Chapter Fourteen #2
I feel like giving up, which is a feeling I’ve never had ever, and it absolutely guts me. I loathe whatever is happening to me, but it feels completely out of my control. I try reciting the bullshit from the therapist again, but it does little to quell the chaos in my brain.
“You need to hold it together for a few more minutes, brother. After the game, you can rage all you want.” Luka’s voice is low but commanding.
“Who says I want to rage?” He isn’t wrong. I do, without a doubt, but how does he know?
“You look like you are ready to murder someone,” Luka answers with one eyebrow raised.
I huff a disgruntled, “Fuck off,” because I don’t like that he can see the turmoil going on in my mind right now.
“What do I need to say right now? Because every time I try, it feels like it’s the wrong thing to say,” he asks, pleading in his tone, and that has me stopping in my tracks. This isn’t his problem, and he hasn’t done anything except try to be there for me.
I don’t know how to explain to him what I’m feeling because I don’t know what it is. It’s so damn foreign I don’t know what to do with it. “I wish I had an answer, but I don’t know.”
His face falls, but soon an expression of determination takes over. Then he says, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
“Woah, dude. You going soft on me?” I joke, but his words slowly sink in, one by one, until they start to click together.
He shrugs, “Saw it on a t-shirt.”
My laugh comes up from the depths of my stomach. Every cell in my body feels the vibration of it. “That’s what we’re doing now? Quoting fucking t-shirts?”
His smile is one of relief. “Figured why the hell not at this point, brother.”
Maybe he’s right. At this point, why the hell not? I’ll take anything I can to get rid of these intrusive and unwanted thoughts. I feel better, at least. The heaviness on my chest has lifted some.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to help get you out of this funk and get your luck back, Rowan. And I mean that," Luka says in anguish. I know he’s been worried, and I know that he feels guilt over the fact that he wasn’t the one with Lily that fateful day.
He told me one night that he couldn’t let go of the thought that if it had been him with her that day, then I wouldn’t be going through what I was going through. Of course, I told him that I didn’t blame him one bit for any of this shit and he shouldn’t feel guilty.
Whether it was fate or Emily, Lily’s long-dead ancestor, or something else entirely, I do know that this was my fate to bear.
I think the whole reason I don’t have my luck anymore is because I used all of it up to save Lily.
A trade I would make over and over for my best friend.
Lily is his soulmate, and if something had happened to her, I know he wouldn’t be the same man standing in front of me today.
No matter how fucking off or unlucky I may feel or be now, there is no question in my mind that it was a sacrifice worth making.
“Thank you,” I say suddenly, the enormity of the situation hitting me square in the chest. It’s like I’ve been looking at it all so clinically and selfishly. Now I can see it all so clearly. I can see what he could have lost. My woes pale in comparison.
My apology must catch him off guard because his eyebrows pull together in confusion. “For what?”
“For putting up with my sorry ass. I promise to do better.” I feel like a complete asshole.
Like this whole time I’ve made it about myself and everything that I’ve felt like I lost when I haven’t even stopped to really consider what he could have lost. I feel like a pansy taking so long to realize this shit.
“I should be thanking you. Without you, she wouldn’t be here.”
I’m already shaking my head. “You don’t have to thank me for that. I only did what you would do for me.” And I know down to my core that he would. An image of Millie, with her bright smile and wild brown curls, pops into my head, like my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
He nods his head in confirmation. “In a heartbeat, brother. Always.”
I slap him on the shoulder, suddenly feeling choked up and at a loss for words. A sense of peace finally descends upon my heart. The first sign of healing I’ve felt since the accident.
“Cap! You ready?”
I look up to find Aiden and the other boys watching and waiting for me to lead them to victory. And I can say without a shadow of a doubt when I answer them this time, I mean every word, “I was born ready! This game is fucking ours, boys! Now, let’s go kick some ass!”
“Hell yeah!” the guys scream in unison as we all hit the ice, ready to annihilate the Wolverines into smithereens.
I skate up to center ice for the next face-off, and it’s the most confident I’ve felt this entire season. I’m a well-oiled machine, my muscles coiled tight and ready to strike. When the puck hits the ice, I let my body take over my mind and do what I do best: win fucking hockey games.
And that’s exactly what we do. Another win to bring the Kings of Hart U one step closer to the championships.
Hell yeah. I’m back, baby.