Chapter Ten

Reeve

After Keely leaves, I sit down on the couch and start icing my knee.

Missing tonight's game is the stark reality check that if I don't do everything I can to recover and rehab, then two nights ago might have been my last night as a professional hockey player.

Keely's right to say that my recovery should be our primary focus. If I want to play again, I need to put everything I have into getting back to playing at my highest level.

My phone rings and I glance down at the caller.

Dad calling…

"Hey pops," I say.

"Reeve. Hi, son. How are you feeling since I talked to you yesterday? You're home from the hospital, right?"

The last time we talked, I was still waiting in my hospital room to be discharged, and then last night, when he texted to check in, my phone was on silent while Keely and I spent the evening together.

"Yeah, and the Hawkeyes already hired me a physical therapist who they moved into the building to make sure I have the best shot at rehabbing my knee, so you don't need to pay for one, but I appreciate the offer."

Not that he would have needed to with the money I make, even if the Hawkeyes weren't covering it. But my dad did well for himself and he's always offering to pay for anything I need. Maybe it's his way of making up for not being in my life as much as we both wanted him to be.

He started out as a roughneck in Alaska at eighteen for an oil rigging company, and then by the time I was six, he had worked his way up the company far enough that they offered him a position to run his own oil field in Texas, and that's where he still lives with my stepmom, living in an upscale gated community, driving golf carts instead of vehicles around the premises.

"I know you don't like the idea, but what about an in-house caretaker? I could pay to have someone around to run errands and make food for you. Maybe do laundry... that sort of thing."

"I'm fine pops, I promise."

"You'll let me know if you change your mind?"

I can hear the worry in his voice.

"I will," I assure him.

"You're sure I shouldn't come out there? I could spend a couple of weeks or a month with you and--"

"I'm good, I swear. My teammates all live in the same building, and the PT now lives across the hall. I have more help than I can handle," I tell him to put his mind at ease.

Ever since I moved from Alaska to Texas when I was fourteen, he seems to think I won't communicate if I need help or if there's trouble. I guess our history might bring him to that conclusion.

"If your mom were still alive, she'd be there with you. She'd know what to do."

It's a nice memory to have of my mom, but in the end, she couldn't take care of herself, let alone me. He keeps her memory in the good lighting, and I appreciate it because that's where I like to keep her, too. But some of his reasoning is from the guilt he feels, though in all fairness, she left him.

"You're doing just fine, pops."

The phone goes static for a second.

"How are you doing with the pain meds?" he asks.

I knew he'd eventually ask—after all, it goes along with the history.

"I told them I didn't want any."

"Reeve..." he says with a sigh of disappointment. "Your mom's therapist shouldn't have said what she said to you. You were too young to be told those things. Whether an addictive tendency is written in your DNA or not, it doesn't mean you'll become an addict. Your mother had a series of unfortunate events that left her in pain all the time and she didn't seek out help as soon as she should have.hat doesn't mean that you're predestined to become an addict. And if your mother knew that you denied pain meds because of her, she'd—"

"She'd ask the doctor to prescribe them anyway behind my back and tell them I changed my mind? Or steal the ones I did get from my medicine cabinet?"

I hate talking about her like this, which is why I don't talk about her much at all.

I like to remember all the ways that she nurtured my dreams as a hockey player and used every dollar my dad paid her in child support to pay for extra coaching, new equipment, and summer hockey camps. She drove me to every practice and sat in the stands for the entire duration. She didn't bring a tablet or a book with her. She'd just sit there watching every minute. She was my biggest fan.

I don't want to remember her as an addict because that's not who she was... but it doesn't mean her addiction hasn't shaped me into who I am now, because it has.

"I'm sorry I didn't see it, son. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me to be--when both of you needed me."

My dad's constant guilt isn't fair, either.

He thought he was giving us a better life in Texas, but she didn't want the big house or the spending account.

She just wanted the same twenty-one-year-old roughneck man she married and a simple life in Alaska--the only home she had ever known.

