Chapter 18
JAKE
The fight happened so fast.
That was what stuck with me, how quick it went by. One second Ethan was closing with that jackass, whoever he was, and then there was a flurry I couldn’t follow any better than the puck, and then they were on the ice. Ethan was on top, which was good, but then…
“Shit,” Carson muttered. “Shit, shit. That’s not good.”
Given that Ethan was being helped off the ice and looked about half a second from passing out, no, it wasn’t good. I was ready to stand up and go down to the locker room, but Carson put a hand on my arm to stop me.
“Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s with the trainers. They’ll take care of him. We can’t get back there anyway while a game is going on.”
Oh right, the game. There were still seven minutes to play, and after the fight the rest of the fans were pumped, cheering and shouting as things restarted. I could honestly say that I’d never been less interested in hockey, though. All my thoughts were with Ethan.
“What happened right before they went down?” I asked Carson.
“I think Ethan threw another punch,” he said, then pulled out his phone.
“Hang on, let me find the feed for the game, I bet people have already posted clips… yeah… ” He shared the screen, and there was a slow-motion video of Ethan hitting the other guy.
High-high, then the fucker got his hands up and so Ethan went low—perfect, a double-tap that broke the guy’s posture, and then—
We both winced at the same time as they began to fall. “Shit, bad angle,” Carson said.
“I bet that’s a boxer’s fracture.” Boxer’s fractures happened you hit with the far side of the hand instead of the close side, and usually meant a break in one of the bones below the pinkie. It could mean breaking more than one, though. It could mean soft tissue damage, joint damage…
“Fuck.” I ran my hand over my head, wincing in sympathy at the thought of the pain Ethan might be in right now. “That’s not good.”
“It’s not as bad as it could be, though.”
That was Carson, always looking on the bright side. Even after I almost broke him permanently, his first social media posts afterward were all smiles and “feeling better already!” without a hint of the pain he was going through.
I pulled out my phone and texted Ethan. Are you okay? That was a stupid thing to ask, all things considered, but I did it anyway. Can I come see you? Better.
“He might not have his phone right now,” Carson said, eyeing me sidelong like he was worried I was about to throw a fit if I didn’t get a response in two seconds.
I wasn’t. I just… “I know. But he should get to see that I’m thinking about him when he does get his phone back.”
Carson grinned. “Oh my God, you’re adorable.”
“Shut up.”
“No! I can’t, it’s so cute. No one would ever look at you and think you were made of marshmallows, but you are.”
“Not for everyone,” I said.
“Yeah, I think we all know that after the show you put on at the tournament, but still. Did you know you trended for that, by the way?”
I scoffed. “Bullshit. Nobody cares about a local tournament.”
“They do when you’re competing, apparently. BJJ Today mentioned you in their highlights reel, and you got reposted hundreds of times.” I shrugged. “How you don’t even follow yourself on social media is bizarre.”
“I stopped after Abu Dhabi.” I raised my hand to forestall any unnecessary apologies from him. “On my therapist’s advice, and she was right. I feel way better not getting sucked back into what people I don’t know are saying about me.”
“Huh.” He nodded. “Smart. But what if—”
I was spared any more explanation by the final buzzer sounding.
The game was over—Vegas had won 6-2, and the home crowd was on their feet cheering as the players took one last skate around the ice before heading for the locker room.
It was hard to stay in my seat, but I did, not the least because I’d have to fight thousands of other people trying to get out of the arena right now.
Ethan might not be able to text, but Marek could, and he wouldn’t leave Carson waiting any longer than he had to.
Unless the news was really bad. Or maybe—
“What colors do you think we should pick for the wedding?”
I blinked right out of my downward spiral at the non-sequitur. “What?”
“Colors,” Carson said, rocking back and forth a little in his seat. “That’s a wedding thing, right? Picking colors?”
“Um… yeah.” I’d listened to my sister agonize over linen versus ecru for long enough to realize that colors were, in fact, something people could stress over at weddings.
“And I want to make sure we have an amazing wedding. Like, it needs to be the wedding to end all weddings.”
“Then you better hope Marek’s brother is ready to pay for it.” I winced as soon as I said it. Fuck. “Sorry, I don’t mean to say you guys don’t make good money or anything like that, but—”
“Not NAPH-level money,” Carson replied with a nod. “I get it, man, don’t worry. I’m sure he’d help out if we asked, but I’d like to have a plan before we do if it comes to that. Colors are part of the plan.”
I chuckled. I could practically hear the capital letters in there. “Whatever you go with, I suggest steering clear of black and blue.”
“Mm, yeah, that would be like bringing work home. Nothing neon either.”
How had neon even been in the running? “Definitely not neon.”
“What about cornflower blue?”
“Do you even know what shade of blue cornflower is?”
“Huh, no.” He looked at me with a deceptively wide-eyed, innocent expression. “I guess we should look it up, huh?”
I knew Carson was trying to distract me, and I appreciated the fact that it was working, but it was still a relief to get a text from Marek five minutes later that interrupted our journey of discovery through cerulean and cobalt.
Carson opened it, and his mouth fell into a flat, worried line. “They took him to the hospital.”
I got to my feet. “Let’s go, then.”
“I’m going to ride with Marek, I’ll meet you there.” He forwarded the text to me so I’d have the name of the hospital, and I took off.
