Knock Me for a Loop (5 page)

“Oooh, holidays with the folks. He must really like you,” Grace teased, shoving a couple of take-out containers under her arm to be taken to the kitchen, washed, and added to the recycle bin.

“Yeah,” Ronnie agreed with a smile bordering on weak. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about that. I’ve met his parents. We’ve done lunch and a couple of dinners. But Christmas …” She gave an indelicate shudder.

Grace sympathized with Ronnie’s bout of nerves, but she couldn’t claim to know anything about spending holidays with the S.O.’s parents. At least not from personal experience.

She’d never realized before how odd that was. But then, neither she nor Zack had exactly grown up like the Brady Bunch. Or the Cleavers or Ozzie and Harriet.

More like Ozzie and Sharon.

Her own mother had been a B-movie Hollywood starlet…but an A-list wannabe. She’d harbored dreams of fame and fortune and a star on the Walk of Fame, but had never gotten close to any of them. Instead, she’d gotten involved with too many untrustworthy men—managers, talent agents, and assorted lovers—who promised her the world, but delivered only lies, disappointment, and misery.

Drugs, alcohol, bad choices, and bad judgment had all driven Lola Fisher into an early grave. Much like Marilyn Monroe, she’d been found dead one morning in her own bed, booze on the nightstand and an assortment of pills spilled across the pink satin sheets.

Grace had been only twelve years old at the time, and to this day, she still wasn’t sure if her mother had accidentally overdosed or taken her own life. The medical examiner’s report had revealed exactly nothing; the media had run rampant with outrageous versions of both possibilities; and the gossip mills had speculated on everything in between.

It was an accident.

It was suicide.

It was murder.

It was tragic and senseless and left a little girl who’d had only one parent to begin with—and not a terribly doting parent, at that—an orphan.

Blinking rapidly and swallowing hard to dislodge the sudden lump in her throat, Grace hurried into the kitchen to dump her armload of trash into the sink. For a second, she stood there, hands curled around the edge of the counter, head down, breathing carefully in and out, in and out.

It had been years,
years
since her mother’s death. Since she’d been heartlessly packed up and sent halfway across the country to be dumped on the doorstep of a grandmother she’d never met. How could it possibly still have the power to catch her off guard and shake her up like this?

Ridiculous. It must be the late night. The movies. The evening’s topic of conversation. The holiday season. Anything other than actual sentimentality, when Grace prided herself on her distinct lack of sentimentality.

Pushing the precarious thoughts and emotions to the back of her mind, she returned to the living area, where Muffin was still snoozing and Ronnie was still bundled up like the Abominable Snow Monster.

“You’ll be fine,” Grace assured her, picking up where they’d left off so her friend wouldn’t suspect she’d dashed into the kitchen in an attempt to actually run away. “Take a nice bottle of wine for them—and a couple more for yourself”—she added with a sly wink—”and act like it’s any other, nondenominational visit.”

Ronnie inhaled deeply and nodded as best she could with only her eyes, nose, and mouth visible. “I suppose you’re right. And he’s going with me to my parents’ for New Year’s, so I suppose it’s only fair.”

“There you go,” Grace said, turning back to the coffee table to collect more leftovers.

As she leaned down, reaching for the empty glasses and bottle of merlot, a movement on the television screen caught her attention. She raised her head, expecting to see the usual for a hockey game—well-padded and suited-up players skating their hearts out, zipping up and down the ice, cracking their sticks into that little black puck like their lives depended on it.

Instead, the action was in slow motion for an instant replay, and what she saw made her heart tumble down to her toes, hitting every rib and internal organ along the way.

“Oh, my God.” The words slid past her lips on a hiss of air as the oxygen left her lungs. The bottle she’d just picked up slipped from her numb fingers, cracking into the edge of the table on its way to the carpeted floor, and she slowly followed it down, her knees turning to jelly.

“Oh, my God,” she said again. Gaze riveted, she sank to her knees, only peripherally aware that Ronnie was moving toward her, shifting her attention to the TV, as well.

“Oh, my God.” This time, it was Ronnie who breathed the words in disbelief. And then she was yanking off her hat and gloves, unwinding the scarf from her neck, and digging into her purse. Cell phone in hand, she punched frantically at the tiny buttons.

