hurt-so-good

by Scott, Myra

  Crash whirled, finding Timmy standing at his side.

  The young man’s face was cloudy, his mouth screwed up and contorted on his boyish face. Usually, he was almost attractive; today, Timmy looked like an angry, stormy mess.

  Crash slowly lowered the phone though a woman on the other end was speaking, holding up his other hand towards Timmy.

  “You’re missing practice, you know,” Crash said slowly, jerking his chin towards the front door of the building. “Don’t you want to be in there with everyone else?”

  “No,” Timmy hissed back. “I don’t want to be in there.”

  The young defenseman suddenly flew forward at Crash so fast that the burly man almost tumbled to the ground though he managed to steady himself just in time. He thrust his hand against Timmy’s chest, shoving him backward. Timmy lunged again, plunging his small fist right against Crash’s jaw. Crash grunted in pain, his eyes gleaming irritably. He didn’t have time for this, he had to make sure that Jake was alright.

  “Timmy, stop!” Crash commanded, dodging another incoming blow.

  His knee throbbed at the quick step sideways, pushing Timmy’s hand away and swiveling around again.

  “No!” Timmy yelled ferociously. “No! No!”

  Their bodies spun and parried again as Crash ducked to the side to avoid another punch to the face.

  As Timmy swung one more time, Crash grabbed hold of his skinny wrist, whirling the young man around and shoving him hard against the wall of the rink so his face ground into the heavy brick.

  “I don’t get you, Timmy!” Crash roared. “I’ve never done anything to you. I’ve never been rude to you. What’s your problem?”

  Timmy didn’t answer, his eyes squeezing shut. Crash shoved him hard against the wall but soon realized that the young man was not going to tell him what was going on. There was no point in hurting him. Timmy wasn’t worth it. The only thing that could come from this was a suspension for bad behavior for Crash.

  Crash growled and stepped back, releasing Timmy. Timmy remained limply slumped against the wall, his eyes still squeezed closed, his hands curled into fists so tight that it would leave tiny red marks for a month.

  It was only when his eyelids cracked opened again that Crash realized there were tears welling up in Timmy’s eyes.

  Lips parting slightly with a sharp inhale of shock, Crash narrowed his eyes and tried to figure out if it was all some sort of trick.

  “I hate you!” Timmy breathed, trembling. “I hate you for being as good at hockey as you are. I hate you for skating circles around me. I hate you for loving it all so much.”

  “You’re good too, Timmy. Just green,” Crash muttered. “With time, you’ll be just as skilled.”

  “No, I fucking won’t!” Timmy cried back, flipping around so his back was pressed against the wall as if his legs weren’t strong enough to hold him up. “I will never be as good as you, Crash, and it’s because I hate hockey! I don’t want to play anymore. I don’t want to be in that rink. I don’t want to be watched by the crowds.”

  Crash blinked once then again. “What?”

  “I hate it!” Timmy stomped his foot like a kid having a tantrum. “I hate all of it!”

  “Then… then why? Why do you play?” Crash could barely comprehend hating hockey.

  The game was his life. He was pretty sure his soul was crafted from ice and puck.

  “My family. My dad played. My grandpa. It’s what I’m supposed to be.”

  Sympathy flickered in Crash, but he was not the type to mince words or be gentle. He was too blunt for that.

  With a sigh, Crash leaned forward and clapped the man’s shoulder. “Our team is suffering because of you,” he said softly. “Your hatred is contagious. You make everyone question themselves. No damn wonder we’ve had such a terrible run.”

  Timmy didn’t bother looking wounded at the true words Crash spoke. Instead, he looked frail and confused, a lost child who had been steered in the wrong direction.

  “What do I do? I can’t quit.”

  “Is it just the playing that you hate, Timmy? Do you like the game?”

  “… I guess. I don’t know. It’s all become so confusing… I don’t know what I want at all.”

  “Talk to Coach, Tim,” Crash said with a wink. “Tell him I sent you to talk strategy.”

