Chapter 20
White.
Blinding white.
Everything is too loud, too bright, like the universe is trying to fuck me with a migraine. My head throbs. My ribs burn. My mouth tastes of smoke and metal. My eyelids drag open, slow and reluctant, like someone glued them shut and cursed every nerve in my body.
What the hell—Hospital.
I blink again, slowly. There's beeping in the corner that's making my head throb harder. The slow pump of IV fluid, a tube in my arm. There's pain in my chest. Something thick and heavy pressing on my lungs. I try to breathe, but it feels like knives.
The room shifts in and out of focus. It reeks of antiseptic and bleach and blood that’s already been washed away. The walls feel distant, pulsing. The ceiling hums with electricity. My body aches. Not sharp pain—deep, dull, as if someone rearranged the pieces without asking permission.
But there’s something else. Something softer and warmer.
Warmth is tucked into my side and the moment I register it, my heart spikes hard enough to startle the machines. Panic surges, fast and unsteady, until I force myself to look down, to really see.
Curls. Blond, messy, sleep-rumpled curls splayed across my shoulder, right where they belong.
My vision clears just enough to catch the curve of his cheek, the part of his mouth, the dried salt at the corners of his eyes.
He’s curled against me so tightly it feels desperate, anchored to my chest like letting go would kill him.
My pup. Even asleep, his brow is furrowed, still fighting something in the dark, even with my heartbeat under his ear. He looks wrecked, but still so beautiful. Familiar in a way that slices through me and leaves something raw and holy behind.
He’s curled into me like he was built for it. Because he was.
I try to speak. It comes out a low, broken groan and his head snaps up instantly.
Eyes blown wide, panic hitting first, then disbelief, relief, everything all at once.
“Oh god. Baby. You’re awake. Fuck! Shit!
Thank you. Thank you, thank you—fuck!” The words spill in a frenzy, voice cracking like it hasn’t been used in days, all the weight he’s been choking back tearing free at once.
He’s crying before I can even try to answer.
Tears, falling hard, like his body’s finally done pretending.
The second I opened my eyes, he broke. It’s not soft crying either, it’s the kind that makes your chest collapse.
The kind that leaves your face aching, breath hitching, like grief’s been living in your skin.
I try again. My throat burns like hell. “Mmm… pup?” It doesn’t sound like me. Doesn’t sound human. It's something hoarse and wrecked.
Elias makes a sound like someone shot him in the chest, then launches forward and nearly smothers me in curls and heat and frantic sobbing joy. “You remember me?” he gasps, hiccupping through the words. “You remember me?!”
I frown. It hurts. Everything fucking hurts. “Why… wouldn’t I?”
He pulls back enough to look at me, and his face is wrecked—eyes swollen, lashes wet, mouth trembling.
“What… happened?” I ask, blinking slowly, trying to piece it together. My ribs scream. My leg. My shoulder. The side of my head is pounding.
“You were in a crash,” he chokes. “The bus. After the meeting with Coach. It—it caught fire. They said you stopped breathing twice.” He swallows hard. “You flatlined in the ambulance and again in surgery. They didn’t know if you’d wake up. Or if you’d remember. Or…”
He cuts himself off and just clutches me.
I exhale slowly. “Still here,” I rasp, one hand lifting, shaky, slow and cupping the back of his neck. “Still yours.”
He lets out a sound that’s not human. Like I just stitched his heart back together with two words.
Elias moves fast, too fast, but he’s trembling, so I don’t stop him. He grabs the plastic pitcher and pours with hands that still won’t settle. The glass rattles once, then he’s at my side again, holding the straw to my lips like he’s afraid I’ll vanish between blinks.
I drink slowly and painfully. It scratches down my throat, but it’s water, so I don’t complain.
He’s watching me like I’m holy and breakable all at once. “I thought I lost you,” he whispers.
I pull back from the straw and let my head fall back against the pillow. “Never,” I rasp.
The door creaks open before he can say more. A pair of clean white sneakers step in first, followed by a white coat and a face that’s too tired, calm, professional. The doctor gives Elias a wary glance, like he’s waiting for him to lunge. Which makes me painfully raise an eyebrow at Elias.
“Mr. Kade,” he says carefully. “Your surgery went well. You suffered multiple internal injuries, a broken femur, three cracked ribs, and blunt force trauma to the head and chest. You coded twice—once en route, and once on the table. We stabilized you. You're lucky to be alive.”
