Page 5 of Power Play
Ben
Monday, I'm walking to the gym with my head hanging low. Carter texted the group chat a pic of him and his happy family, baby included. Carter's still part of the group chat even after he retired because of course he figured out a way to keep himself on it.
I can't even be mad at him, though. He found The One. The kind of love you can't let slip away, the kind you build a life around. I had that once. She was everything to me. The way she laughed, the way she believed in me, like I could do anything.
We were just kids back then, too young to understand that what we had wasn’t something everyone finds. But we had dreams, big ones, and we both refused to hold the other back. So we did the responsible thing. We let each other go.
She was always the one, though. The one that got away. The one I’ve measured everyone else against, even when I told myself I had to move on.
My hands clench into fists as I reach the gym doors, my chest tight. I've been playing it cool, pretending like my heart isn't pining for someone who is gone, and that seeing Carter in love doesn't add salt to the wound. But I never stopped loving her.
"Kowalski!" Coach Ward's deep voice booms, echoing through the hallway. I won't lie and say that man doesn't intimidate me. I haven't been on the receiving end of any of his lectures, but I've heard them enough. I don't want to get on that guy's bad side.
I look up, ready to snap into line and do whatever he wants, when the deep green eyes of the woman next to him suck me in like a vortex. My muscles seize and my jaw drops open.
"You," I breathe out, my limbs suddenly heavy and my head suddenly light.
My heart stumbles, caught in my throat, and for a second, the ground beneath my feet feels unsteady. There she is—real, close enough to touch, yet impossibly distant after all these years.
Lacey winces slightly and gives me a regretful smile. She gives me a shy wave. "Hi, Ben." Her voice is soft, unsure, like she wasn’t ready to say my name aloud.
I'm stunned for a moment. Like my thoughts of her made her appear before me, but she's not real. But Coach Ward is shooting looks between the two of us and Lacey's eyes are begging me to play it cool. I clear my throat and stiffen my shoulders.
"You two know each other?"
Ward’s tone is even, but his sharp gaze burns into me
I'd like to respond, but my brain's forgotten English, my mouth has forgotten how to produce saliva, and my heart's forgotten how to beat. I'm pretty sure the sky could fall, the rink could melt, or Ward could catch on fire and I wouldn't notice a thing. Fuck me, she got even prettier with time.
"We went to high school together," she replies for me.
I try...so fucking hard...not to let the hurt her words have caused to show on my face. We went to high school together, sure, but we also lost our virginity to each other, promised each other forever, and then lost each other when life took us in different directions.
Lacey was my everything.My beginning and my end.Which I told her as many times as I could before she left for college, and I signed to the NHL.
I knew I was going to the NHL after high school. I wasn't smart enough for college, and hadn't found anything that gave me even close to the same feeling as hockey. She had dreams, too, though, of becoming a physical therapist, which requires crazy years of education and training. We vowed not to hold each other back, and we went our separate ways.
She deleted her social media soon after and changed phone numbers. It stung at first, but I realized that I had been stalking her Instagram, hoping to see just a sliver of her, and it was affecting my game play. So, I deleted mine, too.
The Titans social media team created one for me, but they run it. I'd rather not be tempted down that road again.
Wait. Why is she here?
"Well then I guess you already know our new physical therapist?"
My neanderthal brain glitches and takes a fucking minute to reload. "You work for the Titans?"
She winces again. She's nervous, her fingers are shaking, but her shoulders are back. You wouldn't notice if you hadn't spent hundred of hours studying her and the way her body moves.
"Starting today!" she says with her voice tight and hollow. She wasn't expecting me. She didn't know I played for them? But I don't understand why she's nervous.
They go to walk past me in the hall, but every cell in my body is screaming at me to grab her, hold onto her, and never let her go again. The idea that she's about to leave has me itchy under my skin.
I have no idea if she's got a boyfriend, or a husband, or several husbands like Emily. All I know is I can't let her go again.
I turn as they pass me. "Have dinner with me?"
Both she and Coach Ward stiffen. She looks up and him quickly but fuck if I care why.