"Actually, I changed my mind. We haven't seen each other in a while. I do want you to come. But how about Christmas in Seattle? Has Caroline ever had a snowy Christmas?"

Caroline is my stepmom and the honest-to-God nicest person I've ever met.

If you looked up Texas debutante in the dictionary, her picture would be right beside it. You'd also find her picture next to Southern Hospitality.

I know that a lot of people don't get along with their step-parents, but Caroline is impossible to hate. It would be like trying to hold a grudge against a Teletubby or a gummy bear.

If it's all an act, then she deserves a fucking Oscar because I haven't seen her slip up once over the eighteen-plus years I've known her.

"She'd love it! I'll have her start looking for a house rental for the weekend."

"Sounds good pops."

"I love you, Reeve."

"I love you too, dad."

I fill the rest of my day with research on past athletes who have had knee surgeries and came back to play professionally again. I know this is Keely's area of expertise, but I need something to fill my time and distract me from the fact that I should be heading into the stadium to warm up right about now, and instead, I can't even go down to at least be in the locker room with the guys tonight because Coach Bex and Sam don't trust that I won't reinjure myself.

When Keely shows back up to the apartment, my heart sinks at the t-shirt she's wearing. It has Oakley's logo on it, and it's just another reminder that even Keely gets to celebrate with my team, and I don't.

We eat the pizza she brought and I walk over to her new apartment with her to see the place. Or at least that's what I tell her, but in truth, I want to make sure she's safe and that there isn't anything wrong with the apartment.

It's a studio, so it's smaller than mine by an entire bedroom, but it's also temporary, and she says it's bigger than the place she has at Oakley's, so it's more than adequate for her needs. I'm just glad that it worked out and she is close by.

We head back to my apartment so she can get her purse and phone that she left and then she pulls out a baby monitor from the department store she went to today.

"Do we need to have the birds and bees talk? Because I only used my fingers this morning. And if you gauged my girth at only two fingers wide, then I'm mildly insulted."

"I'll never tell," she singsongs and then takes the baby monitor to my room.

The anticipation at what she plans on doing with that has my body thrumming with excitement and my brain firing off a million dirty images of Keely, me, and a camera.

Or shit... Keely and a camera would be fine too.

I make my way toward my bedroom to find Keely plugging the camera in and turning a switch on the top.

"I turned off the camera so that I can't see you on the other end, I can only hear you. And it's on mute so I can only hear you when you turn it on. I got it so that I can hear you tonight. If you need me, I can easily zip over and help," She looks down at her phone, her eyes flashing. "I have to go. I told my uncle I would be there a little early to help with inventory before the crowd hits at happy hour. Are you going to be okay while I'm gone?"

"I'll be fine, don't worry about me. I'll just be here icing my knee and learning about the mating ritual of the humpback whale."

"Spoiler alert, but did you know that the males engage in a weird ritual where they fight and try to push each other out of line behind the female? It's also rumored that ultimately females pick their mates and researchers believe that it's usually the larger, stronger, older males."

I stare back at her as she sets the camera next to my bed and checks the monitor to make sure it's working on her end.

"You just gave me a huge brain boner."

"Excuse me?" she chuckles.

"You're really smart, and it's freaking hot."

"Thank you," she smiles, a flicker of something in her eye. "And I think it's cute that out of everything you could watch on TV, that you watch the Discovery Channel."

"Cute?" I say with a scoff. "You have to do better than that."

"Okay, fine, I find it outrageously sexy that you choose to watch humpback whales doing it in your spare time."

"That's better."

She shakes her head and then heads toward me standing in my bedroom doorway.

"Now I really have to go. I'm going to drop the monitor off at my apartment and then I'm going to head to the bar. You might be asleep by the time I get home so make sure you turn on the monitor before you go to bed," she says.

"Okay," I say but my stomach knots up at the idea of her going to the bar without me there to walk her to her car.

"Hey, Keely?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't walk to your car alone. And make sure to look both ways."