I nod once, slow and careful, and even that tiny movement sends a fresh ache pulsing through my chest, sharp enough to make me wince. But I don’t stop. Because every beat of my heart feels like a miracle I haven’t earned yet, a reminder that somehow, against everything, I’m still here.
But before I can sit with it, before the weight of that fact can even settle, the door flies open so hard it slams against the wall, and suddenly, chaos doesn’t just arrive. It storms in.
“DAMIAN!”
“CAP!!”
“HE’S FUCKING AWAKE?!”
It’s a goddamn pressure cooker blowing its lid.
Shane comes flying down the hall in a wheelchair, tearing through like he’s racing for gold. Cole stumbles over a chair, arms flailing, clearly forgot how legs work. Mats crashes in behind them, vibrating with pure adrenaline, eyes wild, on the edge of either sobbing or throwing a punch.
Viktor’s the last to enter—massive, silent, arms folded tight and scowl locked in place. Already bracing, already positioning himself between the bed and anyone dumb enough to come too close, too fast.
“Shane, slow the fuck down—”
“Curls, tell me this isn’t a dream—”
“I swear to god if you flatline again, I’m kicking your ass myself,” Mats barks it out—deadpan, zero hesitation. Less a joke, more a legally binding threat.
The room’s a riot of noise. Voices clash, footsteps echo, emotions crash into each other like wreckage on a loop. Elias hovers at my side, half-curled between me and the chaos, twitchy and protective. He’s got that look—touch him and die—and I fully believe he’ll swing on anyone who steps wrong.
I just grin. Crooked and small. It fucking hurts, but I do it anyway. Because they’re here. All of them. And for the first time since the darkness swallowed me whole, I don’t feel alone.
The doctor clears his throat. Doesn’t bother to raise his voice.
Doesn’t fight the noise. He waits, calm as hell, like this isn’t the first time he’s watched a storm burn itself out.
And when it does, when the shouting fades, and the adrenaline turns to breathless silence, he speaks.
“Mr. Kade,” he says, calm and too careful.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to hang up your skates. ”
The words hit like a puck to the chest.
The entire room freezes.
My breath leaves me slow, deliberate, as if I’m keeping myself from reacting too fast, too hard.
I stare up at the ceiling for a second, blank and blinking, then exhale a long, low groan.
The kind that comes from somewhere deep, less pain, more inevitability.
“Fuck,” I mutter, rough around the edges.
“Well… wasn’t planning on skating after playoffs anyway. ”
The silence that follows is instant and absolute.
The only one in the room who doesn’t look blindsided is Coach.
He’s standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest, not a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
Just quiet understanding. Because he knew.
That’s what we were talking about before the crash.
Retirement. The end of the road. Passing the C.
Letting it all finish the right way—with me choosing it.
But Elias, he looks at me like I just tore the sky open.
His face folds slow, like glass shattering in a dream.
Confusion crumples into horror. Disbelief twists into something jagged and raw.
“You what?” His voice is small, like it already knows the answer and doesn’t want to believe it.
“But—” he tries again, then stops. “But I can’t skate without you. ”
And God, that look. Wide-eyed and wrecked. Like I took something he didn’t know he needed until it was already gone.
I lift my hand, slow, shaking, everything in me aching—and cup his jaw.
He leans in. Desperate. Like maybe if I touch him long enough, it won’t be true.
Like I can anchor him here, in this moment, before the world finishes falling apart.
“You’re gonna have to, baby,” I rasp, voice worn thin but steady. “You’re ready.”
“No, I’m not,” he whispers, blinking fast, lashes soaked again. “I’m not ready if you’re not there.”
“You’re the best center I’ve ever seen,” I mutter, trying to grin through the pain. “You think I bled for you on that ice just for you to quit when I’m gone?”
Elias doesn’t answer. He leans into my hand, sniffling, curls shaking, nose pink and lips trembling.
And then the door opens again, and a nurse steps in, clipboard in hand, scrubs spotless, expression neutral but watchful.
“Good to see you awake, Mr. Kade,” she says, her tone calm and professional, not unkind but distant in that practiced way nurses have, like she’s walked into a thousand rooms like this one and knows how to keep herself far enough away from the wreckage.
She taps something into the tablet resting in her arm.
Then she glances up, pen poised, voice even.
“How’s the pain? Scale from one to ten?”