Find Me in the Storm (Nighthawks #7)

Prologue Shay

The only thing I’ve ever wanted my entire life is to be a professional hockey player, and here I am, right now, doing just that.

The biggest exhale I’ve ever felt deflates my lungs and chest as I feel the puck secured beneath my glove on the ice.

“Yes, thank God,” I whisper against the frozen surface as a few people from the dogpile above me start to peel away.

The damn Los Angeles Lions have been peppering me nonstop for the last few minutes.

I was worried number twenty-seven was going to beat me and score. She already had once this game.

But not this time.

My heart thumps in my ears, drowning out the packed arena—a sound I yearned to hear for two decades while getting to this moment.

I still can’t believe I’ve been lucky enough to play professionally for the last five years on the New York Mavericks Professional Women’s Hockey League team. I’m living my damn dream.

I’ve felt sort of emotional all day about how rare it is to find such success at only twenty-five years old.

Maybe it’s because it’s my five-year anniversary of signing to the PWHL.

Maybe it’s because I saw a little girl wearing my jersey in the crowd.

Or maybe it’s because someway, somehow, my subconscious was aware of what would happen next.

“Oh God!” someone shrieks above me—not the excited kind at my incredible save, but one chock-full of horror.

More shouts echo the first, voices growing louder and more concerned, but I can’t make out a single word. It’s all jumbled together. The noise becomes unbearable, rippling through the crowd like a dangerous wave.

My hearing fails me, the chaos fading away as the sound of my heart pounding in my ears takes over. The repetitive thump keeps time in my head as the seconds drone on. What the hell is happening?

The rest of the players untangle themselves from me, and I finally lift my head. A mere inch further from the ground, I see it … the cause of all the mayhem.

The ice is speckled and painted red beneath me, and the puddle’s getting bigger by the second.

The crook of my neck and shoulder immediately light on fire, as if my brain only acknowledged the pain after I spotted the blood.

“Oh God. Oh God. OH GOD!” I cry out, tears welling in my eyes, both from the pain and the fear.

This can’t be real. This can’t be fucking real!

Planting my hands on the ice, I try to push myself up, but I fall, crashing down. I try again, falling harder this time, my helmet bouncing off of the ice.

“Rooney!” A voice cuts through the drowning noise. Our goalie coach, Andy, rushes to my side. He rolls me over, and the lights above me seem so much brighter than I’ve ever noticed before. “I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay.”

I’ve known Andy for most of my adult life. He was an assistant coach on my college team and transitioned to pro coaching the same time I started for the Mavericks. He’s seen me at my worst and my best and cheered me on all the same.

I would like to believe him, but as he kneels down beside me, blocking out the light, I finally see the tears streaming down his face. He lifts his other hand up, cradling it beneath his chin, placing a gentle kiss on the knuckles, but something’s off about this image.

That’s not right … not unless he has the same micro goalie mask tattoo on the inside of his wrist that I do … and the same jersey on.

He squeezes the hand, and my blood runs colder than the floor beneath me. He’s not squeezing his hand, is he?

His dark blue eyes widen as he registers the realization dawning on me. His stare follows mine as I look down to the intertwined hands, panic settling deep into my bones.

“Squeeze my hand.”

I do as he said, and both of us watch my limp fingers fail to follow the direction.

Oh God … nothing’s happening.

I can’t feel anything.

Not in my hand … or my arm. Everything’s frozen and numb. It’s all happening so fast and yet painstakingly slow, and I don’t know whether to shut down or scream.

I’m stuck between accepting what’s happening or dissociating to a place I’ll never want to leave.

One where I’m not bleeding out on the ice, where my arm isn’t immobile and lifeless.

One where I’m still a professional hockey player with a bright career in front of me with my friends and family at my side.

Oh my God, my family.

Thank God my parents aren’t at this game, but I know they’re watching from home and losing their minds right now, trying to either get ahold of someone or get here.

