhales heavily, looks at the ceiling, and turns away. “Fine. I’ll switch my room to a double and he can take the couch.”
“Every time you say something that makes me sound like a child, I’m going to tell you something about me you really don’t want to know.”
His brows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
I put up a palm. “I’m done, okay? He’ll stay with me in the room you’ve kindly already booked for me.”
He barks out a single note of laughter. “You think I’m paying for the room Beaumont’s going to seduce my own daughter in?”
“I did a threesome once. And I was the only woman.”
“No!” he yells, his expression a mixture of horrified and furious. “I can’t unhear those words, Talia!”
“Then let’s end this conversation. I’ll see you at home later.”
I walk out of his office then, his assistant Josh pretending to be immersed in whatever’s on his computer screen. Then I wait around the corner, making sure Dad doesn’t come flying out of his office to hunt down Lucien.
After about a minute, I decide it’s safe for me to go.
Hopefully.