Puck Love

by Carmen Jenner

  I pull my ball cap down on my head and sink farther into my seat. It’s a half hour past when this show was supposed to start, and after sitting through the torture that was Thomas Bentley wailing away in pants so tight I could see his nut sack, Emmett and I are still staring at the fifty-foot woman on the screen. She’s blonde, cute as a button, and fucking hot—in a virginal, squeaky-clean rep kind of way. I’d so tap that. I would ravage her tight body, and dirty up her sweet little mind so fast she’d be taking her clothes off at the very mention of my name.

  Emmett lets out an impatient sigh as he drums his fingers on the armrest. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. Jesus. Staring at the fifty-foot image of a country music star and attempting to cover my boner while my baby brother gets angstier every second she’s not gracing the stage is not how I wanted to spend my one night off.

  I shift my shoulder, pain shooting through me. I thought I had a handle on my injury from Wednesday’s game against Washington, but this shit could see me recovering for weeks. I badly want more meds, but I should slow my roll. I can’t be getting high on Oxycodone. I need to look after Emmett, and when your little bro has Down syndrome, it’s important to keep in touch with reality. Besides, overdosing on prescription meds is kind of a dick thing to do.

  “Come on, come on,” Emmett says with an edge to his usual impediment. “What’s taking so long?”

  He rocks back and forth in his seat, a good sign he’s agitated. He likes things to be punctual. I do, too. We both like routine—that’s why we work so well living together. Of course, he goes back to our mom’s house when I play away games. He hates it. She adores him, but it’s hard for her not to baby him. She’s always on him about his Flamin’ Hot Cheetos obsession, and won’t let him drink. A grown man should be able to have a beer whenever the hell he wants to. Emmett’s pretty good about handling his limit, and when we do have a drink on the deck at the end of a long week, it’s rarely more than two. Besides, coach would bust my ass if I showed up hungover and didn’t bring my A game, and I have no desire to get drafted to another team.

  The MC’s disembodied voice comes through the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re very sorry to tell you that Stella Hart is too sick to perform. Tonight's show has been canceled. Please see your ticket provider for details on how to obtain a refund. Stella and her team wish to extend their sincerest apologies.”

  The crowd boo and hiss. They stand up and cram towards the exits in an attempt to vacate the venue, and a man nearby throws an empty water bottle that bounces off the stage and lands a few feet from us. I turn my focus to my bro beside me. He ducks his head, covers his ears and rocks back and forth, being jostled by the angry mob. I grab his hand, but he shrugs me off. The little bastard is strong. “Come on, Emmett. Let’s get outta here.”

  “No,” he shouts to be heard above the noise. “She’s supposed to be here. She’ll be here.”

  “I know, buddy. But she’s not coming.”

  “She is. These are the only tickets we could get. She’s in Vancouver next week.”

  “I’ll get you tickets to that show. I promise.”

  “No. I wanna see her now.” His voice reaches fever pitch, and several people around us stare as they line up, likely waiting for us to exit the row so they can too. I ignore them, and eventually they turn in the other direction and shuffle through the empty row behind us.

  “We can’t. If she’s too sick to perform it means she’s probably at the hospital or something. She’s not coming out tonight.”

  More eyes turn in our direction, but I ignore them. My little brother means more to me than hockey, which is saying an awful lot. These people can stare all they want, it doesn’t mean shit. I’m not ashamed of him. Emmett’s whole world just got turned upside down. To anyone else, it’s just a concert, but to Em Stella Hart is god. Her voice is the first thing he hears in the morning, and the last thing at night. Posters of her are slapped across every surface of his room, and he’s been waiting for this moment for the last two years.

  I glance at the thinning crowd, and those that are watching us too closely shoot me apologetic looks, as if they feel sorry for me. That just pisses me off. I don’t want their pity. Emmett doesn’t need their pity. We just need them to leave. Me and my brother are going to be here for a while yet, at the very least until the staff threaten to call security because Emmett doesn’t handle disappointment well.

  I’ve always hated country music, but the truth is, I don’t mind Stella Hart. Her songs make Em happy, but right now, I really hate Stella for breaking my brother’s heart.

