Page 73 of Lucky Laces
A long moment of quiet and then he shudders again, the hand at my hip shifting, sliding around my waist and drawing me to him, clutching me to him, holding me so tightly I’m not sure I can breathe.
Or maybe it’s because of what he says next.
“I’ve tried, DeeDee,” he whispers and the agony in his words slices me deep.“I’ve spent hours with the packet you put together, with the drills, with the videos and explanations and...”He buries his head in my throat.
“And what, baby?”I press.
“And I can’t get it to stick in my head.Words are hard but symbols and numbers are harder.They’re always moving or changing and every time I sit down thinking this is the time I’m going to get it to make sense, to put all the pieces together, I swear, it’s like my brain is fucking with me.One second, a circle will look like a circle and the next it’s a fucking X or an arrow or it’s floating on the page and I don’t know if it’s my eyes or my mind or if where it’s at is where it’s supposed to be or if my brain has shifted it and made it seem like a different shape.”He sucks in a breath as I process that, asmymind struggles to comprehend and put the pieces together.“I was never all that good in school, but I could usually fake my way through it, do well enough to pass or work it so my teachers passed me anyway.And then I went straight into the league after I graduated so I didn’t have to worry about college.But this…” Another shuddering exhale.“It’s like the harder I try, the worse it gets…until I’m seeing nothing except a jumble of lines a-and?—”
His voice cracks.
I hold him tighter.
“I’m broken,” he rasps.“My brain is so fucked that I know—fuckingknow—that I’ll never get the system down, so—” He pulls back and the agony on his face slices right through me.“So you might as well get me off the roster now before I fuck things up further.”
I rack my brain for how to handle this.
But there’s nothing in my coach’s handbook for the best course of action on how to handle a player who thinks I should drop him off my roster because he’s trying so hard enough he’s tormenting himself over failing.
So…I have to follow my instincts.
I draw him back to me, hold him close and tight for a long, long time.
Until he’s no longer trembling.
“In school,” I whisper, “did they ever diagnose you with anything?”
He lifts his head.“No.Why?”
I cup his jaw and say, “Because I think I knowexactlywho to call.”
Twenty-Four
Hudson
“I thinkI know exactly who to call.”
That’s what she said.
And that’s what she did—stepping away from me, pulling out her phone, and then making that call.
Then two more.
And now, less than an hour later, I have an enemy hockey player on my back porch, along with his pretty, shy wife, Kailey.
Connor Smith is a veteran defenseman in the league and was recently traded to the Grizzlies.
Which means he’s local.
And the Eagles have to play against his big, old, but still remarkably agile for a man nearing retirement’s ass eight times this season.
I much prefer him on the opposite coast with the Breakers, only having to deal with him on the ice twice throughout the year.
“Your back yard is the shit!”he says—or really, yells, because based on the ten minutes he’s been in my house, the man seems to only have one volume and that’s yelling.The worthiness of my back yard declared (loudly), he reclines in his—my—chair, the wood creaking dangerously beneath his big ass body.
I’m no slouch in the muscle department, but my chairs definitely don’t protest that much when I drop into them.
Clearly I have some more work to do in the weight room.
