by RJ Scott
The game against the Cheetahs was scrappy as hell and so close that for ninety percent of it I wasn’t sure what the end score would be. Not only that, but now it was my turn to pace, and my leg muscles ached like a bitch. The break might have healed, but the affected muscles made me weak as a freaking kitten when it came to my trademark stride.
The score was three-two, in their favor, and Benoit had stopped so many shots that he had to have been dizzy with the amount of time nearly standing on his damn head. Coach wasn’t happy, our defense was breaking, our forwards were falling into traps, we were completely off-plan, and it showed. I leaned on the wall next to the benches, listening to Coach calmly explaining how his team should pull themselves together. At least, that was what he was saying out loud, but I imagined the cursing he had going on in his head.
Two minutes left, we had shots on goal, and the tide shifted a little in our favor. Ryker’s line went over the boards, and the Cheetahs were focused on him like flies on shit. In a scuffle the corner, it was the Cheetahs who had the puck, heading en masse toward Benoit, their captain confident, focused, collecting a rebound and wrapping around the back of the net. Benoit had him, stopped the shot easily, but it slithered from his grasp, bouncing off his blocker, and the Cheetah captain was right there, stick handling, trying to corral the bouncing puck, only he never quite got the hold of it, and Ryker was right in the scrimmage. It seemed to last forever, and then in a flash of brown and gold, Ryker had the puck and was skating like the wind down the rink. One D-man tried to hold him, another to trip him. He managed to avoid it all, and then with a maneuver that defied logic and gravity, he used his body to defend the puck, spun, deked, and shot. For a second the puck hung, or at least it felt that way to me, even though physics dictated it must be moving. Everything stilled, but their goalie had absolutely no way of switching direction fast enough to stop it, and when the goal horn sounded, the Owatonna fans rose in a wave of brown, creating a wall of shouts.
A tied game, and now only just over a minute left. This could go to overtime, and I wasn’t sure my nerves could handle it. The tension was worse than any Stanley Cup final I’d been part of. I was invested in Benoit, and I felt everything, even though I wasn’t on the ice and this wasn’t my team. I felt hopeless as the clock ticked down. We needed another Ryker miracle, or for Benoit to make the save of his life to turn this game, or for any one of our other skaters to pull that one thing out of their hat which would give us the win. I wasn’t ready for our journey to be over—I wanted this win for Benoit.
In the end, it didn’t take a miracle. It didn’t take our star player or our goalie. Fifteen-seconds to go, a check followed through by Shawn, the puck knuckling toward our goal, Cole Montgomery collecting through luck when one of the Cheetahs fell, and passing it hard to the opponents’ net. Their goalie hadn’t been expecting anything like it, and when the puck went past him, he looked as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. As if the catalog of errors and misfortune hadn’t just culminated in Owatonna going a goal up with only ten-seconds on the clock. I wanted to say that the Cheetahs rallied and fought for their lives in those remaining seconds, but they were in shock, and when the goal horn sounded, it was Owatonna who were through to the Frozen Four semi-finals by only one goal.
It was brown and gold that hugged and whooped in celebration, and scarlet that left the rink in complete despair.
We were through to the next round; we were going to Boston for the National Semi-finals.
The mood on the four-hour drive back to Owatonna ranged from exuberant to exhausted to quiet. There were moments in those two games when the Eagles had shone; others where they had needed to work, and there had been back slaps, worries, pointers, and then tiredness. When we disembarked, I expected Benoit to head out with his housemates, thinking he would need to be around them. Instead, he walked with me, our hands brushing, until we made it back to the car. I didn’t question where he wanted to be; I know I wanted him with me, but I also wanted to be the kind of partner who understood and who was supportive and not insanely greedy to be with him all the time.
He was quiet in the car, and the stillness unsettled me so much that I flicked on the radio, the soft sounds of a late night show drifting into the silence.
“That was some game,” Benoit finally offered when we were only about ten minutes or so from the house. Did he want to talk? I could do that, but only if he wanted me to.
“It was a brilliant game,” I said and indicated left off the turnpike.
