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CHAPTER TWO

TUCKER

It was the moment I realized there was still no better feeling than when my skates hit the ice that I knew I was going to be okay. Trapped in the hospital, missing huge pieces of my body, I felt like I’d lost everything that had once made me the person I was.

It took seventeen months after my final surgery before I was able to do it and another three years before I stopped falling on my ass every time I let go of the wall. But it happened.

I’d never play hockey the way I used to, but being able to propel myself around the ice, using my stick as a guide so I didn’t ram into the walls, was everything. It was how I calmed myself down, which was something I desperately needed after the hell weekend in Vegas.

Two weeks had passed, but I still wasn’t over it, and I was pretty sure half my team, most of the kids I coached, my roommate, and my other best friend were plotting a Julius Caesar–style murder against me if I didn’t stop obsessing.

Et tu, ya fuckin’ Brutuses?

They were supposed to have my back, goddamn it. But it was kind of hard to get over my brother getting ready to marry my ex, waking up in a strange hotel room with no idea how I got there, and having to ride a goddamn luggage cart back to my room because my legs were missing.

Not to mention the creepy fuckin’ anonymous note attached to them as they sat at my front door. I supposed the only saving grace was the fact that no one had any idea how expensive these things were and were too creeped out to steal them and sell them on the black market.

If there was an actual black market for stolen prosthetics.

I made a note to look into it.

Then another note to make sure Ford or Boden wiped my search history if I ever turned up dead.

“Yo! Who’s on the ice?”

I swiveled around, using my stick to keep me balanced. I’d never been much of a figure skater, and it was worse now that I had no control of my feet. Turning my head, I squinted to see who was skating toward me. It only took a second before a familiar dark head of hair appeared in my sightline.

“Jonah!” I called out. He was the goalie on the blind hockey team that used the same rink we did for their practice. He was also my assistant coach for the peewees. “Get the fuck off my ice, bro. I booked it.”

“Make me,” he said with a grin. He skated forward until his stick touched mine with a soft tap. Goalies were the only players on the team required to be fully blind, but it was easy to forget sometimes that Jonah’s freaky anime eyes were prosthetics. He met my gaze more often than most of the guys on my sled team did. “When did you get back?”

Shit. I hadn’t seen anyone apart from Ford, Boden, and my team at the last practice since the disaster trip. And I knew it was hot gossip. We lived in a small town where shit rarely ever happened, so right now, I was the most interesting guy in the world.

And it didn’t help that we were like a damn knitting circle with the way rumors spread around from team to team.

Plus, I’d been bitching to anyone within earshot, so I guess most of that was my fault.

“Uh. A little bit ago.” There. Nice and vague.

“Bad, huh?”

I had no chill. “I hated every second. My brother’s a jackass, his friends are still trying to live their frat bro glory days, my ex is still a bitch, and apparently , I got blackout drunk and woke up in a hooker’s hotel room.”

He didn’t move, like the ice had frozen him to the spot. Then, after a breath, he burst into laughter. Doubled over, he gripped his stick to keep him upright. “What the fuck, dude?” His head tipped up to face me. “No, seriously. What the fuck? This is like movie levels of nonsense. You killed a hooker and lost your liver, or?—”

“Oh my God, no. Shut up.” I skated a half circle around him, and he followed the sounds of my blades on the ice. “I didn’t kill anyone, and I still have all my organs. But, uh…I might have woken up alone with no memory of what happened, and both my legs were missing.”

He burst into laughter again, and it took him a good minute to be able to speak. “Shit. Really?”

“Yep. I found them, so it’s all good. But I had to get carted around like some 1930s carnivàle half-man on a luggage cart because I was, like, seven floors above my room.”

His face turned red with how hard he was trying to keep his composure. “Sorry.”

“Fuck you.”

He burst into another fit of giggles. “Where’d you find your legs? Lost and found?”

“Bro, get this shit. They were leaning up against my hotel door with a Post-it note stuck to the side. No name or anything. Just…here’s your legs. Have a great day.”

Jonah grimaced. “Okay, that’s a little creepy.”

“Right? God, it could have been anybody.”

He felt around with his stick again until it tapped mine, and then he jerked his head and took off in sprints. I followed suit. “What if it was a celebrity?” he said as he zoomed circles around me. “Holy shit, isn’t Britney Spears doing a Vegas show right now?”

“Uh. No?” Was she? Jesus, I hoped I hadn’t run into her that night. The last thing I needed was some celebrity talking about the legless guy they rescued from a self-imposed spiral. But God, I guess it could have been anyone.

