Chapter 66: An absentminded accident

​Miller came across the blue line, sending a hard, standard pass toward Reid’s stick. A normal Reid McCoy would have caught it effortlessly on the backhand and skated it clear. But because he was so entirely absent-minded, his timing was a fraction of a second late. His blade clipped the puck poorly, the black rubber skittering away.

​Reid tried to force a sharp, unnatural correction, digging his skate edge violently into the ice to pivot his massive frame around while carrying way too much speed.

​His blade caught a deep rut in the ice.

​A loud, sharp crack echoed through the quiet rink as his ankle caught the brunt of his momentum. His body completely lost its balance, and he took a nasty, heavy fall, his body sliding hard across the cold surface before slamming heavily into the rigid boards near the team bench.

​The sound of his impact was sickening.

​"Ah, damn it!" Reid growled out, a raw, breathy curse tearing from his throat as he rolled onto his side, his hands instantly clutching his left leg.

His helmet hit the ice with a dull thud, his sharp features twisting into a grimace of pure, unadulterated pain.

​"Whistle! Whistle!" Coach Devin shouted, his boots stomping furiously along the bench as the medical trainer immediately sprinted onto the ice with a medical kit. "McCoy, stay down! Don’t move that leg!"

​The entire team crowded around the boards, a heavy, anxious silence falling over the rink. I skated over slowly and stopped a few feet away from where the trainer was already unlacing Reid’s skate.

​Reid was pale, his eyes shut tight as he breathed through his nose, his jaw clenched so hard a vein was pulsing on his temple. It was a real, physical injury—a severe ankle sprain, if not worse—born entirely out of his own stubborn, distracted stupidity.

​"He’s done for the day," the trainer announced, looking up at Devin. "We need to get him off the ice and back to his place to elevate it immediately. No pressure on it for at least forty-eight hours."

​"Great. Fantastic," Devin muttered, rubbing his temples in pure frustration before glaring down at the rookie. "Get him out of here."

​As two of the teammates helped lift Reid to his feet to drag him toward the tunnel, his smoky grey eyes cracked open.

Through the haze of pain, his gaze tracked through the crowd until it locked directly onto me. He looked furious, humiliated, and incredibly vulnerable—but the stubborn, snobbish prick still tried to harden his jaw as he passed me.

​I just stared back at him, my face a completely blank, cold mask. You idiot.

​"Alright, back to work!" Coach Devin’s voice boomed, shattering the silence as the tunnel doors clicked shut behind the injured rookie. "Miller, you’re filling in on the first line for the rest of the morning drills. Let’s see some actual focus today!"

​The whistle blew, and the rink erupted back into the familiar roar of scraping blades and slamming boards. But my mind was entirely somewhere else.

​By the time practice finally wrapped up, the locker room was thick with quiet anxiety.

The guys were murmuring about the medical update, wondering if our star rookie was going to be sidelined for the massive game against the Avalanche.

Marcus walked in just as I was pulling my regular clothes back on, a tablet tucked under his arm.

​"The trainer just dropped McCoy off at his place," Marcus sighed, looking directly at me. "It’s a severe ankle sprain. No fracture, but he’s confined to his apartment. Kain, as the Captain, I need you to head over there after you’re done here. Check on him, make sure he’s actually resting, and get a read on his mindset. We can’t afford our first-line winger dropping out of the mental game before Friday."

​I let out a low, irritated breath, my hands pausing on the zipper of my jacket.

The absolute last thing I wanted to do was walk into Reid McCoy’s luxury apartment and play nursemaid, especially after the stunt he pulled at the studio.

But as the Captain, turning down a welfare check on an injured player in front of the manager wasn’t an option.

​"Fine," I muttered, grabbing my keys. "I’ll go."

​Thirty minutes later, I stood outside the door of Reid’s penthouse apartment downtown. The building was ridiculously high-end, wrapped in tough security and quiet, carpeted hallways that felt entirely too suffocating.

So, this was what he meant when he said his family couldn’t cut ties with him. They still provide him with the best life despite his rebellion. Well, that sports car he drove to my family’s house on Sunday evening was quite the statement, so I didn’t expect any less of his house.

​I didn’t bother knocking softly. I rapped my knuckles hard against the wood, my face twisted into a thoroughly grumpy, annoyed expression.

​The door unlocked with a quiet, electronic click after a long moment. When I pushed it open and walked into the sprawling, minimalist living room, the first thing that hit my senses wasn’t the sleek luxury furniture or the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the grey Seattle skyline.

​It was the scent.

​Without his need to suppress it or the cold air of the rink to contain it, the heavy, concentrated drift of frozen pine was thick in the apartment, vibrating with a raw, restless edge of physical pain and pure frustration.

​Reid was sprawled out on a massive dark leather sofa, his left leg elevated on a mountain of pillows, heavily wrapped in a thick compression ice-pack.

He had stripped down to a loose grey t-shirt, his hair a messy, uncombed disaster. The moment he saw me walk in, his smoky grey eyes flared with a sudden, sharp defensiveness, his jaw instantly clenching.

​"What are you doing here, Evans?" he grumbled, his voice rough and completely lacking its usual smooth, arrogant polish. "Come to gloat?"

​"Marcus sent me," I said coldly, slamming the door shut behind me and walking over to stand at the edge of the sofa, crossing my arms over my chest.

I looked down at his swollen ankle, then met his irritated gaze.

"But if I knew you were just going to lie here and pout like a miserable child, I would have told him to come himself." I clicked my tongue. "What the hell were you doing out there today, McCoy? You looked like a complete amateur."