Page 12 of The Fate Factor

He shoves me with his gloved hand. “Can still drink you under the table.”

“It’s sad how badly you wish that were true.”

Chase taps his stick on the ice. “Are we playing or you guys wanna grab a box of wine and make a scrapbook?”

I shake my head and take off to center ice. I’m keyed up for tomorrow and I need at least one more period of crushing cardio if I’m going to get a decent amount of sleep tonight.

I’m thinking about the band and the number of kegs I’ve stocked. Whether this event will help me beat my record for sales from the last product launch—a number I need to hit if I’m going to keep digging my heels in on the argument my brother Wes and I are currently embroiled in.

And maybe a little about the fact that my friends were all talking about my love life at the community center like they were planning an intervention.

My attention is hovering somewhere outside of the game the entire time. I’m definitely not thinking about keeping my head up and leaning into the hit when Greg checks me from the left with two-hundred-forty pounds of gear and dad bod—perfectly legally this time.

The red boards come at me quick and violent, and my skates disappear from beneath me. The last thing I remember thinking before I eat ice is whatever’s broken better be fixed by tomorrow night or I’m royally screwed.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have attempted to drive myself home. Headlights from an oncoming car flash across my face and my head pounds at a decibel I’ve never felt before. I groan, replaying the moment I heard the crack that I knew immediately was bone—right before everything went black. Wedon’t hold back, and I’ve taken a few hits before, but this one rang my bell as my old coach would say.

When I came to, Trev was kneeling over me, holding up two fingers and asking me if I could see them. Of course I could fucking see them, it was my ribs that felt like they’d turned into serrated knives, sawing each time I took a breath. I was also pretty sure I wasn’t going to be skating or walking on my left knee for a while.

I’d iced up and taped it as best I could, then let Greg pack my gear as an apology before assuring them all I could make it home. In the back of my rattled brain, I thought that if I didn’t go to the hospital, I’d somehow magically be able to work tomorrow. Maybe I’d be a little sore. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

That hope is dimming.

Four minutes into the half-hour drive, my vision started to double when I turned to switch lanes, and now, a mile from the highway ramp I need to take, I’m genuinely concerned that I’m going to puke in my own lap.

I ease my car to the edge of the road and dig around my gym bag unsuccessfully for my phone. I can’t bring myself to take a full breath because of the pain in my side. It hurts so bad, my forehead is starting to sweat.

Letting my head fall to the steering wheel, I mumble a request for my car’s Bluetooth to call Kelly. She hasn’t returned my text from before, but she usually answers my late night calls.

Her voicemail picks up, though, so I guess it’s not late enough.

“You’ve reached Kel. Leave a message or don’t.”

The shrill beep is an arrow through my brain, and I clap my hands over my ears like a little kid in a thunderstorm.

Fuck.

The rest of the guys are still on the ice so they won’t be answering their phones, and I can’t pull Em away from the baron a busy Thursday night. I wouldn’t call Wes if I were stranded at sea and he had a boat.

Some neuron in my brain that’s still working remembers the story Trev told tonight, the one about the bottle of Fireball. He got it wrong, though. I didn’t sleep in my car.

An idea starts to emerge from the fog. It’s been a few years since I’ve been stuck across the bridge, unable to drive myself home, but it’s definitely not the first time. Back then it was because we’d partied too hard on the beach and our blood-alcohol level was too high to get back to the city. Luckily for us then, and for me now, we had a place to crash when we needed it.

I pass the on-ramp and head toward the water instead. I’m maybe three minutes from my stepdad’s rental property at Willard Beach. He owns a few of them right on the water, and I have a key so I can check on them for him when he needs me to. My family still thinks of me as a glorified bartender, so he assumes I’ve got the time.

His low opinion of me is about to save my ass, though.

I turn down the access road and it’s as dark as midnight. Almost every house down here is seasonal and the season’s over, which is how I know Bob’s place’ll be empty. It has linens and hot water. Everything I need to sleep this off.

Yeah, I’m still clinging to that pipe dream.

The fog along the water is thicker than the brain fog I’m battling, but after a mile or so of squinting at dark house after dark house, I pull into the crushed oyster shell driveway and drag myself and my gym bag out of the car. At least I have some extra clothes that I can sleep in, since this T-shirt looks like a prop from a horror movie. The gash on my forehead from my face hitting the ice bled like a mother.

I make it to the front porch before a wave of nausea sweeps through me and I have to lean over the edge and gag a few times. Nothing comes up, thankfully since the flower pots liningthe stairs look new, but I still wipe the back of my hand over my mouth.

This scene is too familiar for comfort—the stumbling across the gravel driveway, the slow climb up the porch steps, holding the railing in a death grip. The way my head spins. I hate the way it instantly brings me back to a version of myself that I’ve been trying to shake for years.

There’s no helping it, though. My grown-up life is about seven miles too far away, and my minutes spent upright are ticking down.

---