Somewhere in the back of her brain, Grace registered her friend’s actions, and even some of what the play-by-play announcer was saying to describe the events taking place at Quicken Loans Arena, but she couldn’t seem to make sense of it.

She didn’t know who the Rockets were playing, and didn’t particularly care. All she knew was that—thanks to yet another instant replay—a player from the opposing team, suited in white and black, was racing down the center of the ice, shifting his stick from right to left, right to left as he steered the small disk of vulcanized rubber toward the Rockets’ net.

In front of the net, weaving slightly in his typical defensive stance, was Zack. And then the puck was launched, went flying. Zack deflected, kept the black-and-white team from scoring a goal, and sent the puck back in the opposite direction.

A second later, that first player hit Zack square in the chest. His back hit the metal frame of the net with what looked to be brute force before both men lurched sideways and began to fall…and were quickly covered by half a dozen other players from both teams.

That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad. Hockey was a rough sport. Zack had garnered his share of cuts and bruises. He’d suffered bone fractures and breaks, concussions, muscle pulls. It was a minor miracle that he’d managed to retain all of his own teeth—for which Grace had always been unaccountably grateful.

But as they went down, Zack’s helmet flew off and his left leg caught on the edge of the net.

The leg held, but his body didn’t, twisting him like a Twizzler beneath the weight of a dozen players.

Grace knew it wasn’t possible to actually hear the rending of bones and tendons, or the smack of his head hitting the ice, but she could have sworn she did. Could have sworn that above the clamor of the crowd, of razor-sharp skate blades cutting over the ice, of the grunts and sounds of impact from the dog pile itself, she heard Zack’s injuries taking place one by one.

Even so, she might not have been concerned if the part of the incident they replayed most often wasn’t the part where everyone got up and skated away to resume play.

Everyone except Zack, who remained unnaturally still, his blue and red Rockets jersey a stark contrast to the crystalline ice beneath him.

“What’s going on?”

Ronnie’s voice, harsh and demanding, broke through Grace’s stupor. It took a moment for her to realize, though, that her friend wasn’t talking to her.

“We’re watching it,” she said into her cell phone. “How badly is he hurt?”

Dylan. She must be talking to Dylan. He was at the arena, covering the game for
Sports Weekly
, and he would be able to give them better updates than the commentators, who even now were merely speculating about Zack’s condition.

Where the hell was the team doctor?

Why wasn’t anyone calling 911 or doing something to help Zack?

Or had they already, and she just wasn’t seeing it?

Because she wasn’t there! Dammit, she wasn’t there!

While they’d been dating, she’d attended all of his home games. And if it hadn’t been for these last six, hellish months, she would have been there right now. And if she was …

If she was, she might have altered something, made some small difference in their lives so that Zack wouldn’t be lying on the ice, unmoving and …

No, she wouldn’t think it, not even for a second.

“Okay. Keep us informed.”

After clicking her phone closed, Ronnie sank to the floor beside Grace and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, hugging her close.

Just as she did, the picture on the screen changed, this time showing medical personnel surrounding Zack. The team physician lifting Zack’s eyelids to check his pupils, taking his pulse. Paramedics with a stretcher, waiting for the signal to load him up and transport him to the hospital. They were all moving too damn slow for Grace’s peace of mind.

“Honey.” Ronnie whispered the endearment slowly, softly, in the tone of voice people used when they had to break bad news and they didn’t want the other person to have a complete and total nervous breakdown.

Grace started to shake her head. She didn’t care what her friend told her, she wouldn’t accept it. Zack was fine. She might not love him anymore, but she didn’t want him to be hurt or…worse. He was fine, and she wasn’t going to let herself believe differently.

“Honey,” Ronnie said again, “Dylan says it’s bad. Zack is unconscious, and the doctor can’t get him to respond. His head cracked the ice pretty hard. His leg is messed up, too. They’re taking him to the hospital, and Dylan is going to follow. We can meet him there, if you want.”

Still numb and reeling, Grace sat where she was until all of the television coverage was over. Until she’d seen Zack loaded up on the stretcher and wheeled off the ice. Until the rest of the Rockets, who had surrounded their fallen teammate as closely as they could, broke away.