“Your silence is telling,” he said, swiveling around to skate backward. He lasted about four seconds before he slammed into the boards and fell on his ass.

“Hand,” I told him, offering it out.

He grabbed it and waited for me to brace myself on my stick before using me to climb back onto his skates. Jonah’s grin was young and boyish—probably because he was young and boyish—and he ruffled a hand through his hair before taking off again.

He was easy to see in his bright yellow jersey, and I followed him along, feeling free like this. If I stumbled and fell, no one cared here. I didn’t need a cane. I didn’t need help.

I could just…be myself.

I took a deep breath of the frigid air as I caught up with him. “Well, I don’t think it was a celebrity. Their handwriting was too crap for it. I have some super-vague memories of talking to people at the bar right after my brother and his friends left for the strip club though.”

Jonah turned around to skate backward again, but this time, he managed the turn before hitting the boards. “They left you and went to a strip club?”

“Dude, no. I didn’t want to go.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Uhh…because I can’t see shit in a dim room? I don’t want to sit in some slimy-ass, come-covered booth to listen to thighs slapping together.”

“Sounds like a rockin’ good time to me,” he said with a grin.

“I’m flipping you off.”

He burst into laughter again. “It’s funny because I know you’re not.” He was right. “Anyway, so let me guess. You were at the craps table losing poorly and met a hooker who promised you a better way to spend your money?”

“Where the fuck did you get that idea?”

“A porn me and Micah watched a few nights ago,” he said with a grin, and then he turned and snowed me as he came to a stop.

“Stop watching porn with Micah,” I told him. Micah was his brother—the goalie on his rival team, both blind from the same birth condition. But Micah was a fucking goblin, and compared to him, Jonah was like one of those chubby-cheeked cherub angels.

“It had audio description and everything. I can lend you a copy. Top-tier sex sounds.”

“Pass. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get it up again until my test results come back and I get some sort of memory of what the fuck I did with my dick that night.”

He grimaced. “Oh shit. Good point. You get the swab?”

I shuddered. I’d gotten the swab, and I could still feel that freaky pull behind my belly button that sent nerve aches all the way into my jaw. “Mm. Blood work, all that shit. I have to go back in for an HIV recheck, but I’ve been on PrEP for a few years, so my doctor seemed pretty sure I was alright.”

“Just gotta check you for the clap.”

“I hate you.”

“Aw, buddy, it’s not that bad,” he said again with a small grin. He still had the faintest twinge of his Ontario accent. “I had it like six years ago. The doctor gave me this powered antibiotic that tasted like grape Kool-Aid mixed with bitter ass juice. I stirred it into water and pounded it back like a frat boy taking down Goldschl?ger. Cleared it right up.”

“Good for you,” I said flatly.

He snorted. “Anyway. You were saying? Foggy memories of a bar and then what?”

I squeezed my eyelids shut and focused on the side of my face where there was no vision at all. It was still odd to have a total lack of anything there. My brain sometimes hallucinated shapes on my right side because it never did fully adjust to the loss.

“Tuck?”

“Black hair,” I blurted as a memory hit me. Wild black hair that was impossibly thick and hung over his forehead. And tan skin. And a large Roman nose. And…an adorable smile? A gorgeous laugh? And a baby face, kind of like Boden had.

God, was I making that up?

“Sorry, bud, black hair isn’t a lot to go on. I don’t even know what that looks like.”

I couldn’t remember much else other than him laughing and touching my hand. Or was I touching his?

“…thought I could take a moment to myself, but it feels like I’ll never be able to get away…”

“He was sad,” I blurted again.

Jonah leaned on his stick, his gaze pointed just above my waist. “Aww, you’re such a poet, Tuck.”

“No, like, genuinely. He was sad. We were talking about depressing shit. I don’t think he’s the guy I went to the room with. He was way too morose to get laid.”

“So that leaves you at square one.”

“Utterly fucked, except hopefully not literally, which would make this all a lot more bearable,” I said with a sigh. Then my alarm started blaring, and I jumped so hard I fell right on my ass. He grinned down at me.

“Hand,” he managed through another fit of giggles.

“Thanks, dick.” It was nice to use someone’s steady body to stand for a change, and I adjusted my legs, which had twisted a bit, before pulling out my phone. My alarm to let me know it was time for work. “Kids’ll be here in ten. Get the fuck off my ice so I can finish my drills. And you take jersey duty today, please.”

“You owe me.”

“Ten blowjobs.”