  Timmy looked uneasily up at the building while Crash turned and scooped up his phone. Luckily for him, the woman was still on the line.

  “—haven’t heard from Jake,” she was saying. “Are you there?”

  “What about Jake?” Crash asked instantly, blood freezing. “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered hurriedly. “I just… I was looking for some papers in his office and I found some weird letters. I didn’t know who to call but I know he’s been spending a lot of time with you. I haven’t heard from him all day, and he usually checks in… Crash, I think something happened.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’ve got you in my schedule for next Monday, Clinton,” Jake smiled, giving a wave as he stepped back onto the porch. “See you then!”

  The door closed behind Jake, leaving him alone under the glow of the afternoon sun. Crash would be at practice right now, he surmised, soaking up the sound of skates on ice and frost in the air. Jake beamed up at the clouds, happy that he’d been able to do something nice for Crash. The hockey player deserved it after all the work he’d put in towards his recovery. Crash was going to be back in his skates in no time.

  Jake still had four more patients to visit today, but he was already itching to get back to Crash’s house for the evening. All he had to do was pick up Monsoon and a few groceries from his house. He was planning on making pesto salmon tonight, a dish that was definitely going to blow Crash’s mind.

  Still grinning, Jake took a single step before the smile froze on his mouth, his jaw slowly going slack.

  A simple white envelope lay on the ground, half tucked under the mat but exposed enough for Jake to see the familiar, frightening writing on the front.

  It was happening again, Jake thought, with the phone calls and now this. When would it all end?

  He’d been pushing that situation as far from his mind as he could all day, trying to pretend he wasn’t scared out of his mind. When he glared anxiously around, though, the road was empty, as usual.

  For a long moment, the physical therapist considered ignoring the piece of paper, but his morbid curiosity won out and he bent down, lifting it tentatively. When he ripped it open and peeked inside, he let out a sharp cry and dropped the envelope.

  Instead of the customary note was something else entirely—a black paw print pressed in ink on a piece of paper.

  Jake’s mind hadn’t caught up with him by the time he was sprinting down the road towards his car, grateful that Clinton lived so far out of town that he’d had to drive.

  If this paw print was a reference to Monsoon, Jake would damn kill someone. You didn’t mess with a man’s dog. Heart clattering like a bag of rocks in his chest, Jake lunged into the car just as his phone rang.

  He answered it, cupping it to his cheek.

  “Jake!” Crash began. “Listen—”

  “Monsoon,” Jake breathed, peeling his car away from the curb with a loud squeal. “I got another letter, Crash, and I think this whacko took Monsoon!”

  “Are you driving? Jake, pull over! You can’t drive when you’re panicking like this!”

  “I have to get to my house! I have to find out if he’s okay. Oh my god, Crash, what am I going to do if they took him? He needs his medicine. He gets so flighty. He could run away.”

  “Breathe, Jake. Take a deep breath. Monsoon is going to be okay, but you can’t go running back there like this. What if that’s what this person wants?”

  Jake blew through a stop sign, ignoring
the red metal as he passed. All he could think of was his dog, who could be frightened or injured or worse. As Jake hastily rounded another corner however, something in his rearview caught his eye.

  “Crash…” he abruptly whispered, the phone going slack between his fingers. “Crash… I think someone is following me. I think it’s them.” His voice was so chilled and quiet that Crash could barely hear him.

  “What? Jake? What’s going on?”

  The powder blue sedan behind Jake’s car abruptly accelerated as Jake was taking another turn, the sound of shrieking tires echoing so loudly through the phone that Crash almost dropped the device from his ear.

  “Jake!” He yelled. “Jake, can you hear me?”

  The only sound that responded was the sound of spinning tires in the wind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “My boyfriend!” Crash gasped into the phone at the police dispatcher as he ran towards

  Jake’s house. “I think he got into a car accident! We were just talking on the phone, and then there was this huge crash.”

  Later, Crash would blush when he remembered referring to Jake as his boyfriend, but right now he was consumed by raw panic and fear that made everything he looked at seem as if it was tinted with a scarlet red.

