Chapter 22 #2
The second the door clicks shut, Viktor grunts, standing there like the wall he is. “Handler, Kade? Really?” he says, flat.
I smirk, shifting against the pillow. “Am I wrong?”
Viktor exhales through his nose like a man who’s witnessed every war crime this team’s ever committed and still somehow stuck around. “Unfortunately not.”
He moves closer. “What do you need, captain?”
My smirk fades. This part’s serious. “I need you to get the pants I was wearing when we crashed. Nurses probably have ‘em in a bag somewhere. I need you to take the ring.”
Viktor goes still.
“And I need you to book me a room in the same hotel you’re staying in for the next game.”
His brows lower. “Kade…”
I meet his stare. This man has been my best friend for years, he knows I won't back down no matter how much he glares at me. But he tries anyway.
“You’re in a hospital bed,” Viktor says flatly. “Plugged to damn wires. You flatlined twice. You can’t walk across the room, let alone into an arena.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say. The kind of tone that ends conversations. “Just do it.”
He watches me like he’s reading the real answer in my eyes, in my posture, in the way I haven’t flinched once since I said it.
The silence stretches, long and sharp, until it’s nearly unbearable.
And then, finally, he nods. A single, clipped motion of understanding.
“You better not die on the way there,” he mutters, but there’s no heat in it. Just grit.
I grin, slow and crooked. “Not planning on it.”
Viktor turns toward the door, all solid muscle and quiet violence, already shifting into motion before I speak again. “Petrov.”
He pauses mid-step.
“Thank you,” I say simply, the words rough in my throat but honest. He grunts, that low, familiar sound that means without ever saying it, and walks out.
Five minutes later, the chaos returns. Correction, the chaos explodes through the door.
Cole’s arms are full of snacks, two drinks, and what looks suspiciously like an entire tray of fries. Elias is balancing a steaming cup of tea, a juice box, and a plastic-wrapped muffin with all the concentration of a surgeon.
They stop dead. “Where did he go?” Cole asks, eyes flicking around as if Viktor might be lurking in a shadow, ready to smite him for breathing.
“What do you care?” I tease, raising an eyebrow.
Cole glares. “I don’t. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t about to shove me into traffic.”
Elias snorts and sets the drinks down on the rolling tray. “Okay, tea, juice, extra napkins, and a questionable hospital muffin that I’m ninety percent sure is made of glue.”
“You spoil me,” I rasp.
“Shut up and drink.”
I let him lift the cup and bring the straw to my lips, just to see him grin. I could do it myself. My hands work fine. But he’s smiling again—really smiling, so I let him. Even when he starts feeding me bites of the muffin.
“Open,” he says.
I do. He's so bossy when I'm not.
Cole groans. “Jesus. I’m gonna throw myself out the window. Why didn’t you flatline permanently if this was what I had to come back to?”
I give him a lazy smile with a mouthful of muffin. “Because you’d cry without me.”
“Bitch, I did cry—”
Elias throws a napkin at his face. And for the first time since the crash, everything feels a little bit normal again.
Night falls like a fucking countdown.
Elias is at home, our home, moving like a storm through my apartment, texting me while he stuffs gear and Reapers jerseys into his bag. I watch the messages light up my phone screen, one after the other:
I don’t want to go without you.
It doesn’t feel right, sir.
I hate this.
I’m packing but it feels like I’m leaving you behind.
What if we lose again?
What if I fail you?
I smirk at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard, ready to send something reckless, something that’ll make him skate harder, hit meaner, burn hotter, but I stop myself.
Because the truth is, I don’t want a message.
I want him. I want to see his face when I walk through that tunnel.
I want the moment to hit him like a punch to the chest—the shock, the relief, the disbelief.
I want him to feel it in his bones when he sees me standing there, alive, upright, and coming straight for him.
“Mr. Kade,” a voice says from the doorway, dragging me back from the fantasy. “You called.”
It’s the doctor. The same one who dug into my chest, rewired my lungs, and stitched me back together when I was trying my hardest to bleed out on his table. He steps inside, bracing for a fight he doesn’t want to have. “How are you feeling?”
I look him dead in the eye. No hesitation. No softness. “Like I could crash again.”
He blinks, stunned by the honesty, or the insanity. “That’s… concerning.”
I grin at him. The kind of smile that normally comes right before a bad idea or a good fight. “I need you to let me go tomorrow morning.”
His eyes narrow immediately. “Absolutely not. You’re not fully stable. Your body hasn’t even regulated post-op. There’s swelling—”
“Put your best doctor on me,” I interrupt. “Shit, you come with me. Take a short vacation. First-row seats at the Cup Final. Five-star hotel. You’ll eat better than you ever have in your life.”
“You need rest, Mr. Kade.”
“I need to be there.”
He folds his arms. Unmoved.
I exhale, then stare straight at him. “Look, my boy is going to win that game in two days. And I need to be there to put a ring on his finger on center ice in front of thousands of people.”
Silence.
Then I drop my voice, cold and hard. “I’m going whether you let me or not.”
The doctor looks at me long and hard, the kind of look that strips you bare and measures every reckless impulse threaded through your bones.
His eyes narrow, his jaw works, and I can see the exact moment he starts calculating all the ways this could end with paperwork, lawsuits, and a very public scandal.
But he keeps staring as if he’s waiting to find even one sign that I’ll back down.
Finally, he exhales. Not sharply, no, this is a long, heavy sigh. The kind that carries weight. Defeat and resignation. “You’re a goddamn pain in my backside.”
I smirk, leaning back enough to make it cocky. “You’ve seen my team.”
He groans, pinching the bridge of his nose like the very thought has physically aged him. I’ve never seen a man look so done and yet so completely aware he’s about to cave anyway. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” he mutters. “You’re a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
I grin, not bothering to hide the satisfaction curling in my chest. “Then come see the Reapers. You’ll understand.”
He sighs again, slower this time. He crosses his arms, stares down at me, and finally relents. “Fine,” he grits out. “Fine. But I’m setting the terms.”
“Name them,” I say immediately, not even blinking.
“You wear a portable heart monitor the entire time. You don’t take it off. Not for photos. Not for a speech. Not for any goddamn reason.”
“Done.”
“You don’t walk on your own. Crutches, chair, whatever’s necessary. You don’t strain yourself. At all.”
I pause and shrug. “No promises.”
He glares, sharp and exasperated. “That one’s not negotiable. I’ll have your nurse tackle you.”
I roll my eyes, dramatically and without remorse. “Fine.”
“And,” he says, holding up a final finger, “I’m sending my best IV-trained nurse with you. You want to be there? You’re taking medical supervision with you.”
I arch a brow. “As long as they don’t get in the way when I kiss him senseless, deal.”
He mutters something under his breath in what might be Latin for this man is going to be the death of me and starts scribbling on a chart.
“Room’s booked,” I add casually. “Plane leaves at six. You’ve got four hours to pack.”
He stops writing and stares at me. “You already planned all this?”
“You’re late to the party, Doc.”