He grinned. “Grow a pair of tits and I’ll consider it.”

I smiled back. “Open your horizons, Jonah. Someone like me will rock your world.”

He giggled again, then headed for the small swinging door and left me to my ice and contemplation. But my brain appeared to be done spitting out memories for the day, so after four more laps and nothing but a new ache in my hips, I decided it was time to call it quits.

Whatever the fuck happened in Vegas was apparently destined to stay there.

* * *

Even with shit vision, I could see Boden’s Glare of Disapproval—in all caps—staring at me from across the restaurant. I leaned heavily on my walking cane as I navigated through the narrow tables, and it was honestly beyond me why he kept choosing this place to have dinner.

It was a whole-ass ordeal every time he wanted to get in and out with his wheelchair, but he still did it. Of course, he was a creature of habits so intense they drove me out of my goddamn skull and made me often question why I was still this dipshit’s roommate.

Love, I guessed. Because I did love him. He was a better brother to me than Killian had ever been.

He was in his manual chair today, and he rolled back slightly as I approached, which was his version of standing up to be polite. “Such a gentleman.”

“Take notes,” he said flatly. His Quebecois accent was thicker the way it always was when he spent extended periods of time back home. He usually stayed with his grandfather in some little one-horse town about an hour outside of Montreal.

It was deep in the woods, and it was healing, at least according to Boden. He was closer to his mom’s side of the family than his dad’s, except for his grandfather. Who also happened to be half of all of Boden’s mental and emotional trauma.

He was the man who attempted to start a family hockey legacy after winning four Stanley Cups in his youth.

His son, Boden’s dad, had hoisted two in his career.

But Boden would hoist zero because even if the NHL did unclench their fucking panties about disabled players, Boden’s cerebral palsy assured him that he’d never be able to skate on his feet. It was something he’d grown up knowing and something that never stopped eating at him.

The man had two fucking gold medals, and it wasn’t good enough for his family.

Boden was intense—it was like he absorbed all the fucks I lost after my accident and made them his whole personality.

Seriously, why did I love this guy?

“How was practice?”

“The usual.” I grabbed his beer and ignored his irritated look as I gulped down half, then grimaced because of course it was that no-calorie, non-alcoholic garbage. “Kids got into a bunch of fights, one of them broke their glasses, and I took a stick to the face.” I turned my head to show off the red mark on my jaw that would be light green by morning. “It’s a good thing I don’t have a partner. Poor fucker would be arrested by now after trying to tell people I get beat up by eight-year-olds and not them.”

At that, Boden’s lip twitched, which for him was basically a belly laugh.

“And you?” We hadn’t talked much since I’d been back, but I knew he had a long, long meeting today about the new team coach. Brad was quitting—his wife was from Spain, and I didn’t exactly blame him from wanting to spend his new life fucking her on a private beach in Marbella. But losing him was going to suck.

Finding a coach was hard enough. Finding one who understood sled hockey and our experience was like finding the perfect needle in a stack of slightly less perfect needles. And finding all that for a beer league team that paid basically peanuts was like asking for someone to lasso the moon and stick it in that English museum that liked to display stolen artifacts.

He sighed. “Jacob made an executive decision.”

Jacob Hardt—the owner of the Wolves. He was an asshole and a half, but he had a shitload of money, and while he’d never put his prissy ass in a sled, he was a wheelchair user, so we never had to fight for the things we needed when it came to the rink and equipment.

We just sometimes had to fight for everything else. He seemed to think that throwing money at a problem would solve it, and he didn’t seem to get that we were all a bunch of broke assholes without a lot of employment prospects.

I got paid jack shit to coach the blind peewee team, and I only made my rent because I could do private lessons six days a week. I didn’t really mind all that much, of course. I loved the ice, and sleep was for the weak. I did plenty of it in my coma, and I’d do the rest when I was dead.

But I could see the strain on the others’ faces. We weren’t the professional league, but Jacob treated us like it more often than not.

“You meet this new guy?” I asked.

Boden didn’t get the chance to answer when the server came over, and I sat back and let my precious little control freak best friend order for us. He knew what I liked anyway.

“India Pale Ale,” he said, gesturing at me. “Two very large waters with no ice. Two Cobb salads with dressing on the side?—”

“And an order of wings. Extra hot sauce, extra ranch,” I cut in. He gave me a filthy look. “I’m a growing boy, and I need my protein.”

The server laughed as she took our menus, and I appreciated that Boden didn’t try and mom away my wings in spite of knowing it would, for sure, give me the shits later.

