Yard Sale (Legends and Fury #3)

Chapter 1

TIAGO

“Would you rather be trapped in a cabin with your archenemy or not be allowed to shower for a hundred days?”

Glancing up, I turned my head until I could see Jonah’s face, and it was exactly as horrified as I expected it to be.

“Who the fuck has an archenemy? You a fuckin’ X-Man?”

Antoine burst into laughter. “I’m—”

“Say Daredevil and die,” someone shouted from across the room.

I turned my head just in time to see Antoine flipping him off. “Answer the question, or pay the fine.”

“No shower,” I said just to get things moving. “I don’t mind rank ball sweat over having to fuck a guy I can’t stand.”

We were five minutes away from the third period and waiting on Tucker to come in and tell us what a beautiful pack of motherfuckers we all were.

This was game four in the playoffs, and it was nice to be home.

But that was only because I could go to my house after the game, collapse on my bed, jerk myself off to sleep and not have to feel bad about the housekeeper who had to clean that up.

I did have a housekeeper, but I washed my own jizz sheets there, so…

“He’s only saying that because he has an archenemy,” Jonah said.

“What?” Antoine’s voice rose above the din. “Who?”

“That fucker from that one website? Gupta’s son? He’s been harassing our poor baby,” Jonah answered, snort-laughing.

Irritation crawled up my spine. Aravind—he said his friends called him Ara, so I never fucking would because the guy was a goddamn ableist tool.

He was one of those assholes who didn’t seem to get that blindness was a spectrum, and he thought the fact that I could navigate a well-lit hallway without my cane gave me an unfair advantage over the other players.

Something he’d literally said to my face the last time he was here getting interviewed. I had no idea if he was going to be at the presser tonight after the game, but if he said one goddamn thing about it, I was going to be suspended for punching a journalist.

Or arrested.

Or both.

My hate for him felt worse, too, because his dad was a disabled player. Or, well, he was an NHL player who’d become disabled, and instead of trying his hand at the PPHL, he’d moved on to coaching.

Rohan was a good guy though. He was always hanging around the arena and came to almost every single one of our home games so long as the Glaciers weren’t on a roadie. And it was a pleasant atmosphere now that Noah’s ass had been booted across the country and demoted to coaching farm.

That part was satisfying.

If only Rohan didn’t come with his uptight, spoiled, arrogant, obnoxious, annoyingly gorgeous son, who…

“Alright, you fuckin’ beauticians!” Tucker’s voice interrupted my internal rant, and I turned my attention to him as he swaggered into the room, leaning heavily on his walking cane.

He looked very well put together in his suit and entirely unlike my disaster friend, who didn’t know right from left on days he wasn’t being forced to act in a professional capacity. He also looked happy, which I loved for him, even if it left me with an ache in the pit of my stomach.

I’d stopped looking for that kind of contentment a while ago, because every attempt I’d made at dating in the last six years had ended either really fucking weirdly or really fucking badly.

The people who did want me wanted me because they thought my very faint accent was hot, or they were curious about getting dicked down by a blind guy.

And I wasn’t interested in fulfilling that little fantasy for them, so it was better that I took myself off the market and called it a day.

But it was lonely. And it didn’t help when reporters, including the hottest man I had ever seen in my life, constantly paraded around the field of vision I had left.

Uhg, Aravind and his stupid off-the-shoulder sweaters showing off all that skin, and his pretty lips, and those eyes, and…

“…and we can win this, eh?”

My second internal rant was disrupted, and I realized Tucker was still on his speech.

When the room was quiet for a second, I let go of my laces and clapped my hands. “Fuck yeah! Let’s go, boys!”

The room erupted into cheers, and that gave me enough time to fix my skate, then grab my stick and wait for Jonah to take the end of it so I could guide him back to the ice.

Halfway to the door, Tucker snagged my sleeve and yanked me close. “I know you’ve got this, bud, but you’re playing tired. Tell me you’re good.”

I knocked my bucket against his forehead a little harder than I might have on another day. “I’ve got this.”

“You fuckin’ beauty. I love your whole face.”

That made me smile, especially when Jonah tapped the back of my helmet with his stick and said, “Let’s go send them home with tears on their cheeks and a little pee in their pants!”

“You’re so weird,” I said, but I was smiling as I headed back down the tunnel and toward the rink.

And I was smiling as I got Jonah back to the net, and then I closed my eyes and let myself feel the choppy, familiar glide of third-period ice.