“And lucky. I mean, we had some lucky bounces. That last goal…” He stopped talking and then reached over and placed his hand on mine. “Sometimes luck just happens, doesn’t it?”
Was he talking about the game? Or us?
“It does.” I thought that was the safest response until I knew the direction of this conversation.
“Like us,” he mused and leaned his head back on the headrest. “I mean, it was lucky you broke your leg, which meant you came here and retired, and we met.”
We pulled up to a stop light, and I couldn’t help but tug him closer to kiss him in the dark. Everything was perfect right now, and when the lights changed and the car behind had to press his horn to get us to move, we were both laughing, even as I held up a hand in apology. Turning into the road leading to my house, I felt lighter than I had in a while. We’d won, Benoit was happy, and we were in love. I glanced to smile at him, and it was obvious he was just as happy.
The thud of something hitting the windshield, the crack of glass, and Benoit’s horrified shout as I yanked the wheel to take us to the curb was chaos in my head, and I held up a hand to protect my eyes as glass shattered around me and momentum slammed me back into the headrest.
“Ethan!
Fifteen
Benoit
It all happened so quickly that my already sluggish mind had trouble linking things up. The car jumped the curb a second after something big had shattered the windshield. I threw my hands up to brace myself from hitting the dash. Instinct I guess, even though my seat belt was on. I yelled for Ethan as glass blew in through the massive hole, with bitter, cold air. I closed my eyes but not in time to avoid something small and sharp getting under my eyelid. The car slammed into something solid, snapping the seat belt across my chest and engaging the airbags. The back-and-forth motion made my head spin. Face full of bag, the inside of the car filled with acrid dust, and several car chimes went off at once.
“God, ah God.” I coughed, my eye left eye weeping badly, my lungs filled with airbag dust, and my neck sore from the whiplash of back and forth. “Ethan, you okay?”
I swatted at the deflating airbag, the pain in my eye growing worse every time I blinked. “Ah, my eye, fuck!”
“My leg,” he moaned as I shakily unbuckled my seat belt, my watering eyes making it hard to see in the dark interior. “I think… oh yeah, it’s fucked up again.”
“Shit, shit. I’m calling for help.” I wiped the back of my hand over my eye, dug my phone out, and kicked my door open, then crept around the car, yanking on Ethan’s crumpled door. It was jammed up pretty badly, but finally the latch gave, and it creaked open.
“We sideswiped a tree,” I said, working with him to get his seat belt unbuckled. “Your head okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, hard as granite. Ouch, fucking A that motherfucking, cock-sucking, furry-assed leg hurts like a humper.”
The latch popped. I reached in and slid my hands under this arms, ready to back away and pull him free of the mangled wreck. “I can tell you’re a hockey player.”
He grunted as he wiggled around in the seat. I heard someone running up to me.
“My boyfriend needs help,” I shouted to whoever was approaching.
“No, no, no boyfriends! You’re mine!” A female screamed, leaping onto my back and battering me around the head with small, painful fists. I fell backward, dropping Ethan to the frosty ground, waving my hands to try to grab the wild woman on my back. She hit me in the face
, hard, right in the same eye that was watering so badly. It hurt like hell. I wiped at my eye with my fingers, pulling them away, then staring at the blood on my fingertips as my feet went out from under me. “You fucked him! You said you loved me, but you left me, and then you fucked him! He has to die,” she seethed, slapping at my face as I tried capture her hands. A sound blow to the side of my face made my ear ring.
We slid to the ground, and I rolled over and on top of my attacker. Headlights illuminated the yard. Vision blurred terribly, I blinked at the familiar face looking at me from inside a dark hoodie.
“Dom?” I croaked, the rush of new information coming into my stunned brain kind of stalling somewhere in the aftershock of a car crash. What? How was it my old ex was here?
People began shouting. Who they were I didn’t know. Probably the folks who lived in the house whose tree we’d just run into.
Then someone pulled me off my ex, barking orders for me to lie on the ground facedown, hands behind my back. I knew a cop when I heard one, so I did as asked, no questions. I tried to explain why the black guy was manhandling the little white girl, but for some reason, I don’t think he believed me. My mother did not raise a fool. I went lax and let him do his thing.
