Page 3 of Trouble in Love
The last nerve I’d been riding finally snapped, the overwhelming pull of rejection too strong. I dealt a vicious cross-check to his chest. “Yeah? Well, you cost me everything.” Before I could stop myself, I was tossing my gloves and stick, clutching his jersey, and smashing my fists into his face.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he grunted, blood spurting from his lips onto my visor, “You don’t love her, idiot. You never even fucked her.”
Pointing that out did nothing to quell my rage; if anything, it fueled the flame. “That’s not the fucking point, Brookes, and you know it.”
Rory, our team captain, joined the refs and dived onto my back to pull me from the brink of insanity. “He’s not worth it, Luca. You’re better than this.”
But it was too late, all hell had broken loose — within me and the barn.
Though he played in New York for several seasons, Brookes’s first NHL team was Toronto. This was home turf, and my move on a favorite son was considered a move on them all. Spectators were baying for blood as both benches spilled onto the ice. Hatchets were unburied. Men I’d never seen take a swing were suddenly Conor McGregor, but my focus remained on the wife-stealer. Toe to toe, we exchanged blows, tugged hair, and spat profanity. But when a searing right hook dislodged his helmet, Dallas called quits on being my punching bag. With his face warped in fury, he made a dirty, ninja-style sweep with his leg, taking it and my ankle guard out from underneath me. I hit the ice with a sickening crunch that repeated seconds later when the full weight of his body crashed onto my chest.
Whistles screeched around me as my disgraced ass lay frozen, incapable of movement, with indescribable pain shootingthrough my body. The tear-stained face of a hysterical Clara was the final thing I saw before my world faded to black. “I’m so sorry, Luca. So, so sorry.”
Luca
Clara standing over me as I passed out on the ice was a pain-induced hallucination. Unfortunately, my sister hovering over me, repeatedly making her opinion known as I lay in a hospital bed, was not. She had been nagging me for hours—actually, days. Weeks. At least it felt that way.
“I wasn’t sure you’d have a problem coming out. There were a handful of queer players in the NHL long before you got busted balls-deep in some random. Sorry, randoms.”
“This is all their fault. You do know that. Don’t you?”
“She knew you thought you loved her, yet she continued with her twisted little game.”
“If they hadn’t forced you, none of this would have happened.”
“Why is there so much butter on this sandwich?”
“Fucking Clara is a fucking ho.”
That went a bit far and earned my first response. “Hey, don’t talk about Clara like that. This is as much my fault as it is hers.”
The book Anabela had read for the last hour without turning a page dropped into her lap. “I know you’re still recovering from smashing your pretty head open, but you’re freaking kidding me, aren’t you? Luca, she Speak Now-ed you in front of the world. Screwed you up so bad you mauled your own teammate, got suspended for ten games, and ruined your chance to hold the Cup. How can you possibly defend her?”
I shifted in my bed, struggling to find a comfy spot with Ana’s truth bombs hogging the space. “Because stealing her life led her down that path. I was the reason she was lonely. I couldn’t be what she wanted.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Anabela, I’ve asked you so many times. Please, for the love of Ma’s lasagna, drop it.”
On a huff, Ana resumed reading her then upside-down book. “There was no need to bring the lasagna into it.”
“I did what I had to.”
A steady stream of huffs and puffs were expelled from my sister’s mouth, but I let them all wash over me, too consumed with longing for Clara.
And for hockey.
After I was stretchered off unconscious, the blood was cleaned from the ice, and sanity was restored, my team won the game. They then swept the remainder of the series 4-0, which meant while I rotted in a hospital bed, watching them strive for glory on a 20-inch screen, New York would be moving on to the next stage of the playoffs. Rory claimed they did it for me and wanted me to be part of the celebration should they win. But how could that be true after what I had done?
Nope. There would be no end-of-season partying for me. In truth, I would be lucky if there was to be another season… ever.
Even to a self-loathing fool, my punishment seemed harsh.
A knock at the door snapped me from my thoughts, but the voice that accompanied it brought little reprieve. “Can I come in?” Clara was leaning against the door, as angelic as ever, and dressed head to toe in our couple-endorsed athleticwear. Nothing sells compression garments and crop tops like a sexy actor/hockey duo.
My sister was up on her feet, her shoulders hunched around her ears. “No, you cannot.”
“Anabela,” I sighed.