Unfortunately, my smile lasted only a minute and thirty seconds, because that was all I got after the puck dropped and everything went to shit.

“Stretcher! We need a goddamn stretcher over here!”

I couldn’t tell who was screaming. I think it was Antoine or maybe Matty. Maybe one of the refs? The pain was too great for me to do anything other than lie on my side, holding my knee, which felt bent at a weird angle.

I had no idea what happened. I took a hard check, which wasn’t unusual, but I went down weird. It was like my skates tangled up with each other, and then there was a weird sort of…pop. And a rip.

And now it felt like my knee was the size of a balloon, and I wasn’t convinced I wasn’t dying from how the blood in my veins felt like it was made of fire.

“Let me sit up,” I gasped, pushing my gloves against the ice. It was too wet for me to get any real traction, and I slipped back down.

“Hey. Don’t move, okay?” I turned my head to see the bright red armband letting me know he was Danny, the ref.

“I can’t breathe, Dan. Please,” I begged him.

His hand hit the back of my neck and then carefully pulled my helmet off. That helped. A lot. I took in a deep lungful of air and closed my eyes, letting my temple rest on my arm.

“The stretcher’s coming, okay?”

The loud murmur from the crowd blended with Tucker’s raised voice, and I knew he was pissed because his prosthetics didn’t offer him enough balance to walk out onto the ice.

The next few moments were a blur as I was strapped to a board and stretchered off the ice, but the moment the light around me went dim, I heard the familiar sound of Tucker’s gait, and then his hand slipped into mine as I was rolled down the hallway.

“Hey, bud. Talk to me.”

“It’s my knee,” I told him. I was calmer now, but that made the pain worse since my adrenaline wasn’t firing as hard.

“Fuuuuuck.”

That was definitely a hockey death sentence in more cases than anyone wanted to admit. And it was worse for a fucking blind guy who needed to be able to walk comfortably unaided to use a cane.

Not that it was impossible. Tucker did it all the time.

But I was not Tucker. I didn’t have years of practice, and although I didn’t need my guide cane all the time, I was using it more and more as my eye disease ate up more of my vision.

“Braedon’s out sick tonight,” Tucker was saying, sounding frantic, “but someone’s called Quinn, and he said he can help. Then we’ll go from there, alright? I…fuck, I should get back to the game, but I can send in Lis for me if you need me—”

“No,” I interrupted. “No. Get out there and make those fuckers pay for this.”

I felt lips press against my forehead, and that settled me a bit more as Tucker walked away and I was rolled into the training room and then into what some of the Star Trek nerds dubbed the MedBay.

The room was dark, which was soothing, though I hated when I had no ability to see at all. My disease had progressed far enough that any dim lighting stole all of my vision, but right now, I would take some reprieve from the bright arena lights.

I counted the minutes and fought the urge to crawl off the stretcher and into the locker room to find my phone, but I was pretty sure that would fuck my knee worse. And there would be a line of guys ready to murder me for being a dipshit.

So I waited. And I waited.

And waited.

“Hey. Talk to me. Are you conscious?” A rough but kind voice jarred me out of my half-daze, and I realized the lights were bright enough that I could see him looming over me.

I didn’t know Quinn well, but I knew he was a former NHL player who had lost his career to a very similar injury. He had a very soothing tone too, which allowed me to relax as I returned to full consciousness. And full pain.

“Yeah.”

His warm hands began to carefully pull at my pads, and it wasn’t long before my knee was exposed to the elements. I heard him suck in a breath, and I opened my eyes to find the room lit up.

It wasn’t bright enough for me to see everything, but I could make out his profile and his salt-and-pepper hair. Then he turned to look directly at me, and I could see his dark eyes and full lips.

He was very good-looking.

So good-looking I might have said something I’d regret later if I didn’t know he was engaged to the newest rookie on the Glaciers. But I liked Ferris, and I would never, ever step on his toes like that.

“Did you get anything for the pain?”

I grimaced. “Uh…no. They just kind of left me here.”

“Fuckers,” Quinn spat.

He walked away, and I turned my head so I could see his limp. Would that be me? I couldn’t remember exactly how badly he’d been hurt or the precise injury he had, and I didn’t want to ask.

He turned back and took a seat on a rolling stool beside me. “Here. Think you can swallow these?”

They were big and white and chalky-looking, but I nodded and managed to choke them down against my dry throat with all the water in the cup he’d handed me. I lay back and tried to ignore the burning throb crawling up my thigh and cascading down toward the bottom of my foot.