Epilogue
CASH
The smell of the locker room welcomed me like an old friend and embraced me in a warm hug. I dropped my gear bag on the floor next to the goalie cubby. Stripping off my street clothes, I pulled on my gitch, working methodically, still fumbling a bit as I dusted off the rustiness of the ritual.
Today wasn’t my first day back on the ice since the surgery, but today felt different. Because it was different. I hadn’t been on the ice with anyone else in so fucking long, and today that changed. The treatment team had cleared me for more months ago.
More speed.
More intensity.
More goalie-specific work if I wanted it.
I’d just hadn’t bothered doing much with the permission.
The locker room door opened, and Thad walked in carrying a hockey bag.
“Doc, what are you doing here?” I asked. “How—”
“I have my ways, brat.”
My gaze dropped to the bag in his hand. “Wait. Are you fucking skating?”
His mouth curved. “Maybe.”
Then he stepped out of the way, and my breath caught in my throat.
“Aiden?”
His bag hit the floor in the middle of the room, and he came toward me with a smile. I surged to my feet a moment later, and he pulled me into his arms.
“Hey, big brother. I heard you needed someone to launch missiles at your head and, well, I couldn’t pass that shit up.”
I hugged him back. Hard. “Fucking Mercy.”
He laughed against my shoulder. “Missed you too, Money.”
Thwack!
The puck hitting my glove was the sweetest fucking sound in the world. Add in the sound of my stick hitting the pipes behind me, the creak of my gear, my blades cutting the ice, and I found myself in the midst of a beautiful symphony. The only thing missing was ten other guys on the ice with me.
Aiden curled around the top of the circle with the puck.
“Is that all you got, Mercy? I thought you were some big-shot NHL star?” I taunted
I knocked my mask back and sucked down some water. His face twitched with a smirk. He’d been launching pucks at me for a good hour.
“Fuck off, old man.”
“Old man?” I yelled after him as he turned and skated away. “Who the fuck taught you to respect your elders?”
“You did.”
“Fair.”
Thad skated over and stopped beside the crease. Actually stopped. Not crashed into the boards. I was a little disappointed.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
“Your skating has gone to shit.”
“Brat.”
I laughed, eyes squinted and face stretched wide. Fucking hell, this felt good. Aiden Mercer, one of the best young players in the show, skating at me. My pads strapped around my legs. My mask on my head. My glove on my hand. Standing in the fucking net again. All of it felt so fucking good.
“I’m good.”
Thad’s gaze stayed on mine for another second before he nodded. That was it. No questions about swelling. No checking my knee. No telling me I’d had enough.
Just Thad.
I dropped my mask. “Again, Mercy.”
Aiden obliged. The puck came off his stick fast.
Blocked.
It bounced off my blocker and sailed it over the ice toward the corner.
He collected the rebound and came around again. Puck bounced on and off his blade. He smacked it.
Low glove.
Caught it.
“Getting predictable. Thought the Nighthawks would have trained you up better, little brother.”
“And you’re getting cocky.”
“Getting old waiting on you to score.”
He flipped me off. I laughed and reset as he came down the slot. I read his shoulder drop, a tell he’d had as long as I’d known him. The puck came at me, and I kicked the puck away with my pad and pushed back up.
My right leg followed a half-beat behind the rest of me.
I shifted my weight. Fine.
Aiden circled. Another shot. Butterfly. Recover. Reset.
The next one came low on my right, and I knew where it was going before the puck left his stick. My brain sent the command. My right skate dug in. My body pushed.
My left leg got there.
Barely.
The puck clipped the outside of my pad, bounced off, and slid across the ice.
“Fuck.”
Aiden gathered it off the boards while I straightened and rolled my shoulders. My right quad burned. Not my knee. My fucking leg. I flexed it once, and the muscles answered with a tremor.
Well, hello to you too.
Aiden came back down the ice, and I yelled, “Again.”
Aiden looked at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then shoot, dammit.”
He did. I stopped it. He shot again, and I stopped that one too. Then he cut across the slot. I tracked him, and he changed the angle at the last second.
I knew what he was doing.
Fuck, I knew exactly what he was doing.
My body had made this move ten thousand times. My right knee hadn’t. At least not the creepy cadaver shit they grafted into it.
I fell into position and pushed.
But it was too slow.
Too late.
The puck sailed past my blocker and buried itself in the net.
“Fuck!”
Aiden grinned and danced around the rink. The prick.
“Lucky fucking shot.”
“Keep telling yourself that, big brother.”
I pushed myself upright. My right thigh shook, but I ignored it.
Aiden didn’t.