  “The name, please?” the calm operator replied as his fingers danced noisily over a clicking keyboard.

  “His name is Jake Masters.” Crash’s leg throbbed but he couldn’t stop, he wouldn’t stop, not until he had Jake safely in his arms again.

  “Hm…” The man said slowly. “We’ve already got two reports on him. Called in by a Lucy Buck and Timmy Lyon. We’ve got a unit en route to Mr. Masters’ residence on 43rd street now.”

  As Crash hobbled on, making such poor time that it would have been laughable had Crash not been so entirely despairing, a sleek black BMW pulled to a stop behind him.

  “I heard your call,” Timmy said through the open window, pushing open the passenger door. “Get in.”

  Crash lurched into the car as he hung up his phone, panting and rubbing his knee. He didn’t speak, just pointing a finger down the road towards 43rd street.

  “That way,” he gasped.

  They veered around bends and corners so quickly that Crash felt like he was on one of those carnival rides that whipped him back and forth and threw him against the sides of the ride, but he didn’t complain. Not if it meant that he would get to Jake faster.

  If anything happened to the man that he loved, he wasn’t sure what he would do.

  Crash stiffened instantly, fingers clenching down on the armrest of the car.

  Love. Love… He was in love.

  It was so blatantly obvious to him now that he wondered just how he’d missed it before. He’d been in love with Jake since almost the first time he saw him, the first time that adorable smile of Jake’s lit his handsome face.

  Crash had never been in love before. The feeling was foreign. It was terrifying. It was beautiful.

  He had to get to Jake. He needed to hold him in his arms and whisper in his ear just how special he was to Crash.

  “What’s that?” Timmy gasped as he steered his car sharply over to the curb.

  Just ahead of them, another car smoked from where it was plowed headfirst into a great big oak tree.

  Crash had never seen Jake’s car before. The therapist had always arrived on the bus. Something in Crash’s gut, however, began screaming at him in a desperate and frantic blur.

  “I’m going to call the cops again…” Timmy began uncertainly, digging for his phone.

  Crash was not one to sit and wait and be calm. He had to move.

  Shoving open the door, Crash hurled his body out of the vehicle, lumbering forward. He was so desperate to get to the crashed vehicle that he didn’t care about his knee, completely forgetting about the pain that rippled through him as he dashed forward.

  He reached the car, brushing his hand over the open door. Jake’s phone sat inside along with traces of crimson blood on the steering wheel, but Jake was nowhere to be seen.

  “Jake!” Crash yelled, spinning in a circle with his hands clutched to his mouth. “Jake, can you hear me! Please!”

  Not far from Crash, through a brush of green trees and bushes, came a faint, almost inaudible moan, one that Crash instantly recognized. Without thinking, he barreled through the trees, his gaze instantly locking on the pair ahead of him as he burst beyond pine and oak.

  Jake’s body was slung across another man’s shoulder, the man’s wild eyes narrowing on Crash as his hand reached into his pocket where the handle of a knife glinted.

  Crash let loose an animalistic roar that would frighten a grizzly bear, throwing himself at the stranger before he could grab at the sharp blade in his pocket.

  “Jake belongs to me!” The man shrieked as Crash knocked into him full force. “He’s mine!”

  Jake’s limp body tumbled to the ground, but Crash resisted the urge to go after him. Instead, he kept the man pinned down as they wrestled and rolled through the dirt.

  “Who are you?” Crash yelled, tackling the man again and using his entire body to keep him down. “Why have you been stalking Jake?”

  “He’s mine!” The man continued with a warbled voice, holding up his hand as fury filled Crash, who yanked back one strong arm and struck the stranger hard in the head. The man was knocked out almost instantly as Crash scrambled to the side, scooping Jake up into his arms.

  Slitted green eyes met Crash’s steely, frantic ones, blood trickling down from a large gash on the therapist’s forehead.

  “You came,” he whispered, a faint smile on his mouth even after the terror he’d just witnessed. “I knew it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first thing Jake saw was white.

