I HAD TO put on a brave face and project confidence for Riley, even though I didn’t feel even remotely brave or confident. He was leaving with the rest of the team today, going out on a road trip for the first time since we’d returned from Mexico. The doctors still hadn’t cleared him to play, but chances were high that he would be getting back into a game during this trip through the Central Division.
“We’ll be fine while you’re gone,” I insisted. “You’ve made sure I know how to do everything I need to do. Grady’s coming by every day to help me walk Max and Lola. Anne’s going to help me take them swimming. I have the vet’s phone number. The other girls can help me if anything goes wrong. We’re going to be just fine.”
He kissed me hard and fast before passing one more searching gaze over my face. “I know you’re going to be fine. I just don’t want to leave you. It was never like this for me before.”
Was it never like this before because his former fiancée had her life in order so he didn’t have to worry about her and his dogs? That was what my brain heard, even though he’d told me time and again that Amanda hadn’t ever lifted a finger when it came to caring for Max and Lola. Riley trusted me to take care of them, but this was going to be my first true test. He was going to be gone for six whole days. Six very long days.
I couldn’t fail.
Nate pulled into the driveway and honked, even though we’d seen him through the windows. They were going to the airport together in Nate’s car so that I’d have Riley’s enormous SUV to transport the dogs if needed.
“You’d better hurry or you’ll be late,” I said since Riley still hadn’t let go of me. “And you’ll make Nate late, too. That won’t go over well. The coaches won’t like that. Nate probably won’t like it, either.”
Riley grumbled something beneath his breath before planting one last hard kiss on me and grabbing the handle of his wheeled suitcase.
I watched from the doorway until Nate’s car disappeared around the corner. Then I rushed to the bathroom and upchucked every last thing in my stomach.
Good thing I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so it was mostly bile.
Max followed me into the bathroom and licked my arm and cheeks until I had to shove him away. Lola stayed just outside the bathroom in the hall, whimpering slightly. Did they know I was sick, or were they just as nervous about the three of us being on our own for a few days as I was?
No telling.
Although, if I was being honest with myself, I had a feeling they were apprehensive about Riley being gone. They were smart dogs. They knew I wasn’t ready for this.
I hadn’t felt sick until the moment I couldn’t see Nate’s car anymore, so surely it was just anxiety. I doubted I was actually coming down with a virus or anything like that. It had to be nerves of the same sort that had caused me to faint when Max and Lola had first greeted me.
At least that was what I tried to convince myself.
“Back up, Max,” I said, dragging myself off the bathroom floor and flushing the toilet. The dog didn’t seem very inclined to obey, and I didn’t have enough energy to put more authority into my tone, so I had to shove him out of my way so I could get to the sink and wash my face and hands.
A glance in the mirror revealed how pale and pasty I looked, and my skin felt kind of clammy. I was cold, despite the fact that I was sweating. Might not be a bad idea to go back to bed for a while.
Besides, this was the perfect time for me to lie in bed and have a good cry without Riley seeing it. I could get it all out of my system, and then later I’d be as good as new. Not that I was even sure why I felt like crying, other than being overwhelmed by everything going on in my life. We hadn’t even been married for two months yet, so there was no way for me to have adjusted to all the changes to date, but already our lives were changing again. That had to be the reason for my tears.
Max crawled up onto the bed beside me and rested his heavy head on my chest, sighing so hard that my hair flew from the force of it. Lola bounded onto the bed on the other side, curling up next to me the way she normally did with Riley. Or almost the same way. She kept some distance between us, unlike her brother.
Seemed like a perfect time for the three of us to take an afternoon nap. Never mind the fact that it wasn’t anywhere close to afternoon yet.
MAYBE I WAS actually sick.
That seemed to be the only good explanation, because I didn’t wake up until Grady texted me to say he was running late to help me walk the dogs, but he should arrive in about twenty minutes.
