Chapter 16
MAREK
Oh, fuck, no. My chest clenches as Nikki sobs against me. What is happening? Is this regret? Disappointment? I don’t think it was that bad.
I hold her tighter, cupping the back of her head with one hand, rubbing her back with the other. “Hey,” I say gently. “This is not the reaction a guy wants to get after parking the Porsche in the garage of love.”
Sure enough, she chokes and starts laughing. “G-garage of love!” she gasps. “Oh my God!”
I stroke her long hair. “What’s going on, diva?”
She takes a couple of breaths and says, “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, I just felt so… emotional and I started crying.” She tilts her head back to peer into my face. “It’s not a reflection on the quality of your, uh, parking.”
“Good to know. I was afraid you were disappointed.”
Her bottom lip disappears between her teeth and her eyes, still wet and shiny, gaze back at me. “Definitely not disappointed.”
I nod.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize!” I resist the urge to shout, keeping my tone low and even. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Okay.” She sniffles. “It was just… a lot.”
She stops there but I know what she means. There’s still something remarkable between us. I’d come to accept that it was a one-time thing, but now… wow. I don’t even have words to describe it.
“Do you regret it?” I ask quietly.
“God, no.”
Her instant response reassures me.
“I wanted that,” she adds. “I wanted you.”
She told me our hookup in Vegas had to be a one and done. She doesn’t have time for anything else. I fight the unease that jabs my gut.
Was I going to turn down sex with Nikki? Fuck, no.
Am I worried that this isn’t because she’s changed her mind about a relationship between us? Hell, yeah.
But we’re here for a good time, not a long time. There’s no way I can resist her appeal—her tight little body, her delectable mouth, her luscious pussy. But also her silliness, her sweetness, her huge heart.
Then she starts crying again, her slight body shaking against me. “I don’t want to have all these feelings!” she sobs. “It’s too much.”
“It’s okay.” I’m not really sure what to say. I do know that I want her to keep talking. “It’s okay to have feelings, Nikki.”
“But it hurts.” She whimpers. “It hurts so much. Oh, Marek. It hurts so much.”
Somehow I know she’s not talking about me. “I know.” I stroke her hair again. “I know it does.”
“It’s all my fault,” she sobs. “People are dead and it’s all my fault.”
“Christ, Nikki. It’s not your fault. Not at all.”
“It was my concert. My responsibility.”
“No. You were in no way responsible.”
“I feel that way, though.” She cries harder.
“I feel responsible. People wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for my concert.
Families are missing people now. Kids are in the hospital hurt.
In pain. It’s just… unimaginable. I never, ever thought something like that would happen.
I was all worried about my career and going on this tour and selling tickets and I was so s-selfish. ”
I close my eyes, pain slicing through me as if I’m feeling hers. “You couldn’t have imagined it. It was an accident. You can’t blame yourself. I understand why you feel that way, though.”
“Really?” She sniffs.
“Yeah, of course.” I pause, gathering my thoughts.
“When something like that happens, something terrible, it’s normal to want to know why it happened.
There has to be a reason. Otherwise it’s beyond comprehension.
And…” I swallow. “Sometimes it’s easier to accept what happened if we blame ourselves. ”
I feel her settle a little against me, as if she’s listening, although she’s still swiping at tears.
“When things happen that are out of our control, it’s a normal way to give us a sense of control over our lives. We think of what we could have done differently. But that doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing you could have done differently that would have stopped that.”
She shifts in my arms to look at me again. “H-how do you know all this?”
Am I going to do this? Yeah. If it’ll help her, I’ll rip my heart out of my chest and lay it out in front of her. “I’ll tell you. Let me get rid of this rubber.” I grimace and gesture at myself. “I’ll be right back.”
She nods and reluctantly separates herself from me, and I hustle into the bathroom to clean up.
Washing my hands, I look at myself in the mirror.
I don’t like talking about shit that happened to me.
Why would anyone want to talk about pain and hurt?
I like to keep things light and easy. But if it’ll help Nikki, I’ll do it.
Back in bed, we attach to each other like we’re made to fit together. I hand her some tissues I grabbed from the bathroom, and she mops up.
“I’m all snotty,” she says, her nose sounding stuffed up.
“It’s okay. I can handle a little snot. You know hockey players are out there hocking loogies all over.”