“Brad wasn’t at the meeting,” Boden said when we were finally alone. “But the new coach was.” He did not sound happy.

The server dropped off my beer and our waters, and I gulped down half the water first, then took a long sip of the bubbly ale. “What’s this guy’s deal? Is it a guy?” Not that I cared. Competence was way more important than gender.

“It’s a guy. Hugo Martin.” He said that very, very French.

“Your neck of the woods, eh?”

He flipped me off as he finished off his own beer, then set it aside in favor of his water. “No. He was born and raised in Dijon.”

“Like…the mustard?”

“Like France,” Boden said, now officially irritated. “US education has failed you.”

“It’s failed most of us, babe.” Running my finger around the rim of my glass, I grinned at him. “So what’s this Hugo guy’s deal?”

“Deal?”

“Yeah. Like…spine injury, amputee? CP pal?”

Boden’s face went very still. “No.”

“MS?” He shook his head, and my stomach started to sink. “Stubbed toe?”

“Jacob seemed to think it doesn’t matter that he’s not disabled.”

“Like, at all?” I felt anger rising along my spine, and it was hotter than usual—and I was pretending not to know why. “He’s just some fucking French guy? Do the French even do hockey?”

“They do some hockey,” Boden said quietly.

I seethed as our food was brought over and viciously ate two wings without ranch before my tongue was pissed and my anger had somehow melded into the heat of the hot sauce. I gulped my water, then used the back of my hand to wipe my nose.

Boden made an annoyed sound and handed me a napkin. “They do ice hockey there, and he’s familiar with it.”

“So he’s played.”

“As far as I know,” Boden said, and there was a strange tension in his tone. He was holding something back. “No. He hasn’t.”

For a moment, it felt like the entire room went silent. Then, there was a whip-crack sensation in the back of my head, and all the noise flooded back in. “So we have some random French mustard guy who’s never been in a sled hired on to coach us.”

“According to this meeting, yes,” Boden said, pointing at me with his fork. He was raw-dogging his salad with no dressing, and I pretended not to notice. “Jacob doesn’t care, and there’s only so much fight I can put up.”

“Did you threaten to quit?”

Boden snorted. “That was the first thing I did. He told me to stop being dramatic and then said he’d walk me to my car if I wanted to show myself out.”

“Fucker.” Jacob was good at calling a bluff. Should have brought his ass to Vegas. “So we’re stuck.” I sat back and folded my arms, staring down at my plate. Half of it blurred into nothing as my eye started to get tired. “We should form our own team. You could ask your dad to sponsor us. He’s rich, right?”

“Not after his fourth divorce,” Boden said. “I have a better idea though.”

I leaned forward, my eyes closed, my ears tuned in. “Hit me with it.”

“We make Hugo regret the day he thought this was a good idea.”

I sat back with a massive grin. There was the Boden I knew and loved. The man who had thrown caution to the wind and let go of all his fucks for a single night in Beijing. And yes, it got us banned. And yes , he’d been working his ass off to rebuild his reputation and be invited back, as well as earn a spot in the professional sled league.

But for a moment, I was going to enjoy the angry, fierce, fiery-eyed man I’d met all those years ago. “I missed that look on your face.”

He said nothing, but he smiled as he took another sip of his water.

“Okay. So, we’ll get Ford over next weekend, and we can start formulating our plans. I think we—” My words were cut off when my phone began to buzz, and I looked down at the screen. “Speak of the devil.” I hit the Answer button. “Babe, you’ll never guess what Boden and I are doing.”

Ford was quiet for a beat, and then he cleared his throat. “That’s not important right now. I’m at your place.”

“Uh. Okay?” That wasn’t unusual.

“I needed laundry soap,” he said. Also not strange. He was always stealing our shit.

“Why do you sound freaked-out?” I was worried. His voice was almost trembling, and that was not like Ford at all. “What’s wrong? Is someone dead? Oh my God, did Betsy die?” She was our neighbor who always made us kolaches on Sundays.

“Betsy’s fine. It’s worse than that.”

What the fuck could be worse than losing Betsy? “Tell me.”

“Someone came to the door. Obviously, I answered it,” he said. Because obviously . “Tuck?”

“Um. Yeah?” Now I was really scared. Boden was staring at me with wide eyes.

‘What’s going on?’ he mouthed.

I shook my head as Ford cleared his throat.

“So…I think I figured out what you did in Vegas.”

My heart felt like it was about to stop beating. “What do you mean? What did I do?”

“Well, apparently, you got married because your husband just showed up.”