After reading his message and sitting up in bed so fast I surprised the dogs, I glanced at the clock on the wall.
Three in the afternoon.
How the heck was it already so late? I’d slept practically the entire day away, and I felt like I needed another week of sleep to catch up.
Then a fresh wave of dizziness and nausea hit me. Probably because I’d sat up too fast or something. Vomiting earlier had been bad enough, but sleeping so long and hard was just further proof that something was seriously wrong with me.
Whatever bug I’d caught, I hoped Riley didn’t come down with it, too.
It must be from all the time I’d been spending around kids lately. One of my foster parents had constantly told me that children were germ factories, which was why she’d made me douse myself with hand sanitizer at every opportunity. I’d had a feeling that she was killing my natural immunity by doing that, but there’d been no convincing her. I’d just had to deal with it, for as long as I’d lived in her house.
Just in case this bug that had knocked me out for hours was something contagious, I shot off a quick text message to Riley, letting him know to be aware of any symptoms he might have. He probably wouldn’t see my message until they landed in Chicago for tomorrow’s game. I only hoped he wasn’t already coming down with this same virus. The last thing he needed, when he was this close to getting back into a game, was to get sick. Or for the rest of the team to catch it.
Then I shoved Max and Lola off me so I could take a quick shower and get dressed.
I’d barely pulled on my clothes when the doorbell rang, announcing Grady’s arrival. Max and Lola barked excitedly and raced down the stairs before me because they knew what this meant.
I grabbed their leashes on my way to answer the door. But then I second-guessed myself. Whatever I’d come down with, I didn’t need to pass it on to Grady. Maybe I shouldn’t go with them today. Although, after my nap, I felt a ton better. I might already be past it. Maybe it was a twenty-four-hour virus and nothing more.
Opening the door, I brushed the thought aside and decided to go with them, regardless. A walk would do me good, and I still needed to prove to Riley that I was capable of taking care of his dogs while he was gone. If I bailed out at the first opportunity now that he was away with the team, what would he think?
“Sorry I’m late,” Grady said. “One of my other clients had a pet emergency, and I helped her get her dog to the vet.” He took Lola’s leash from my hands and started hooking it on to her collar, and I did the same with Max’s.
“What kind of emergency?” I asked. Because, even though Riley had left me with phone numbers for the emergency veterinarian, I honestly hadn’t thought about the very real possibility of anything happening to these dogs while he was gone.
I made a mental note to tell Max and Lola they weren’t allowed to get sick on my watch, but I wanted to do it later, when Grady couldn’t hear me and laugh.
Maybe it was silly of me to think I could tell them anything of the sort and that it would have any effect, but I was determined to try. Max, at least, seemed keen to do whatever I told him. Lola was a bit pricklier. She liked to pick and choose which commands she wanted to obey and which she’d prefer to ignore, at least when they came from me.
“Not sure yet,” he replied. “Her dog’s lethargic and vomiting. Might be some sort of illness causing it. But the dog might have eaten something that’s stuck in the intestines or some other part of the digestive tract.”
“Something like what?”
He held the door open for me, and all of us went through. He waited, holding on to both dogs’ leashes, while I locked the door behind us. “Tennis ball? Sock? Shoelace? There are lots of things that pets could eat that could cause problems. Maybe even a plant that is poisonous for the dog or something. One dog I used to walk ate an entire tennis shoe. That’s why you’ve got to always pay attention to the way they’re behaving. They can’t tell you something’s wrong with words, so you have to figure it out from the way they’re acting. And dogs are sneaky and fast. They can get into things quicker than you can blink, and you wouldn’t even know they’d done anything until it was too late.”
This was one more reason Riley should never have married me, and an even bigger reason he shouldn’t have trusted me to take care of his dogs. I wouldn’t have the first clue if Max or Lola were sick until it was already well beyond too late, and even if I did catch on, I wouldn’t know how to handle it.
