Chapter 1 #2
“Okay,” I say. The word tastes like surrender and sanity.
The doc runs me through the plan: cognitive rest, graded exercise, screens limited, sleep like it’s my religion. Hydration. Headaches will lie; respect them anyway. No contact. No bikes to failure. No pretending I’m bulletproof.
They leave. Nurse Maya returns with water and a pill cup. I lift the cup and my hands shake just enough to make me mad at them.
“Normal,” she says. “Your body’s doing a lot just… being.”
“I’m more of a doing guy,” I say, which is truer than anything else I’ve said today.
“I gathered,” she deadpans, then softens. “If you have a moment where the world pops to static, push the call button. That’s what we’re here for.”
“Static,” I echo. “Great.”
She tilts her head, studies my face the way people do when they want to ask for a selfie but remember they’re in scrubs. “Also… my brother worships you. For what it’s worth.” A small shrug. “If worshippers help.”
“Only if your brother’s bringing tacos,” I say, and it pulls a real smile out of both of us.
The room quiets again. My phone is a stacked tower of messages—Agent. PR. Coach. Most marked “Read” but I have no recollection of them. Then, the family—
Mom with a chain of heart emojis and a text: Eat broth.
Dad: Cameron. That’s it. Which is him saying everything without saying anything.
Luke—my younger brother, the golden child in the family, a trauma surgeon: Call me. No arguments.
I can hear him already: You’d never tell a teammate to skate on a broken leg. Stop trying to skate on a broken brain.
Touche.
The door opens, and the noise in my head drops two notches just because he’s here.
Levi.
He looks like a man who wrestled a series and then sat through the longest night of his life. Stubble, shadows under his eyes, that steady gravity that made me trust him the first day we were stupid and twenty. He takes the chair like a goalie takes the crease: quiet, certain, necessary.
“You look terrible,” I say.
“And you look like hell,” he retorts.
“You should see the other guy,” I rasp.
“There wasn’t another guy, Cam. It was a puck and your skull.”
“Semantics.”
“You also smell like antiseptic and ego,” he answers.
I let him have the last word because my head starts throbbing again.
Then, his mouth twitches. “You scared me.”
“I scared me,” I admit. The words scrape but feel like relief. “Tunnel… went sideways.”
“You tried to joke and forgot the punchline,” he says softly. “It wasn’t your best material.”
I huff a laugh that hurts. “You know the verdict?”
“Yah, PCS. You got one too many hits, man,” he says. No drama. No pity. Just the truth we have to walk through. “You need quiet.”
“In Houston?” I raise a brow with resignation.
“Here’s the thing,” he says.
“The season’s over. We lost, yeah, but so what? We already won the Cup last year. You’ve got that ring on your finger, your name on the silver. And we’re still the East champs this year, Cam. What matters now is you.”
“You’re not going to do this in Houston with cameras camped outside your house and people asking for selfies while you’re trying to remember what day it is.”
“I’m fine,” I say, and we both hear the paper-thin lie.
I sigh. “So where, Goalie?”
“Cedar Falls.”
The words land with a thud and a memory.
Lily’s candy shop welcoming in August, my laughter bouncing off brick when we wrapped that ridiculous delivery van in vinyl with our mugshots.
The van, a gift from Jeff, the team owner.
The vinyl decal, a perfect touch of prank from me because nothing we do is small.
Levi’s proposal night—fireworks, cheers, me the loudest idiot in the corner.
The wedding two years ago, me on a dance floor with a grandma who could two-step better than most rookies can skate.
I was there. I felt good.
Levi leans forward, elbows on knees. “Sugar Mill Lofts. Lily can get a unit ready for you. There’s a clinic that won’t treat you like a headline. There’s a lakeside path where you can walk until the buzz drops. There’s no one who wants anything from you except you, breathing. And I’m there.”
“You’re selling it hard.”
“I’m selfish,” he says. “I want you alive and loud for the next fifty years.”
I look at the crack in the ceiling again and imagine it’s a river on a map. A line from the roar to the quiet. From the storm to the somewhere after.
“Do I even know how to shut up?” I ask.
“Try,” he says. “For me.”
The ache behind my eyes spikes, then softens. I think of Dad’s single word text. I think of Luke’s future lecture. Of the GM’s “brand” and how fast I want to launch that word into the sun. I think of steel and ice and the moment the concrete kissed my cheek.
“Say yes,” Levi adds, voice low and steady. “Don’t make me drag you.”
“You couldn’t drag me if you tried,” I mutter, because I have to win something today. Then I breathe out and let the fight drop where it belongs.
“Yeah,” I say. The word is small and heavy and right. “Okay. Cedar Falls.”
Levi’s shoulders loosen in a way I only ever see after game-winners and Lily’s kisses. He stands, squeezing the back of my neck—the quick brother touch that resets my pulse. “Good. I’ll tell Lily. We’ll have the loft ready by the time you’re discharged.”
He heads for the door, pauses. “And Cam?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to be ‘on’ there,” he says, softer. “Let the armor rest. Come with me. Just for a while.” Then, the latch clicks behind him.
I stare at the reflection of my taped eyebrow in the tainted window, the faint tremor in my fingers, the call button waiting like a dare.
Cedar Falls. I’ve painted the night sky there—pranks, fireworks, wild energy that made people laugh.
This time I’m arriving without the noise.