9. Brent
Aww, Lexie! You Care!
Every time I stepped onto the ice for a game, whether it was during preseason, the playoffs, or any day in between, I forgot everything but hockey. Most athletes were masters of single-minded focus when it came time to perform, but I’d frequently been told I took it beyond what was normal.
What could I say? I was above average.
This ability was something I’d need to lean on heavily for tonight’s game. It was the day after Christmas, and my mind kept wandering to distracting places.
Namely, Berkley Daniels, and how much I missed her.
I shook my head and scanned the ice, scoping out our opponent, the Pittsburgh Quakers.
My first several shifts went by without incident. We had one good scoring opportunity early, when Mitch sent a lead pass to Cole, who narrowly missed the chance to tap it into a wide-open net. Shots on goal were hard to come by for both teams in those first twenty minutes, and the period ended scoreless.
My second shift of the second period is when all hell broke loose.
Instead of settling down and catching their breath during the first intermission, it seemed as if the Quakers had taken shots of pure adrenaline in the locker room and were even more wound up than before. Every pass was harder, hits rougher and borderline illegal, and players regularly slammed their sticks into the nearest hard surface in frustration.
“Dude, what the fuck happened to them?” Cole asked me around gulps of air as we caught our breath on the bench before our next shift.
“I don’t know. They’re fucking rabid. If the refs keep calling it like this, someone is going to get hurt.”
I didn’t realize then how prophetic my words would be.
“JEAN!” Coach yelled, and I didn’t hesitate before throwing myself over the boards, eyes zeroing in on the puck.
Mitch had it on his stick behind our net and passed it to me as I raced out. I skated it down the side and out to center ice, trying to hurry and catch our opponent on a bad change. One of the Quakers caught up with me and trailed me to the corner, where he pushed me against the boards and stuck his stick between my legs.
“At least buy me dinner first,” I said as we continued to fight for the puck.
“Fuck you,” the guy growled in response.
I drove my elbow back into his stomach, earning me a few inches of space. I yanked on my stick, trying to free it from where it tangled in the legs of another Quaker who had joined the scrum. At last, it came loose, and I kicked the puck out of the circle, attempting to turn and get free.
At once, I had the distinct impression of falling.
Then everything went black.
Flashes of light had me blinking my eyes, and I only picked up every few words through the deafening, intermittent buzzing in my brain.
“…you…hear? You…bad hit…taking…hospital…”
Before I could make sense of anything, blackness descended again.
The next several minutes—hours? days? I had no idea—passed in a wave of too-bright lights, faces I didn’t recognize, and a lot of coming in and out of consciousness.
When I woke at last, I cracked my eyes open to find myself lying in a hospital bed.
“Fuck,” I groaned, that one word and the resulting exhalation making my head throb. I scrunched my eyes shut against the pain.
“Thank God,” a female voice said.
“Berk?”
“You wish, lover boy.”
I opened my eyes again, blinking to bring the brunette woman at my bedside into focus.
“Lexie?” I asked. “What are you—”
“Berk asked me to come check on you.”
“How did you even get in here?”
“I told the nurses I was your sister.”
I studied her for a moment. I supposed if I squinted and titled my head at a certain angle…the brown hair and height could have her passing for another Jean sibling.
“Well, it’s nice to wake up to a familiar face,” I said. “What even happened? The last thing I remember was fighting for that puck in the corner.”
“Some dickbag from Pittsburgh crosschecked you from behind. You slammed your chin on the edge of the boards and passed out. There was blood everywhere.”
For the first time, I noticed the faint throb on my jawline, and I tipped my head back. Running shaking fingers across the underside, I winced when I encountered the stitches slightly to the right of center. My flesh was tender and swollen, and I instantly ran my tongue across my teeth, breathing a sigh of relief when I noted they were all still intact. A quick inventory of the rest of my body revealed no other injuries.
Minus the splitting headache, of course.
“Okay,” I said. “Concussion: check. Not my first, surely won’t be my last. Same goes for the stitches. I’m just glad my teeth are okay.”
Lexie rolled her eyes, but a chuckle escaped her anyway.
“When was your last one?”
“Concussion or stitches?”
“Concussion…” She trailed off, thinking about it, then said, “Both.”
“God,” I said, screwing my eyes up in thought. “For the concussion? College, I think?”
“Okay, okay,” Lexie said, holding up a hand. “Don’t hurt yourself. That hit was gnarly.”
I smiled, though even that was painful. “To answer the rest of it, I had stitches a few years ago. Don’t ask how, but Mitch’s skate sliced open my finger at practice one day.”
“You guys are fucking idiots,” she said, but there was no harshness in her tone.
“I’m not gonna fight you on that one.” I relaxed back into the bed, letting my eyes fall closed again. “God, I feel like someone took a hammer to my head.” Then, “Wait, you were at the game?”
“Yeah…” For the first time since I’d met her, Lexie seemed…shy. “Mitch gave me a ticket.”
Unbidden, my brow rose, and I winced at the pain that shot through my skull. Relaxing my face, I asked softly, “You and Mitch, huh?”