I supposed I could always call Grady, but what if he couldn’t help me? What if he was busy with one of his other clients, or one of his own animals was sick?
Maybe I could call Anne or one of the other WAGs, but I would hate to do that. I didn’t want them to think I was using them or taking advantage of their friendship.
And if either Max or Lola got sick enough they couldn’t walk, how could I get them to the vet? They both weighed more than I did. I couldn’t carry them. I couldn’t drag them, not even far enough to get into the SUV. I’d be up a creek without a paddle.
This was a bad situation, all around. And now I felt panicky again, and it was just because I was alone with Riley’s pets, and I felt inadequate to meet their needs. There was a lot more involved in being a pet owner than simply knowing how much to feed them and making sure they had clean water.
I was in over my head.
Way over my head.
We walked to the dog park, Max and Lola happily leading the way, and then we took off their leashes and let them run free for a while. Even though I still needed a jacket, the spring air felt nice, and the park was dotted with the buds of wildflowers just starting to bloom.
Grady and I took a seat on one of the benches next to a couple of other dog owners we’d seen here a time or two before, and we watched the dogs romping through the field.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Grady said after a bit.
“Just thinking.”
“Just worrying, more like.”
I chuckled, because he was right. He barely knew me, but he knew that much. Apparently, I was an open book. “Maybe I’m worrying a bit,” I conceded.
“If Max and Lola get sick, you’ll manage. You’re a lot more capable than you think, you know.”
“Not capable enough to lift one of those dogs into Riley’s SUV and get them to the vet. Not if they’re too sick to do it on their own. And what if they try to attack because they don’t understand I’m trying to help them?” Dogs could do that, after all. Couldn’t they?
“Then you can call me or someone else to help you out. Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re admitting defeat.”
I realized that, but still. “I’d rather they just didn’t get sick on my watch.”
“Things rarely work out the way we want them to. Bad things always happen at the worst possible moment. But you’ll still manage. You’ll figure it out, because you’re tough, and you’re a survivor, and that’s what you do.”
A survivor? Hardly. I rolled my eyes, staring out at the park so he wouldn’t see.
“Think we should head back yet?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to the way I’d responded to his suggestion.
But seriously, me? Tough? Not even close.
We probably should get home soon. It was late in the day, and I was still unconvinced that I wasn’t coming down with a virus, if not something worse. “Yeah, probably so,” I said. I got up and gathered my things. “Max! Lola! Let’s go.”
The dogs lumbered over to my side, tails wagging and tongues lolling out of their mouths while drool dripped from their chins. I carefully reached over to fit their leashes on their collars again, not overly keen to be covered in doggy slobber.
But I was still stuck on the fact that Grady had called me a survivor. How did he figure that? I’d spent the majority of my life just scrabbling for a grip, searching for a toehold, trying to keep my head above water so I could ride out the latest wave that threatened to drag me under.
In a way, I was glad someone had that kind of faith in me. I only wished it were me. It would be nice to be able to agree with him. It’d be nice to believe in myself.
I WAS PRACTICALLY sick from missing Mackenzie, and we’d only been gone for two days so far. Four more days to go before I’d be home and could drag her into my arms again.
And no, even though she’d warned me about a possible stomach bug, I seemed to be fine on that front. No signs of stomach upset. It wasn’t that sort of illness.
Just homesickness.
Or maybe I was lovesick.
Was that even a thing? I wasn’t sure, but if it was, I would claim it right now. I missed my wife more than could possibly be healthy.
It killed me that she’d been sick and I wasn’t there to take care of her. Yeah, Max and Lola would do their best to keep her in bed so she could rest, but that was about all they could do to help out. They couldn’t take her to a doctor if she needed it. They couldn’t cook or clean for her. They couldn’t do anything but provide moral support, which was helpful enough in its own way but sorely lacking in others.
I hoped Mackenzie would at least call Anne or one of the other WAGs to help her if she needed it, but something told me she wouldn’t. I got the sense that she didn’t want to be a burden on anyone.