I allowed him to yank me to my feet, slap cuffs on me, and then haul me to the nearest police cruiser. Ethan bellowed at the cop who was leading me to the car. That was what threw a wrench into my impending arrest. That, and the fact that Dom was beating on a cop and screaming that I was her one true love and that the asshole who stole me had to die. Paramedics arrived, people milled around in robes and coats, and throughout it all, I could hear Ethan demanding that I be released right this fucking minute. God, I loved that man. It took some explaining, but I was finally released into the custody of the paramedics while Dom was led to a police cruiser, her long red hair having broken free from the tight bun under her hoodie. Her once smiling blue eyes now held nothing but hatred. She spit at me as two burly state troopers led her to their car.
I ran to Ethan after having a chunk of glass the size of a small pebble rinsed from my eye by an EMT. He applied some antibiotic drops, bandaged it, and threw up his hands as I broke free from his ministrations to go to Ethan. He was just being placed on a gurney. I checked his car and thought it was probably totaled. There on the console between us was a big chunk of cinderblock, and tied to the block, a damn pink envelope. I nearly threw up. We could have died. Both of us. She could have killed us both. My knees almost folded, but I held it together and went to Ethan, grabbing his hand as he reached for me.
“You okay? Are you okay?” I asked, the tears appearing, which made my eye burn. “I can’t… she was… are you okay?”
“Yeah, good, fine. I think I rebroke my leg. Can you imagine?” His laugh was short, more of a bark of pain than a real laugh. “Just got the fucking cast off. What happened to you? Are you hurt?”
“Nope, no, just a bit of debris in my eye. It’ll be fine.” I squeezed his hand tightly. A cop car peeled off, the one with my old girlfriend in the back. Ethan began chirping the paramedic about his purple hair between groans of pain. I crawled into the back, ignoring the look from the paramedic who had tended to my eye. “I’m riding with him.” It was not a polite request as one would expect from a good Canadian boy. It was a command. They all nodded as Ethan was loaded in.
We left the scene of the accident, police right behind us, and spent the next six hours in Our Lady of Perpetual Care hospital. Ethan had been X-rayed and casted and was now resting comfortably, an overnight stay a precaution as he had complained of a slight headache.
I was staring at the back of two police detectives as they left the waiting room. They seemed to have enough information from me about what had happened. Combined with the previous call about the stalking and Dom’s rambling manic confession and fingerprint matches for all the notes, it seemed as though they had a good case against her. They’d asked me about a key that the neighbor had found outside Ethan’s place. Since I knew nothing of this key, I told them that. One of them, an old white guy whose name I’d blanked on, showed me a picture of it on his phone.
Tired as I was, sore and in pain, it took me a second and a half to recognize that small gold key on a bright yellow ribbon. It was to the lockbox in my room. I’d kept the box, and Dom had kept the key. I still nursed the feeling of being gut-punched. Why hadn’t Ethan told me about the key? Maybe I could have avoided all of this agony if I’d known about it and what it symbolized. The cops might even have been able to pick her up.
“Hey, you want more coffee?”
I blinked my one good eye at Ryker. I’d called him as soon as we’d arrived because I honestly didn’t know if I’d need a ride home or a lawyer or perhaps both. His dad was well known and, I figured, able to summon an attorney in the middle of the night. Also, I just wanted to have a friend nearby during the questioning. Not that I’d done anything wrong, but I was shaky and felt sick. His presence had been reassuring.
“Thanks, sure.” I gave him the empty cup in my hand, and he passed over a fresh cup. Then he sat beside me. “I can’t get my head around all this. Like…” I stared down into my cup of joe. “I dated that woman.”
“Yeah, it’s wild. I’ve had exes that were mental, but not like legally mental, just socially mental. This Dom girl? Wow, she must have tracked you for years.” He took a sip of his coffee, then fell silent.
“Guess so. Somehow she found me and… I don’t know, started this hate campaign. I just… my head hurts.” I got to my feet, Ryker glancing up at me with tired, worried eyes. “I need to walk.”