A watery laugh springs from her. “True.”
Maybe I don’t have to tell this story. Maybe she’s forgotten. But…
“Okay, tell me,” she says softly.
“This is not something I enjoy talking about. I’ll tell you on one condition.”
“What?”
“That you do the same. Talk to me more about what you’re feeling.”
She doesn’t reply for a fraught moment. Then mumbles, “Okay. I’ll try.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “When I was eighteen, the fall after I got drafted by the Storm, I got cut by a skate blade. On my throat.” I swallow. “I nearly died.”
Nikki draws in a sharp breath. Her gaze and her fingertips immediately go the scar on my neck. “This?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Jesus. What happened?”
“It was a freak accident. It was the third period of a game against New Hampshire. We were on the penalty kill and just took a faceoff in the O zone. I slipped and fell. It happens all the time, right?”
“Right.”
“I saw another player’s skate come up and I felt the impact of it but I didn’t realize how bad it was. Like an idiot, I decided I wouldn’t go to the bench because we were already down a man.”
“Marek.”
“I know, it was crazy. But I couldn’t even make it a few steps.
I collapsed. Meanwhile, the other team had won the faceoff and had rushed to the other end.
Their goalie saw me down and bleeding like crazy and he started yelling and waving his arms. The team trainers ran out on the ice and took care of me.
If it weren’t for them, I might not have made it. ”
She lets out a long shaky breath.
“They rushed me to the hospital. The cut was half an inch from my jugular. I had surgery and got fifty stitches. When I was lying on the table getting ready to get stitched the doc told me how lucky I was, because if it had been a quarter of an inch deeper it would have probably been fatal.”
“I always hated it when anyone got hurt playing. I’d get a sick feeling in my stomach.” She presses a hand to her belly as if she feels that way now. “I always worry about Grayson.”
I nod. “After, I figured I’d just let the stitches heal and I’d be better and back on the ice in no time.
But when I got home from the hospital, I was as weak as a baby chick.
I got dizzy when I tried to move around.
I ended up in bed a lot. I did all the things I was supposed to do—drank lots of fluids, took an iron supplement, ate healthy—but it took a while for my body to recover from the trauma.
I slept a lot. They told me it was good to sleep because that’s when your body can repair and heal. ”
“You told me that.”
“Yeah.” I exhale slowly. “I went through a lot. At first I was sure it was gonna be okay. But when it started to sink in that it wasn’t going to be that easy, I was pissed.
I started to wonder if I was going to play hockey again.
And I’d just been drafted. That was my goal my whole life.
” I shake my head, my throat burning even all these years later.
“I had a hard time dealing with it all. I was angry and bitter. And… well, I guess I was sad and grieving. One day, I burst into tears in front of some of the guys when they came to see me. Then I was even more pissed, because I was humiliated. I fucking hated that. So, my mom made me go for therapy.”
“Ahhhh.”
I pause because I can almost hear wheels turning in Nikki’s head. “They told me it’s not healthy to hold back your feelings. The anger was what I really struggled with. I was pissed at Gifford, the guy whose skate cut me.”
“Ohhh.”
“It wasn’t his fault. It was fluke timing, me falling, and his leg coming up.
But I didn’t care about that. I was just furious at him for doing this to me.
It was pretty intense and when I started thinking about getting revenge on him, I knew I had to talk to someone about it.
So it was good that I had a therapist. He told me that anger is a natural part of the recovery process.
Also the revenge feelings, the sad feelings, the crying.
” I grimace. “Feelings aren’t right or wrong, they’re just feelings and we have to have safe and healthy ways to express them.
Ignoring feelings like that can even cause physical problems.”
She nods against me.
“And, like you, one of the feelings I had was guilt. I wanted to understand why it happened to me. Now I know I was trying to feel a sense of control over my life again. I kept thinking, what if I hadn’t fallen, what if I’d been more careful or a stronger skater.
That’s all normal, too. My therapist told me I had to find a way to forgive myself for what happened if I wanted to get over it. ”
I think Nikki’s crying again. She’s shaking and a hiccup escapes her.
I wrap her tighter in my arms. Christ, I would take away this pain from her if I could.
Pressure builds behind my eyes and cheekbones and my throat feels like a hockey puck is lodged there.
I squeeze my eyes shut and hold her through her tears.