Well, I called bullshit on that.
My wife wasn’t a burden, and everyone needed a bit of help sometimes. I was proof enough of that. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I could do anything I set my mind to. But then there was all the time when I’d been dealing with my injury and I’d needed help.
She’d dropped everything to take care of me while I was recovering, waking up in the middle of the night to get ice for my ankle and doing any number of other tasks that should have been performed by a nurse. If she was sick, she needed to let someone else help her out in the same ways.
But I wasn’t there to be the one to do it, and that killed me.
Maybe I should call Anne myself, come to think of it. Because Mackenzie likely wouldn’t do anything of the sort if I knew her as well as I thought I did.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I shot off a quick text message to Anne, asking her to check in on my Mackenzie and maybe take her some soup. I didn’t think there was any in my pantry, and if she was sick she shouldn’t be trying to cook. That helped ease my mind somewhat, but I doubted anything would really calm my nerves short of getting home and seeing Mackenzie for myself.
Anne replied that she was on it. So I could breathe a bit, at least for now.
The degree of my distraction so far on this road trip was unreal. I’d never experienced this kind of longing before while out with the team, this urgent desire to be home and in my own bed. But it wasn’t my home or my bed that I missed, or even my dogs, so much as the woman who slept beside me.
I missed the sweet scent of her hair and the way it would tickle my shoulder when she rested her head on my chest.
I missed the determined sound of her voice when she tried to give Lola a command but failed to get my stubborn dog to listen to her.
I missed the little ways she would surprise me, whether it was through confronting her fears or getting a job.
I missed her, and no amount of calls or text messages would make the longing go away.
I’d been practicing with the team, wearing a yellow no-contact sweater, for the first couple of days of this trip, but this morning, the trainers gave me the go-ahead for full contact. My ankle had been feeling good, and every time I skated, I was faster and felt more like myself.
It was time.
Thank fuck for that, too, because I didn’t know how much longer I could stand watching Koz’s attempts to fill my role on the team.
We were practicing face-offs, which I normally excelled at. Our head coach, Mattias “Bergy” Bergstrom, nudged his head in my direction, so I stepped into the face-off circle against Luc Vincent. Vinny centered our fourth line, typically, but he also spent a lot of time on the penalty kill. The guy was something of a face-off specialist. He’d make me work for it today, no doubt about it, and going up against him was exactly what I needed to prepare to get back into a game.
Bergy stood between us. He took a long, appraising look at me before turning to Vinny. “Give him hell,” he said, just before dropping the puck.
Not that Vinny or any of the rest of the boys needed any encouragement to test me. We all needed to believe I was ready to take on anything the other teams decided to throw my way. If my coaches and teammates didn’t believe I could do it, the boys might try to help me out instead of doing their own jobs on the ice.
But that wasn’t what Vinny intended here. He knew his role, and today his job was to use every trick in the book to test me. Sure enough, Vinny pulled off a few moves I didn’t even realize he had in his arsenal to beat me, including angling his body so that he could block my stick.
Bergy didn’t step in or make any attempt to stop him, not even when he was cheating blatantly, but it didn’t matter.
I wasn’t going to let anyone get the better of me.
I moved my skate in to block Vinny’s stick and got my blade on the puck about a nanosecond before he would have, pulling it back to Cody Williams, better known to the guys as Harry because of his ginger-haired good looks that reminded everyone of the British prince.
Vinny whacked at my skates, but there was a big shit-eating grin taking up half his face as he did it. “Nice to have you back. I’ll fucking kick your ass next time, though.”
“I’d like to see you try,” I shot back, but I was already skating away from him so I could get into position to complete the drill.
Harry passed the puck to Burnzie, who skated it into the offensive zone and sent it over to Babs. Once the forwards had control, we pulled off a tic-tac-toe move, between Babs, Ghost, and me. I was the last to touch the puck, dropping it behind me so one of the D could get off a slapper toward the goal. Burnzie’s shot sailed high over the goal, hitting the glass so hard I was surprised it didn’t shatter.