Lexie waved me off. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. I haven’t mentioned it to Berkley yet.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “But you know Berk would be so happy for you two. And for what it’s worth, Mitch is a great guy. The best.”
Lexie gave me a wry smile. “I’m quickly learning that.”
I smiled, then, changing the subject, said, “So Berkley wanted you to come check on me?”
“Yeah. She told me it was the least I could do after going to the game without her.”
I barked out a laugh. “That sounds like her.”
“You should be glad she’s not here, actually. She’s really worried about you, and she doesn’t do well with injuries. There was one time Logan broke his hand playing in a slow-pitch summer league. She was a nightmare, and that wasn’t nearly as serious as this.”
My mind skipped right over the part where Berkley was worried about me and instead latched onto the name Lexie had spoken.
“Who the fuck is Logan?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Lexie laughed, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Easy, killer. Logan is her brother.”
“Berkley has a brother?” I asked dumbly.
“And a sister,” Lexie told me. “Seems like something you should know about the girl you’re dating.”
“Well, it’s not like she knows I have siblings, too,” I said. “A brother and a sister as well, actually.”
“Honestly, I’m sure she knows already,” Lexie said, snorting. “The girl’s been kind of obsessed with you for a while.”
“How long is a while?” Though Berkley had told me herself she’d had a bit of a crush on me since college, I couldn’t help pumping her best friend for more information.
“Oh, God, definitely since college. You were the hot older guy she always fantasized about but knew she could never have.”
I thought back to the kind of man I’d been in college. More of a boy, really. A lot of hockey players played two years of juniors before matriculating, but I hadn’t. I’d chosen to jump right into NCAA play with both feet at eighteen, and those first couple of years had done wonders in maturing me as an athlete.
Not much, however, in maturing me as a human.
Those early days of being on campus, getting to know my teammates and learning the lay of the land were a blur. On top of regular practices and classes, tutoring and training, my teammates and I spent a ridiculous amount of time at the local dive bar. And in those days, I’d only wanted one thing from females.
Sex.
I’d only had one partner before then—my high school girlfriend—and the wheels had come off when I moved to East Lansing. Away from the watchful eyes of my parents, I’d turned into a certified fuckboy. My body count had gone from one to double digits in a matter of weeks. I wasn’t a bad guy, exactly. I had always been upfront with women about what I wanted from them—and what I didn’t. But I quickly gained a reputation, and being a standout collegiate athlete made it easy for me to exploit it.
And then I’d met Ashley, and…god, that time of my life had been so fucking messy.
Ashley was the kind of girl who’d seemed perfect at first glance. When I met her—at the bar, of course—her black hair was cut just below her chin, and she had a hoop through her septum and several more lining her delicate earlobes. She’d been wearing the shortest, clingiest dress I’d ever seen, the kind of dress that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. I’d taken her back to my apartment that night, and she’d basically never left.
By the time I was in my senior year, Ashley a junior, she had grown her hair out so it fell well past her shoulders, had removed all but one stud from her lobes, and had taken to dressing in expensive skinny jeans, sweaters, and heels, where before she had favored oversized band tees and black denim she’d distressed herself with fishnets underneath—even in the dead of summer.
The change was so subtle, I hadn’t noticed until it was too late. She’d been grooming herself to become the Instagram influencer trophy wife of a professional athlete in front of my very eyes, and I’d been so focused on hockey and school that I’d completely missed it.
When my final season ended and I got the call to leave school early to play for the Warriors during their playoff run that year, I’d started packing my things for the short drive to Detroit without hesitation. To this day, I had no idea how she figured out I was leaving, but as I shoved shit into my duffle, she showed up at my apartment, one of those hard-sided suitcases wheeled by her side.
“When we get to Detroit, we can go to a jeweler and pick out a ring,” she said excitedly. “I suppose we’ll have to stay in a hotel while we look for a place, but you can afford that, right? I think we start with an apartment in the city, and once we get married, we can buy a house in the suburbs. One big enough to start a family.”
I barely heard her endless chatter over the roar in my head. We’d been together for nearly three years and I’d never once considered the possibility of marrying and starting a life with this woman. In an instant, I went from riding the greatest high of my life to feeling like the biggest chump in the world.
Ashley was mid-sentence when I said, “No.”
“No, what?” she asked, turning from the mirror over my bathroom sink where she’d been inspecting her flawless makeup, hands on her hips.
“No to…all of it. I’m not marrying you. You’re not coming with me. This…this is over.”
“What?”
“I don’t want all of that,” I said, quickly adding, “At least not right now.”
And definitely not with you.
I hadn’t said that last part, but what I had spoken told her enough. She’d picked up the nearest heavy object—which happened to be my economics textbook—and chucked it at my head before storming out of the apartment.
I never saw her again.
“Dude, where did you just go?” Lexie asked, pulling me from my reverie.
“Just thinking about college,” I said, blinking a few times. “I wasn’t a good guy back then. I suppose it’s a blessing Berkley and I hadn’t crossed paths until now.”
“Yeah, well…new-to-the-pros Brent wasn’t much better,” Lexie said. “Shit, even Brent from a few months ago could’ve used some work.”
