The Risk

She bites her lip and gives him a grateful look.

I change lanes to pass a truck that’s traveling half the speed limit even though it’s not raining anymore. “So you went out with Eric Royce,” I say roughly.

Her head jerks in a nod.

I remember playing against Royce a few times in high school. He was damn good. “He never went to the NHL,” I muse.

“No.” Sadness hangs in her voice. “His life turned to shit after graduation.”

“Why, though?”

“The short version? He had some emotional issues, and he liked to party. And when he partied, he partied hard.” She hesitates. “Plus, I broke up with him not long after the draft. He didn’t take it well at all.”

“Jeez,” Brooks pipes up. “You dumped the guy and sent him spiraling into a pit of drugs and despair? Savage.”

She bites her lip again.

“Brooks,” I chide. To her, I try to offer reassurance. “I’m sure his spiral wasn’t your fault.”

“No, it was. Or at least partially my fault. The breakup destroyed him. He was already prone to drinking and drugs, but after we broke up, he took it to the next level. Drinking every night, skipping school to go smoke joints with Ricky Harmon and a few guys who graduated the year before and were doing nothing with their lives. And then one weekend he fucked off to this EDM festival and got so high he forgot to show up for a crucial game. The missed practices were bad enough, but when he didn’t suit up for that game, his coach kicked him off the team.”

Speaking of coaches. “Did your dad know you were seeing Eric?”

“Yeah. It was a whole big mess.” She drops her head in her hands and lets out a weary groan. “Eric and I started dating when I was fifteen. Dad was okay with it at first, mostly because he had no choice but to be okay with it. He knew he couldn’t stop me from seeing Eric. I was too stubborn.”

“Was?” I crack.

She ignores the jab. “Anyway, after he missed that game, it was the beginning of the end for him. Chicago found out he was kicked off the team. And Eric hadn’t signed a contract yet. They were still in the negotiation phase.”

I nod in understanding. A lot of guys don’t realize that just because a team drafts you it doesn’t mean you’re immediately on that team. It simply means that franchise has exclusive rights to you for a year, during which you’re negotiating your contract.

“They didn’t want to sign him anymore,” she says sadly. “Word got around that he was a party boy, and then nobody else wanted to sign him, either. So he started partying even harder and running with a new crowd, and now here we are.”

Here we are. Ten thirty at night, driving to another state, searching for Brenna’s ex-boyfriend who may or may not have smoked meth tonight.

Awesome.

From the corner of my eye I notice Brenna wringing her hands together. I hate seeing this badass girl so shaken. And although I’m still not comfortable with this situation, I reach across the center console and grip her hand.

She glances over gratefully. “Thank you for helping me.”

“No problem,” I murmur, then pray that I’m telling the truth and there isn’t going to be a problem.

Thanks to the bad weather and late hour, the roads are blessedly empty, and we make it to the Nashua area faster than anticipated. As I get off the highway, Brenna calls Eric again.

“Hey, it’s me. GPS says we’re two minutes from Forest Lane. We’re going to turn onto it, but you need to give me a landmark or something we can use to find you.”

“This is Forest Lane,” I tell her, making the turn. Luckily the entire area has power, so the streetlamps are in working order.

“I’m seeing row houses,” she says into the phone. “Are you sitting on a curb? Sidewalk?” She curses. “In the bushes? Jesus Christ, Eric.”

I suddenly feel incredibly sorry for her. The disgust she’s trying to keep out of her tone is twisting her beautiful features, and I can’t imagine how shitty that would be, feeling so repelled by someone you were once intimate with.

“A garden with what?” she asks. “A huge spinny thing? A metal spinny thing…Eric, I don’t know what—”

“There,” Weston says, his face glued to the window. “On the right. I think he’s talking about the mini-windmill in that garden over there.”

I pull up at the curb. Brenna swings the door open before I’ve even come to a complete stop. “Wait,” I say sharply, but she’s already gone.

Shit.

I jump out of the car. Brenna is making a beeline for a tall hedge that separates two front yards. I catch up to her just as she drops to her knees.