  I’m lost. I have no damn clue where I am. I fiddle with the gadgets and knobs on the dash and attempt to turn up the heat. Next time I run away from a stadium full of people and steal a car in cold-as-fuck Canada, I’ll remember to bring a damn jacket. Snow dusts the windshield. I turn a lever by the steering wheel, and water sprays the glass. Shoot. A fine layer of frost forms instead, and I tremble as I take another sip of the whiskey I stole.

  Headlights approach. I slow, trying to find my hazard lights so the car will pull over and the occupants can help me get my bearings, but they zoom on by and I give them the finger as I glance back in the rear-view mirror, even though they’re already long gone.

  There are no streetlights out here. I turned off the highway after seeing a sign that read Fairmont Banff Springs. It won’t be the escape I long for, but it will be a place to spend the night while I drown myself in Wiser’s Special Blend. Hopefully, in the morning, this will all have been a bad dream.

  Something tells me that’s not the case though. No. Not something—my mamma’s voice. I can still see her standing over me at the age of seventeen on the precipice of all my dreams coming true while I broke down in my dressing room with my very first panic attack.

  “You made your bed, kiddo. Now, pick yourself up, fix your damn lipstick, and show everyone in the audience why you’re Stella Hart.”

  Every night I take the stage, I hear her saying those same words. Sometimes, I even whisper them to myself like a mantra. But my mamma’s been dead now for almost as long as I’ve been in showbiz, and sometimes I think her daughter was buried right alongside her because when I look in the mirror, I have no idea who the girl is staring back at me. Certainly not the illegitimate daughter of a business tycoon and a cocktail waitress. That girl is long gone. In her place is Stella Hart, country’s sweetheart, a lonely, sad echo of a woman whose job it is to entertain millions, and who takes the stage without a trace of the desperate panicked girl I’d been in the dressing room just five minutes earlier. Well, usually.

  “Turn around where possible,” the robotic voice of the GPS tells me again. She’s been doing that for the last hour, but there is nowhere to turn around. The road I’m on is winding and steep, and narrow to boot. I’d likely fall right off the edge and roll into a ditch.

  “I can’t turn around!” I scream at the disembodied voice. “I can’t do shit, lady!”

  I hit the wipers again and tap the screen for the GPS to get a better look at where I’m going, but it goes blank and flashes a terrifying shade of short-circuit blue before it lets out an almighty squeal. The screen is pitch black.

  I bang my hand against it. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  The snow is falling so hard that I can barely see past the hood of my car. I consider pulling over, but there isn’t room on the narrow road. I could freeze out here by myself, and who knows how much worse this snow storm will get? Panicked and parched, I unscrew the cap on the bottle of whiskey and take a swig. My trembling fingers drop the lid.

  “Shit.” I glance down, trying to find where the hell it went, and when I lift my gaze to the road, I’m headed right for a moose. The thing bounds off. I swerve into the bank. Cold liquid splashes across my lap and down my legs as the bottle goes flying through the cab of the SUV. My head smacks off the steering wheel. The airbag explodes, shoving me back against the headrest. Propellant fills the air.

  Pain. It’s ev
erywhere. My head swims, my vision blurs. I need to get out. I reach for my door but it’s stuck. I can’t get the window down. I can’t breathe. The airbag burns my bare arms.

  “Help,” I murmur, but there’s no one around to hear me. It’s fitting, really, that I should wish to be alone and suddenly, I’m exactly that. Alone. Completely, and utterly alone.

  “Hey, buddy, you want a burger?” I ask Emmett as we drive through the last fast food joint on our way out of town. He shakes his head and stares out the window. I order him one anyway. I’m tired, so I can only imagine how exhausted he is. Meltdowns like that take it out of him. They take it out of everyone, and I’m just glad I was with him instead of my mother because she only winds up coddling him when he wants to be left alone. It’s nothing I can’t handle.