  For a whole second, he was surrounded by such a brilliant sheen of white that he thought he’d died and sprouted angel wings and had been carried up to the great beyond.

  It was only when he gasped and shot upwards where he lay that he realized he was not living in a world of clouds but one of sanitary, pale walls, and beeping instruments that closely monitored his blood pressure and heart rate.

  A hospital, Jake realized, as pain came surging back up through his body. With a low and rumbling groan, he flopped backwards onto his bed, closing his eyes against the nausea rising inside him.

  Concussion, he knew, picking at the vague memories that he could recall. An accident. Fear. Monsoon. Crash.

  With another gasp, he shot right back up again, as did the bile in the back of his throat. He doubled over with a grimace, clutching at his mouth as a familiar hand reached over to rest on his shoulder.

  “Take it easy,” Crash said gently. “You’ve been out hours. Monsoon is waiting at Lucy’s. He’s going to be pissed as hell at you if you hurt yourself and have to stay here any longer than necessary.”

  Jake twisted his head, taking in the sight of the strong hockey player in a hospital gown, all laid out on the bed beside him.

  “Oh no,” he whispered. “Did you get hurt?”

  Crash smirked. “Nothing I can’t handle. Messed my knee up a bit is all.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jake cried. “I didn’t mean for you to get messed up in this.”

  “He was an old patient of yours.” Crash shrugged, slowly easing off the bed and crossing the small distance between them in a single hobble.

  Jake scooted to the side, letting Crash climb up carefully beside him, weaving his way through the wires attached to his skin.

  “Sean Poll. Does that sound familiar?”

  Jake nodded, his eyes going huge. “He was nice.” Jake shrugged. “He wasn’t badly injured, just a minor sprain. We only had two weeks of sessions. I can’t… I can’t believe it. It was really him?”

  “I don’t blame him.” Crash admitted with a nod, brushing
his fingers over Jake’s cheek. “It took me about that long to fall in love with you, too.”

  The words slipped from Crash’s tongue before he was prepared for them, his throat going tight in surprise. True to his style, however, he refused to back down from what was said. Instead, he wore that same smug smirk he had before when he’d said or done something without thinking.

  Jake went dead silent, eyes huge and chest going still from the shock.

  “Are you… are you saying you think you love me, Crash?” He inhaled tightly.

  “There’s no think about it, Jake,” Crash responded gruffly, pressing his mouth to Jake’s tender lips. “I do love you. Every bit of you. Your devotion to me and your patience. Your heart. I love it all.”

  All the pain in Jake’s body was forgotten in the wake of his sudden exhilarated joy.

  “I love you too, Crash!” Jake whispered, voice cracking with glee.

  Crash didn’t care that they were in a hospital. He didn’t care they were both in ugly gowns and would probably be having jello and stale crackers for dinner. All he cared about was the man in his arms and the tender love that bloomed in his heart. For once in his life, he felt complete, more so than he did while on the hockey rink.

  Jake was, and would continue to be, Crash’s perfect match, his other half.

  Epilogue

  The buzzer rang, squealing loudly over the last few minutes of the hockey game.

  Jake stood and threw his arms over his head with a cheer, so excited for the last play where Crash had so decisively blocked yet another point from being scored against the Montana Miners that the bag of popcorn in his hand spilled out over the top of his head.

  Brushing the buttery snack away, Jake turned and waded through the crowd of people, darting around the side of the rink to lean over into the box where Willis and Timmy stood side by side, going over the strategy for the final play.

  Timmy glanced back, offering a shy smile to Jake. Even though it’d been almost a year since the pair met, Timmy still felt guilty about how he’d treated Jake and Crash. Now that he was training to take over for Willis, however, Crash had told him that the past needed to be laid to rest. They couldn’t constantly be held back by their mistakes, not when they had a season to win. Plus, Timmy had been instrumental in Crash’s finding Jake, and both Crash and Jake would be in Timmy’s debt forever for that single action. It was thanks to Timmy that Jake was found and Sean was arrested, put behind bars for hopefully a long, long time.