Page 44 of On the Line
“Never,” she said with a wink. “You’ve got some visitors today.”
“Visitors? What, more doctors that want to poke and prod me and study my back?” He groused as he made his way into the rehab room halfway down the hall.
Mitch’s cane clattered to the floor when he stepped inside and found himself face to face with Brent Jean and Cole Reid.
“Hey, Mitch,” Brent said with a sheepish smile on his face.
“What the fuck are you guys doing here?” He asked, turning away from them and slowly making his way to a chair at the edge of the room. His back wasn’t in good enough shape to bend over and retrieve his cane, so it lay there on the floor, abandoned like an out-grown child’s toy.
Cole stepped forward and picked it up for him, walking it over to where Mitch sat.
Mitch angrily swiped it away from him. “I asked you a question,” he said, not meeting either of their gazes.
“We wanted to come see how you’re doing,” Cole said.
“How did you even know I was here?”
“Jean might have called your mom to check on you, and she gave us the scoop,” Cole said. “We would’ve called you directly but your bitch ass changed your number when you left.”
When you left.
The words hung heavy in the air between them, and Mitch had no doubt they were chosen carefully.
“I was traded,” he said lamely.
Brent snorted. “You could’ve stayed in touch after the trade, bro.”
Mitch heaved a sigh. “It was just…easier.”
Mitch looked up then and met Brent’s gaze. Those blue eyes, cold in appearance but the exact opposite if one knew the man underneath, bored into his own. “I know you don’t want to talk about…her,” Brent said. “That’s not why we’re here anyway. We came to check up on you.”
“I don’t need you checking up on me.”
“You can knock the attitude off right now because you’re not getting rid of us until this PT session is over,” Cole said.
“And even then…we know where you live.”
“So what, you’re here because you wanted to come make fun of me? The thirty-four year old washed-up hockey player?”
“No,” Brent said. “We genuinely wanted to check on you. Seven months is too long to go without talking, man.”
“Oh god,” Mitch said, eyes growing misty. “Don’t get all cheesy on me. The last few weeks have been absolutely brutal on my emotions.”
“Fine,” Cole said as Mitch’s physical therapist came into the room. “Then let's get to work.”
For the next two hours, while Mitch worked through his physical therapy routine, Brent and Cole worked right alongside him. It was almost familiar, as though they had done this before.
And that was because theyhaddone this before. For years, side by side in the weight room, on the streets around downtown Detroit, on different sheets of ice across the country. They had sweat and bled and cried tears of joy and disappointment together.
The fact that Mitch had thrown that all away because his heart was broken…he’d never forgive himself for the lost time.
But it seemed as though not all was lost, not if Brent and Cole were here now, making an effort to bridge this gap between them.
When his PT session wrapped up, Mitch sat on a chair and chugged half a bottle of water.
“We’re going out,” Brent said without preamble.
“So you’re kidnapping me now?”