  I take the bag from the cashier, shove a handful of fries in my mouth and chew as we head down the highway towards Banff. I savor the grease and salt as I swallow. Goddamn, does that shit taste good. I’ll be paying for it tomorrow, of course. I’ll be sluggish and sick, and probably want to puke all over the ice, but for now, I think I’ve earned it. I scarf down my burger, and by the time I’m done, Emmett is tucking into his. He’s still in a pissy mood, though. I plug my phone into the jack and turn on the music. The same shit we were listening to on the way here: Stella. I think maybe it’ll cheer him up a bit, but he slams his hand against the screen, and the music shuts off. He loves music. I’ve never seen him turn it off before, but I guess I can understand.

  We drive the rest of the way in silence. The snow is heavy, and even with thirteen years’ experience of driving on icy roads and chains on my Hummer, my hands tighten on the wheel, and I take the corners a little slower than usual. I glance over at my brother before turning onto my road. He’s nodding off, so I reach out and give him a noogie. “Hey, douche knuckle. Don’t go to sleep yet, okay? We're almost home.”

  If there’s one thing that Emmett hates more than a disruption to his routine, it’s being woken up. Despite only being five-foot-one, he’s heavy as a sack of shit. I can’t carry him without fucking up my shoulder even more.

  He mumbles and shoves my hand away. I continue to poke him because I’m an asshole, and that’s what brothers do. He gets me back in plenty of ways.

  “Fuck off!”

  I chuckle. “Dude, I’m not throwing out my shoulder dragging your heavy ass inside again. You gotta wake up, or you’re gonna sleep in the freezing car, eh?

  “You’re such an asshole, Van.”

  “Love you too, brother.” I grin. I’m so busy looking at him that I almost don’t see the SUV parked in the snowdrift on the side of the mountain.

  “Look out!”

  I swerve and nearly run us off the edge of the cliff. Thank fuck for my snow chains. My injured arm shoots out to stop my brother from flying into the windshield, and the pain is unbearable.

  “Jesus, Fuck!” My heart pounds. Adrenaline and pain trade plays inside me, back and forth as I pant, and my mind reels to make sense of the fact that we both nearly died.

  “Why weren't you watching?”

  I glance at my brother. The sound of the idling engine helps to calm me. We’re still here. We’re alright. “Are you okay?”

  “No, dumbass. You nearly killed us.”

  “I know. You’re okay, right? Everything still in its place?”

  “Yep.”

  “I gotta go see if the driver needs help.” I throw the beast in park and climb out. Bitter cold slaps my face. The taillights of the SUV glow red against the stark white snow. The engine is still running. The wheels kick up slush and snow, but the car’s not going anywhere. “Stay here, okay?”

  My brother doesn’t listen. Instead, he jumps out of the Hummer and runs to the driver’s side of the SUV, attempting to open the door, but there’s a shelf of snow blocking it.

  “Em, no!”

  “It’s a girl. There’s a girl in here.”

  “Okay, we’ll get her out, but I need you to go back to the car. Turn the heater up full-blast and make sure it’s warm in there.”

  “Okay.” He trudges off and climbs in my vehicle. I want him out of the way because there’s no telling what could happen if that snow shifts. It might bury us all alive, or the whole side of the mountain could slide and take us with it. At least in the car, he’d have a little protection.

  I open the back door of the SUV. I’m hit with the stench of blood and booze. Jesus. I climb through to the backseat and lean through the gap. A woman’s face is squashed against the airbag. She’s bleeding from the head. “Miss. Can you hear me?”

  She moans. I press my fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse. It’s strong. I lean across and turn the car off so it won’t overheat, and I won’t accidently shift gears while I’m attempting to get her out.

  “Can you move?”

  She groans but sits back from her crouched position around the steering wheel. There’s a small cut on her forehead, but it doesn’t look dire. Head wounds always bleed like a motherfucker, and her face and hair are caked with blood, but so far she looks to be in one piece. There’s a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the passenger seat. It’s all I can smell in the cab, and on her breath. Jesus Christ.

  “Sit tight. I’m going to call for an ambulance.”

  “No,” she murmurs. “No ambulance. I’m okay.”

  She’s definitely not okay.

  “Look, lady, you’ve bumped your head. You were parked in a snowdrift, for god knows how long—”

  “Please?” Her eyes are open now, her gaze is focused on my face as she pleads. “The tabloids will have a field day.”