Lifting my right hand up, I form a thumb and raise it up as high as I can. The crowd claps in response, but it’s not for them.

When I was growing up, my parents and I always discussed that if anything bad were to happen on the ice, I was supposed to signal to them if I was good, maybe okay, or bad—thumb up, thumb sideways, or completely turned down, respectively.

But I’m going to be just fine, so I go with a thumbs-up. It’ll reassure them and make them feel better. Which, in turn, will do the same for me.

“Hang on, Shay. Here they are,” Andy murmurs.

He squeezes my hand again, and my vision blurs, tears pooling down the sides of my face and running into my hair.

“I can’t f-feel it.” My voice isn’t my own, pained in a way I’ve never heard before. “I can’t move it.”

“I know. It’s okay. It’s okay,” he tries to assure me, but hope is the furthest from what I’m feeling.

Time seems to be impossible to grasp. I can’t tell if seconds or minutes have gone by. How long have I been lying here?

I glance down, and my usual white-and-purple jersey is saturated in deep red, each stitch and tiny mesh circle unrecognizable.

Jesus Christ.

Squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as they’ll go, I will my arm to twitch, my fingers to move, to do anything. But nothing happens.

Bright light floods my vision as I grunt with frustration, staring at my arm and waiting for it to cooperate.

Come on!

A gasp tears through me, panic bubbling up and taking over as my arm fails me over and over again.

This can’t be happening.

I thought it was all going to be okay. I thought that maybe my arm’s resistance was a weird reaction from my body going into shock. But I think it may be much worse than I initially imagined.

What if … what if I can never use my arm again? What if it never heals normally? What if I can never play hockey again?

Terror like I didn’t know was possible rips through my body, and my breaths quicken with each ticking second.

Oh God.

I’m going to lose everything, my team, my dreams, my future.

I’m going to be nothing.

No. No. No. No.

My racing inner thoughts turn outward.

“No. No. No! No!” I cry out. “Please! Please!”

“Out of the way!” EMTs rush over, hands immediately finding my neck. “Stretcher now! Over here!” Kind brown eyes find mine. “Shay, take a deep breath for me. Come on.”

Dramatically, he demonstrates the slow and steady inhale until I finally manage to do the same, my heart rate slowing down gradually. That lasts only a second before it once again tries breaking through my rib cage.

Multiple hands reach for my body, and the next thing I know, I’m loaded on a stretcher and being rushed toward our bench.

Deafening silence envelops me in the coldest embrace. This is the quietest I’ve ever heard the arena. It’s eerie. The type of silence you only hear in the dead of night … when crickets sing and moonlight shines through the windows.

I feel like that’s where I am right now—stuck outside, staring in and watching this all happen to me as if I weren’t at the center.

Andy pats my uninjured shoulder, but I don’t feel the contact or any of its warmth. The numbness has begun to spread, stretching outwardly to every inch of my body.

Maybe every part of me is giving out for good.

Maybe this is it.

It’s shocking that it’s not until this very moment that I wonder if I’ll even survive this. But I’ve lost a lot of blood … and if I continue losing it at this rate, I can’t imagine that I’ll last much longer.

Will the vision of my crying and distraught teammates be the last thing I ever see? Will my parents be forced to say goodbye through a screen?

Without thinking, I lift my right hand and turn my thumb down and leave it for only a second before forming the ASL sign for I love you. If this is it, I want them to know I’m thinking of them too.

Britt, one of my teammates, comes into view, and I turn my head to see more of my hockey family sobbing as they watch me approach the bench.

Their mouths move as I’m wheeled by, but I can’t hear a word anymore. The silence has overtaken me completely.

As the wheels find the rubber, I glance at the crowd and am blinded by a thousand phones taking pictures and recording.

I can’t even see the faces of the last people I might ever lay eyes on, each person concealed behind a lens.

It’s the last thing I remember before everything goes black.