“Be glad that wasn’t my head,” Nicky called out as we skated over to the bench so the next two lines could take their turns at the drill.
“If I wanted to take you out, I would have,” Burnzie called back. “Good thing I like you.”
“More like you need me since you’re a slow, crippled, old man.”
“Who’s old?” Soupy joked, lining up near the face-off dot for the next drill.
I noticed he didn’t argue with the crippled part.
“If anyone needs a walker out here, it’s me,” Hammer said, slowly skating into position, bent over with a hand on the small of his back. “I’m getting older by the second, so can we fucking get on with this? I’m growing gray hairs while you boys argue.”
“All right, old man,” Cole Paxton, his defensive partner, said, not that Colesy was all that much younger than Hammer. “You can soak in Epsom salts later. We’ve got a job to do now. Besides, you’re already gray.”
“Only a little gray,” Hammer replied, sounding faux-wounded.
Yeah, Hammer was getting up there in years, but he was still the strongest guy on the team by a mile, and everyone knew it. Especially the younger guys. They marveled at how much Hammer could bench-press in the gym. It seemed as though every year, Hammer came back stronger than the year before. The guy was hard as a rock and the toughest son of a bitch I’d ever known. I was always glad he was on my side and not playing for the other team.
We went through a few more rounds of the current drill before Bergy and the rest of the coaches had us line up for the next one on the schedule. I was just getting into position when Archie lumbered out to the bench area and spoke to the coaches at the bench.
The next thing I knew, David Weber, one of our assistant coaches, was waving me over. “RJ! You’d better go with Archie. Jim Sutter needs you.”
Jim Sutter was our general manager. We’d already passed the trade deadline, though, so I didn’t have any idea what he might need to talk to me about that was important enough to drag me out of my first practice back.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
My feet felt like lead in my skates as I headed toward the bench. Several of the guys slapped me on the back in camaraderie as I went, and Ghost followed me all the way to the boards.
“What’s up?” I asked, dreading the answer. Maybe Doc had changed his mind and was taking me off the ice. Maybe they’d found some loophole in the Collective Bargaining Agreement that allowed them to trade me after the deadline had already passed, something to do with my injury keeping me out at the deadline and making me untradeable at the time. Granted, I knew that wasn’t a possibility, but my brain was going about a hundred miles an hour, and all of it was bad.
Archie just angled his head toward the tunnel and started walking that way.
“Is it all right if I go with him?” Ghost asked the coaches.
They nodded, and the two of us hurried to catch up with Archie.
Mr. Sutter was waiting in the tunnel, wearing a somber expression that I couldn’t interpret. “It’s Mackenzie,” he said without preamble, and the ground just about slipped out from under me.
“What’s wrong with her? What happened? Is she worse?” This was only the first time I’d had to leave her, of what was sure to be many. I couldn’t handle it if… Hell, I couldn’t even let my mind go there.
But in lieu of answering me, Mr. Sutter held out his own cell phone to me.
After a moment, I realized the screen was lit up. Meaning Mackenzie was on the phone.
She needed me.
She needed me right now.
I grabbed the cell from the general manager’s hand and pressed it to my ear in a panic. “What’s wrong? What is it? Are you okay? You’re worse now, aren’t you? Do you need to go to the doctor? You should just go to the hospital. Don’t’ even mess with going to the doctor first.”
“Slow down and let her talk,” Ghost said, and I knew he was right, but it was hard to rein myself in because I could hear Mackenzie sniffling on the other end of the line.
“It’s Lola,” she finally said.
“Lola?”
The world might as well have started spinning right then, because I felt more light-headed than I could ever remember feeling before. Ghost had to reach out a hand to steady me so I wouldn’t fall.
“She’s sick and I don’t know what to do.”