  At first, I think she means because of me, but then it dawns on me where I know her face from. While it’s certainly not as put together as the fifty-foot version I was staring at just a few hours ago, it’s those same sweet and innocent baby blues staring up at me. Shit. I don’t need the tabloids tangling me up with a drunken, runaway country star.

  “Okay, do you think you can climb on out of the car through the back here? I can’t open your door without risking the whole mountain falling in on us.”

  She nods. I lean over and unfasten her belt, and she gets halfway to twisting in her seat and climbing through the gap when she passes out. Fuck me dead. I wrap an arm around her torso and pull her through to the backseat, my shoulder protesting the entire time. In a few minutes, I have her laid out across my lap. If only she were conscious. I open the door and kick it with my foot, wrestling out from under her. I finally make it out of the vehicle, my shoulder screaming at me the whole time.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” I reach in, sliding my hands underneath her arms and tugging her forward. Her skin is like ice. She’ll be lucky if she doesn’t get frostbite. Jesus Christ. What the hell was she thinking, running around in a snowstorm in heels and a tiny little dress?

  I crouch down and pull her prone body over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The pain is blinding. White-hot and searing. I almost pass out, but that’s not an option. Emmett is not strong enough to move either one of us, and we’ll both die out here in the snow if I don’t haul ass. Every step is agony. I’m going to be lucky if I don’t wind up benched for the whole goddamn season, but I don't see what choice I have. Even if I left her in the car and called the paramedics, she’d freeze to death by the time they got here. I need to get her inside, warm, and cleaned up, and then I’ll decide if she needs a hospital. Possibly a psych ward. I don’t know what the hell she was doing on my mountain, but I’m the only one who lives up this road, so it’s not as if I can leave her for someone else to find. Out here, I’ll be the only one to find her in the morning. Frozen as the snowdrift she plowed into.

  “Emmett, get the door,” I shout when I’m close enough for him to hear. He jumps out and opens it. A blast of warm air rolls over me. I lay her down on the backseat of the beast, and my brother stares. His mouth is wide open, but no sound escapes.

  “Looks like we found your runaway sing
er.”

  “But I thought she was sick?”

  “Not yet, but I reckon she will be in the morning, eh?”

  He doubles over, bracing himself with his hands on his knees as he sucks in air. “Stella Hart’s in our car.”

  “Yep.” I fold my arms and glare at the woman in question. “You know we can’t keep her, right?”

  “I think I’m going to pass out.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I warn. “I can’t carry you too.”

  Emmett grabs my arm and shakes it in his excitement. He doesn’t know his own strength. “Oh my god, Stella Hart’s in our car.”

  “Ow, dude.” I wrestle free from his grip.

  “Can I drive, if your shoulder’s hurt?”

  “Er, I think I’m gonna take this one, buddy.” I grimace. “Precious cargo and all that.”

  “Good idea.”

  Emmett scrambles into the passenger seat. I close the door on the country music singer, stare up at a sky devoid of stars and wonder how the hell I wound up with the brightest one in the back of my truck.

  My head aches. I groan, and the throbbing is enough to make me want to just fall back into the pillows and soft flannelette sheets and sleep all day.

  Wait, what? Flannelette?

  My eyes spring open, and I sit bolt upright in bed. It appears that I’ve traded places with a lumberjack because the log cabin walls, rustic four-poster bed and roaring fireplace in the corner tell me I’m not in Kansas anymore.

  I remember driving away from Calgary like a maniac, wielding a couple of candy bars and a bottle of whiskey. I remember snow, mountains, and turning off the highway because the sign for the Fairmont Hotel looked as inviting a place as any to rest my head, and really, what the hell else could I do? I may have wanted a little time out from life, but I had no intention of freezing to death in the Canadian wilderness. I had no desire to wake in a lumberjack’s cabin either, but here I am.

  I glance around the room, suppressing a shudder, and then I check the ring finger of my left hand to make sure I didn’t marry some damn tree-tapping Canadian redneck asshole, because clearly there is no other explanation for waking up in a place as country as this. And I’m from Nashville, so I know country.