“Okay, just be careful. You can’t see right. Might walk into a wall or something.” He motioned to the new gauze, padding, and eyepatch I now sported. “Or maybe the Black Pearl will sail up, and you’ll have to fight Jack Sparrow for the honor of wearing the pirate captain crown.”
“You’re an asshole. I love you, but you’re an asshole.” I punched his knuckles with mine. Dude could joke, now that he knew Ethan was okay and I’d be back on the ice sometime. That sometime kind of worried me as I had tournament games to play and an NHL team to impress, but the ER doc said that the laceration was pretty deep but, on the flip side, eyes healed quickly. If I used the drops, applied the steroid cream, and took some Advil for the pain, I should be fine within two weeks. The team ophthalmologist had already been notified, and I was to be monitored closely for signs of infection.
I strolled down the hall and made a left, stopping to stare out at the new morning creeping over Minnesota. My body was ready for sleep, but my head kept spinning things around, trying to make sense of everything.
“Mr. Morin, we’ve gotten Mr. Girard settled into a private room, and he’s asking for you.” I waved her on. We rode up a few floors, her white shoes squeaking on the newly mopped floor tiles as she led me to room 314. “We’ll be bringing up breakfast within the hour. Would you like a tray?”
I glanced around the corner at Ethan. He was as wiped out as I felt. And so alone. “Yeah, thanks. And can you give this to the young guy with the head of dark curls in the waiting room?” I dug into my pockets and found a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. “Tell him to eat something at the cafeteria and that as soon as breakfast is over, we can go home. His name is Ryker Madsen.”
“Of course. Now try not to excite the patient. He’s been drowsy but unable to fall asleep, and rest really would be beneficial to you both.” She patted my biceps and squeaked off down the hall.
“You hitting on the nurses?” Ethan asked as I slid into the white-and-blue room. “Your eye?”
“Will be okay. Your leg?”
“Broke again, right along the same fracture line. Tree impact will do that to a bone. I talked to the cops. Benoit, I just don’t know what to even say. That Dom girl, she seems unbalanced.”
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.” I sat beside him on the bed, staring at the dried blood on my shirt and jacket. My blood. “I’m sorry you got caught up in it
all. This is going to be a huge shitstorm. Ryker is keeping an eye on social media, says it’s all on the down low now, but as soon as everyone wakes up. BOOM.” I made a motion with my hands of a bomb going off. “All I wanted was to play hockey and love you on my own terms.”
“I know, babe, I know. Sometimes life isn’t dealt to us on our terms, though. If it was, I wouldn’t be lying here with another cast on my stupid leg. I’d be home in bed loving you.” I smiled at that. Loving him sounded good. So, so good. “Want to grab a few Z’s with me before they bring breakfast?”
I toed off my shoes and cuddled up beside him, careful of the brilliant, white cast.
“You feel okay to talk a bit?” I asked, resting my hand on his chest. He gave me a slow nod. “There was a key found. Outside your place. Why didn’t you tell me about it? I recognized it instantly. Dominique kept it on the same damn hair ribbon that I’d pulled from her hair and slid the key onto the day we’d made that time capsule in a box. I just… why didn’t you tell me about it?”
His eyes drifted shut for a moment, and I thought he’d drifted off. Then he spoke, “I wanted to protect you, I guess. It seemed inconsequential. I mean, an old key could have belonged to anyone. The kids who shovel the paths, the paperboy, the people who lived there before. You had so much going on, you were this close to unraveling, and I just—”
I pressed my lips to the corner of his mouth. “Okay, it’s cool. I get it.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight, I guess. I love you, and I worry about you, the weights that you carry. I meant to say something, but nothing more was ever said about that stupid key, so it kind of slid to the back of my mind and—”
This time I put my lips to his. “Thank you for being protective. I love that you look out for me.” My thoughts went roundabout again, skipping in circles like kids around a maypole. “I’m just so confused. I mean, we broke up years ago. Has she been obsessing over me all this time? Why? I’m a nobody.”