Peering over her shoulder, I spot a hunched-over figure hugging his knees. The T-shirt he’s wearing is soaked through and plastered to his chest. Chin-length hair, dark strands either wet or greasy, frame a gaunt face. When the guy gazes up at us, his pupils are so dilated it looks like he doesn’t have any irises. Just two black circles glowing in his eyes.

He starts talking the moment he recognizes Brenna. “You’re here, oh thank God, you’re here,” he babbles. “I knew you would come, I knew you would, because we were together and you were there for me and I was good to you, right? I was good to you?”

“Yeah.” She’s utterly emotionless. “You were great. Come on, Eric, up you go.” She tries to help him to his feet, but he doesn’t budge.

I step forward.

Eric’s eyes widen in fear. “Who’s this?” he demands. “Did you call the cops on me, Bren? I thought—”

“I didn’t call the cops,” she assures him. “This is my friend, okay? He drove because I don’t have a car, and he’s agreed to take you home. Now let us help you up.”

I think he’s about to comply, but then his gaze focuses on someone behind me. Brooks’s timing couldn’t be worse.

“Who’s that!” Eric shouts in a panic. His eyes, with those enormous pupils, dart wildly between me and Brooks. “They’re here to take me away, aren’t they? I’m not going to that fucking rehab, Brenna! I don’t need it!”

“The only place we’re taking you is home,” she says calmly, but the sheer frustration clouding her face reveals that calm is the last thing she’s feeling.

“Promise!”

“I promise.” She leans in to move a hunk of wet hair off his forehead. Her fingers are shaking as she does it. I no longer feel any jealousy toward this guy. Only pity. “We’re going to take you home, okay? But you need to let my friends help you up, because I can’t do it by myself.”

Without a word, I extend a hand toward Brenna’s ex.

After a moment of hesitation, he accepts it.

I haul him to his feet. Once he’s vertical, I discover he’s around my height, six-two, or maybe a bit taller. I suspect he used to be a lot bulkier. Now he’s skinny. Not twig-skinny, but certainly not built like the hockey player he once was.

Brooks is startled as he examines Eric. He flicks a look in my direction, and I see the same pity I’m feeling reflected back at me. My teammate shrugs out of his windbreaker and steps closer to drape it over Eric’s shoulders.

“Here, man, you need to warm up,” Brooks murmurs, and the three of us guide the shivering guy toward the car.

“Westlynn is a ten-minute drive from here,” Brenna tells me when we reach the Mercedes.

This time Brooks gets in the passenger side, and Brenna sits in the backseat with Eric, who spends the entire car ride incessantly thanking us for coming to pick him up. From what I can glean, he went to visit his friend three days ago.

Three days ago.

The revelation makes me think of all those shows and documentaries about drug users. Crystal meth, in particular, is a nasty drug to be addicted to, because apparently the high doesn’t last long at all. Which leads users to take more and more, going on binges in order to maintain the high. And that’s what Eric Royce had been doing, bingeing for seventy-two hours straight. But now he’s crashing. He left his friend’s house to walk home, became completely disoriented, and wound up in a stranger’s bushes.

This was a number one draft pick.

I can’t even wrap my head around that. One minute someone is on top of the world. The next, they’re hitting rock bottom. It’s terrifying how fast and how far people can fall.

“I knew you’d come,” Eric is mumbling. “And now you’re here, and maybe you can give me fifty bucks and—”

My eyebrows shoot up.

“Well, that took a turn,” Brooks mutters to me.

“No.” Her sharp tone invites no argument. “I’m not giving you money. I drove almost an hour to—no, not just me. I dragged my friends out in the rain to come find you, to help you, and now you’re hitting me up for money? So you can buy more drugs, which are the reason you’re in this situation to begin with? What is wrong with you?”

He starts to whine. “After everything we’ve been through—”

“Exactly!” she thunders, and both Brooks and I flinch at her vehemence. “After everything we’ve been through, I don’t owe you a thing. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing, Eric.”