Playmates (Mates #2)

Prologue - Jay

“Hang in there, Jay,” Coach Mercer says like he’s choking on the words.

His hand clamps down on my shoulder.

The ice beneath me is freezing.

It’s soaking through my gear, leaching into my skin, and I just fucking can’t stop shivering, though the pain is doing a pretty good job of distracting me. I can’t move. Not my leg, not my fingers, not my feet. It’s all stiff. I try to wiggle my toes, but there’s nothing. No feeling. Just this hollow, terrifying nothing.

Coach kneels beside me, his whistle swinging uselessly around his neck, and I just try to see anything, anyone else but him. I know we were in a game. I know there are people besides Coach. But all I can see is him. The lines in his face are deeper than I’ve ever noticed before, and for some reason, I focus on that. On the gray in his hair and how his mouth is pressed into this thin, grim line.

“The medics are on their way,” he says, like he needs me to hear it, like it’s supposed to fix everything. But his voice is so tight. It cracks on the last word.

I’ve seen enough injuries to know what this is. To know it’s bad. To know that when your body feels like someone else’s—foreign, distant—it’s never good news. But still, I wait for him to say something hopeful. Something to pull me out of the icy panic clawing at my chest.

But instead, he mutters the words that will ruin me.

“Help! Do something!” he screams at whoever stands next to him. “That’s the end of his career!”

The words hit like a puck to the gut, knocking the air out of me.

My vision blurs—not from the pain, but from the weight of what he’s just said. The finality of it. My career, my life, over in a single sentence.

I close my eyes, and for the first time in my life, I have no idea if I even want to open them again.