It turns out it’s pretty easy to get through a crowd when you’re motivated and my size.
It wasn’t the sort of thing I took advantage of often, but when I needed to bulldoze, nobody was going to stop me.
I made it to my car in less than ten minutes, and ten minutes after that I was at the ER trying to get information from the nurse behind the desk about Ethan, which of course he didn’t give me.
Marek and Carson arrived a few minutes later.
Marek looked… weird. Tired, which wasn’t unusual for after a game, but the hollows beneath his eyes were darker than I could remember seeing.
He talked to the nurse for us, showed some ID, and then we were told to sit down with the understanding that when Ethan was available, we’d be taken to him.
Carson was hovering, opening his mouth and shutting it again in a way that showed he was nervous but not quite confident to talk about whatever was going on. That was weird, too—these two shared everything. Which meant the issue was over whether or not I should be told.
“What?” I demanded in a louder voice than I meant. “What is it?” If Ethan was worse off than I thought, if there was some sort of complication or he’d hit his head too or—
“I told him to fight,” Marek said, not looking straight at me. “He asked, but I was the one who told him to go ahead. Now his hand is broken.”
Oh. My ire died down almost immediately.
“He wanted the fight.” I knew enough about Ethan to know that he had the spirit for fighting.
He didn’t just want to know how to handle himself in case he got pulled into something; he wanted to be the one doing the pulling, watching out for his teammates when they needed him. Tonight they’d needed him.
“I should have said no.”
“You had a good reason for saying yes,” Carson blurted like he couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “With Keps and Mags out and that asshole gunning for worse because they were losing… ”
“You probably made his night by telling him to go for it. What happened at the end was just… ” I sighed.
“An accident.” They happened. Shit, even Carson’s concussion had been an accident.
I hadn’t meant to spike him like that; I’d overdone the move while I was hopped-up on adrenaline.
I felt fucking awful about it, but he’d forgiven me.
Learning to forgive myself was harder, but I was making progress there.
“It sucks, but it was an accident. Ethan won’t blame you. ”
Marek sighed, but his rigid posture relaxed a little as he swayed back against the seat. Carson gave me a relieved smile where his fiancé couldn’t see, then said, “I bet it won’t be long before we can see him.”
He was right. It wasn’t even half an hour later before we were shown into an exam room where Ethan was laid back on a bed, his right arm wrapped in thick bandages and pinned to his side by a sling.
He also had a hazy look in his eyes that spoke of some serious pain medication.
The haze lifted a little bit as he focused on us.
“Hiii,” Ethan said, a grin breaking out on his face as he tried to sit up.
“Ah-ah, not with that hand,” the nurse who was with him said when he apparently tried to use his right arm for support. “Remember, you’ve got to be careful with that hand for a while.”
“Mm. I do?”
“You do,” the nurse said patiently.
“Really?”
“If you want your fractures to heal well, yes.”
I worked my way over to his bedside as the nurse explained the prognosis—a comminuted fracture of the fifth metacarpal, which meant it had broken in two places.
Luckily, it wasn’t displaced, and as long as he was careful with it he should be able to avoid surgery.
“He’s looking at about four to six weeks in a cast due to the complex nature of the injury, though,” the nurse finished.
“And it’s best that he not be alone for the next few days while he’s on the oxycodone. ”
“He can come home with me,” I said.
Ethan looked at me with surprise. “Really?”
I sat down next to him. “Of course.” What, like I was going to let anybody else take care of my boyfriend right now?
“But I fucked up.”
I stared at him for a second before my mouth caught up to the fucking contortions my brain was doing. “No way.”
“I did, I was there!” he insisted, which was both sad and adorable.
“I didn’t hit him the right way. You spent all this time teaching me how to hit people and I screwed it up, and you watched me screw it up, and now you’re going to get tired of me because I can’t fight right, and my hand really hurts, and I can’t even play hockey. ”
I barely knew where to start with all that.
I glanced over at Marek and Carson, Marek with a flinty expression on his face as if he was a second away from punching me himself and Carson unhappy to be in the middle, and waved them back.
“Ethan.” I leaned in and kissed him gently on the mouth.
His lips were dry and chapped, but it still soothed something deep inside me to feel them.
“Baby. You did a great job.” I set a hand on his wrist. “This part was an accident. It happens to a lot of people, even people who fight for a living. I think you’re amazing; there’s nothing boring about you. ”
“Yeah?” His voice was small but at least he didn’t look so sad anymore, which was good. My heart couldn’t take it.
“Yeah. And I want to bring you home with me and take care of you and make sure you’re gentle on your hand so you can get back to hockey as soon as possible.”
Now he was smiling, and my heart lifted right along with his lips. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay.” He reached over with his good hand and pulled me in close. “Then let’s go home.”
The nurse had brought a wheelchair over, which was good because my next move would have been to pick him up and carry him right out of there myself. I didn’t know when my life had decided to rewire itself around Ethan, but it had done so wholeheartedly.
I stopped by Marek and Carson for a moment while the nurse helped Ethan into the chair. “I’ve got him,” I said. “Send whoever you need to over to my place—PT, trainers, your coach, whatever. The door will be open.” But he’s staying with me.
“Good.”
It was about the best ending to a rough nice I could picture. Now, to get Ethan back to my place, put him to bed, and figure out how to reschedule work so I could be home with him for the next few days.
Or maybe a week.