I barked out a laugh, my head throbbing enough that I quickly quieted down.
“You’re not wrong.” We grinned at each other, and I said, “So back to Berkley. She’s worried about me?”
Lexie rolled her eyes. “Of course she is. She had to watch you take that hit on TV, and you were bleeding everywhere and not waking up. Hell, even I was worried.”
“Aww, Lexie! You care! That’s so sweet!”
“I only care about you because you matter to Berk.”
I gave her a knowing smile and winked. “Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“God, you’re infuriating. It makes sense that you and Berk found each other.”
I smiled proudly, assuming that, if Lexie was giving me shit, it meant she liked me.
Though it wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker, having our friends get along would make a world a difference as my and Berkley’s relationship progressed.
Hours later, an insistent buzzing woke me from intermittent sleep.
I didn’t even bother to see who was calling before swiping the screen to answer.
“Hello?” I croaked.
“Brent, oh my God, it’s so good to hear your voice,” Berkley said in a rush. “I’ve been so worried. Lexie told me she saw you, but she wouldn’t give me anything more than to tell me you were alive.”
I chuckled at her rambling.
“Hi, Blondie,” I said.
“What’s going on? How are you?”
“I feel like a Mack truck ran my head over, and I’m going to have a nice little scar on my chin, but otherwise I feel okay.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I’m so sorry. I wish I was there to take care of you.”
“Take care of me in what way?” I said suggestively.
“Brent! Now is not the time to be making sex jokes.”
“That was hardly a sex joke,” I laughed. “I was merely asking a question.”
A moment later, my phone beeped, alerting me that Berkley wanted to FaceTime. Desperate to see her face, I quickly accepted.
“Hiiiiiiii,” she breathed. “Gosh, you look terrible.”
“You’re so sweet to me.”
Berkley giggled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But your chin is all swollen and bruised, and you look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted! The nurses won’t leave me alone.”
“Well, you do have a concussion. There’s like protocol for that, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled.
“God, it’s good to see your face, though,” she said, practically sagging with relief. “That scar is going to be impressive.”
“But it’ll make me more handsome, right?” I flashed her a grin.
“I’m not sure such a thing is possible, but yes.”
“How are you doing?” I asked.
Berkley waved a hand, the camera shaking as she flopped backward onto a bed laden with throw pillows. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not the one who got their bell rung.”
“Yeah, not exactly how I planned my night going,” I told her, shifting a bit to make myself more comfortable. Hospital beds were notoriously disagreeable, and I was stuck overnight for observation. I couldn’t wait to get out tomorrow. “I wish you’d been here, though, but I’m glad you weren’t. Lexie told me you don’t handle injuries well.”
“That bitch,” she whispered. “Okay, in my defense, my brother rarely gets hurt. I was always the one breaking something or getting scraped up when we were kids. I had little regard for personal safety, and I thought I could do everything Logan could and not suffer any consequences. More often than not, I was wrong.”
I laughed, picturing Berkley as a tiny blonde hellion, scaring her parents half to death every time she returned home with a new cut or bruise. My brother Nate had been like that as a kid, too. Berkley, however, had grown out of that recklessness in adulthood. I couldn’t say the same for my younger brother. “Mischievous” might as well be Nate’s middle name.
“My brother was the same way growing up,” I said at last.
“Sounds like you’re the same way now.”
“I didn’t exactly give myself a concussion, Berk,” I said. “You can blame that Quakers asshole.”
“I will, gladly.”
“Speaking of which…who won the game?”
“Your boys pulled it off,” she said, and told me about Mitch’s game-winner, a wicked slapshot from the point that apparently “had eyes for the back of the net.”
Her words, not mine.
I loved when she talked dirty.
“I’m glad,” I said with a sigh. “I’m going to be off until after the new year, probably a few weeks at least, so hopefully they keep it up without me.”
“Aww, poor baby,” Berkley said, fake pouting into the screen. I scowled back, and she laughed. “I wish I was there. We could curl up and watch movies while you convalesce.”
“That sounds amazing,” I said, wincing and closing my eyes against the surge of pain atop my skull.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Berkley said. “All this screen time probably isn’t great for your injured brain. I’ll let you go.”
As loath as I was to end the call, my eyes were on fire, and I wanted nothing more than to take a nap.
“Yeah, I’m going to try to get some sleep before the next nurse comes in to torture me,” I said. “But it was good seeing your face. I can’t wait for you to come home so I can see it in person.”
Berkley dipped her head, and I was certain she was hiding a blush.
“Look at me,” I said.
She did, and even under the dim lights of her bedroom and from a few hundred miles away, I was pleased to find her cheeks pink.
“Fucking beautiful,” I breathed.
“Good night, Brent.”
“Good night, Berk.”
We hung up, and I stared up at the ceiling, phone cradled against my chest.
Due to my concussion, I’d be going on the injured list for the foreseeable future. I wouldn’t be allowed to so much as set foot in the arena until I was concussion symptom-free for at least ten days, and it would be even longer before I could play again.
Suddenly, my schedule was wide open, and I knew just what I wanted to do with all that free time.