He rested both hands on the top of his stick. “You’re cooked.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re cooked.”
“I’m going to shove that stick up your ass.”
“After a nap, maybe.”
Thad laughed behind him.
“Fuck both of you.”
I skated out of the crease. My knee felt fine. My leg felt like I’d played a full game after forgetting to fucking eat. Or spent sixty miles on my road bike climbing the mountains, training for the race I heard about at the bike shop the last time I was there.
By the time I made it to the bench and dropped onto it, my quad was twitching. Aiden followed me off the ice and climbed over the boards. Thad stayed on the ice, gathering pucks and doing edge work. Aiden sat beside me, sucking down water before offering me a bottle of my own.
I pulled off my mask and squirted water into my open mouth.
“Your recovery got slow about twenty minutes ago,” Aiden said.
“Thanks, Coach,” I smarted off.
Aiden was a fucking asshole for pointing it out. He knew it too, if his expression said anything. But I wouldn’t want him to sugarcoat anything.
“You’re push was too and you started cheating left.”
I looked at him.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“You were swimming as well.”
He was right. I left my right vulnerable in the end because it was easier to push right than left. And…I relied too much on my glove and stick. “Yeah.”
I took another drink while my leg continued twitching.
It would recover. That was the thing. Most of the time, the knee didn’t hurt anymore.
Not like before. I could walk. Drive. Work.
Skate. Spend a whole day in the saddle, either in the gym or out on the road, until my ass went numb, then get up the next morning and do it again.
My knee held up through a helluva lot.
Aiden leaned his forearms on his thighs. “So why haven’t you?”
“Haven’t I what?”
“Tested it before today? Really tested it?”
“I’ve been skating. I just let an NHL player shoot at my head for an hour.”
“And you’ve been holding back all fucking day.”
My eyebrows went up.
Aiden laughed. “Jesus Christ, Cash. I’ve seen you play. You haven’t challenged shit. You haven’t scrambled. You haven’t fought like you would through traffic. You haven’t even tried half the crap I’ve watched you do in games.”
“Because I’m not a fucking idiot. Today’s the first day in the net.”
He bumped his shoulder against mine. “Your people cleared you to try more months ago. Didn’t they?”
I stared out at the ice. Thad was at the far end now, skating lazily after a puck.
“Yeah.”
“How long ago?”
I took another drink.
“How long?”
“Couple of months.”
His head snapped toward me. “A couple of fucking months?”
He stared at me. I stared back.
“Why?” he finally asked. “Why haven’t you been in the net?”
I looked down at the bottle between my hands.
I knew what he was asking.
I spent nearly a year trying to get back. Through three fucking torturous surgeries. Through every doctor who told me to wait and every person who told me to be realistic.
And every fucking day my knee hurt so bad I contemplated risking the addiction my parents battled and lost.
Then Dr. Thaddeus Vale cut me open and put somebody else’s cartilage in my leg, and I had to start all over again. And for ten months, life got whittled down to one more rep. One more degree. One more milestone. One more chance.
And maybe now I had one. But I never asked the question. Never put my knee to the test.
“You’re not going back, are you?” Aiden asked.
I watched Thad fire a puck toward the empty net.
He missed.
By a fucking mile.
Jesus.
“No.”
The word came out before I could think.
Aiden was quiet beside me. I turned my water bottle in my hands.
“No,” I said again.
Something in my chest loosened, and my body melted as all the tension left me.
Huh.
Wow!
Aiden looked at me. “When did you decide?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
That was the truth. I said the words today, but before today there hadn’t been some big fucking moment where I’d stood in front of a mirror and announced that Cash Benjamin, professional hockey player, had officially retired.
Somewhere between learning to walk without crutches, going to work at the rehab center, getting on the ice again, and spending more time on two wheels than any sane person should, getting back to the show had stopped being the first thing I thought about when I woke up.
So I told him that. “I found other shit I want.”
Aiden stayed quiet, waiting.
Fucker knew me too well.
“I rode sixty-three miles last weekend.”
His head turned. “On a bike?”
“No, Mercy. On a fucking unicycle.”
“Fuck you.” His gaze dropped to my leg, then returned to my face. “Sixty-three?”
I nodded, unable to stop the grin pulling at my mouth. My ass had hated me by mile fifty, my quads had been screaming by sixty, and I’d already been looking at longer routes before I loaded my bike into my truck to make the trip home.
“I’m doing a century,” I announced.
“A hundred miles? Are you insane?”
“Yes, and probably. The jury’s still out on the last one.”
“Does Doc know?”
My grin must have answered for me because Aiden barked out a laugh.
“He knows I ride.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I just hope I’m around when you tell him.”