As soon as there was no camera trained on Zack and she knew there was no chance of catching another glimpse of him, she turned to her friend. There was nothing but concern and compassion in Ronnie’s eyes, and she knew that if she said the word, they’d be in the car, headed for the hospital in a flash.

But was that what she wanted? Did she want to sit in a crowded emergency room waiting area, pacing and worrying about a man she wasn’t supposed to care for anymore?

All of her friends—save the two who were currently honeymooning in St. Thomas and didn’t even know about Zack’s accident—would be there. All of Zack’s teammates, the Rockets coach, the team doctor, and other assorted team associates would be there.

The press would be there. Reporters from all of the media outlets, both large and small. Newspaper, magazine, television…Cameras everywhere, snapping her picture, speculating on whether she and Zack were back together. Whether she was grief-stricken over his accident or secretly pleased that the man who’d two-timed her was finally getting his just deserts.

Could she deal with that? And when Zack woke up—because he
would
wake up—did she want him to know she’d been there the entire time, waiting for a report on his condition?

The former lover, fiancée, and almost-wife in her screamed
Yes!
, wanting to jump up and race to the hospital in her pajamas and bare feet.

But the woman-done-wrong and public personality behind that persona definitely didn’t want the attention or the gossip that would follow. Or for Zack to think he meant more to her than he should after what he’d done to her.

Ronnie’s gaze bored into her, waiting for her to make a decision. But even though it felt as though her insides were being sliced to bits by a thousand tiny razor blades, she didn’t have an answer.

Stay or go?

Remain strong or admit her vulnerability to Zack and to the world?

She didn’t know what to do.

She just didn’t know …

Row 4

One month later…

Zack—formerly “Hot Legs”—Hoolihan sat in his wheelchair, left leg propped straight out in front of him, staring at the fifty-two-inch screen of the state-of-the-art plasma television taking up nearly every square inch of the far living room wall.

His friends had been so damn impressed when he’d bought the thing and invited them over to christen it with a weekend of chips, beer, pizza, and the NBA finals. Little did they know his main reason for replacing his perfectly good thirty-two-inch flat screen was because he’d needed something to hide the hole Grace had left when she’d rammed one of his hockey trophies straight through the drywall. He’d come home to find the ass end hanging in the air like the minuscule hockey player had gotten stuck during some botched escape attempt.

The trophy he could live without.

The hole he couldn’t live with. Not staring at him every day, reminding him of the woman who’d put it there and what had driven her to such violence in the first place.

Not that she had a reason to be so pissed off. He should have slapped her with a lawsuit to get his apartment repaired, his belongings replaced, and his dog returned. It was no less than she deserved.

And he missed Bruiser, dammit!

The apartment was too quiet without his heavy, padded footsteps. His rattling snores. And Zack hadn’t sat down in a puddle of drool in months.

Who knew a man could come to miss having a wet ass?

Zack stabbed the tip of one needle through a stitch on the other, looped his yarn, and kept knitting. The past month while he’d been “recovering,” he’d gone through enough yarn to cover all of Cleveland and made just about everything he could think of that he could actually put to use. A scarf, a hat, a couple pairs of slipper socks. He’d thought about trying his hand at a sweater, but though he had the time, he wasn’t sure he had the talent or patience.

So instead, he’d begun knitting thick, warm squares that could then be stitched together into blankets and donated to the local VA hospital. He’d heard about the need for that sort of thing through a teammate whose wife volunteered around the city, and it had sounded like as good a way as any to pass the hours that had turned into days that had turned into weeks. After all, it wasn’t like he’d be back at practice or back on the ice anytime soon.

He made another vicious stab at the yarn, then forced himself to take a breath and relax before he either broke the damn stuff or screwed up the consistency of his stitches.

A knock at the door made him jerk, but only slightly. He didn’t get a lot of visitors these days, mostly because he was such a bear to be around, no one could stand him for very long.

Even Magda, who got paid to come in once a week and clean up after him, kept a wide berth. She would make him a sandwich or something for lunch when she was around because she disapproved of his living off potato chips and delivery, but that was about it.

Since Magda was in the kitchen running a load of dishes through the dishwasher and getting ready to take his dirty clothes down to his apartment building’s laundry room, he let her answer the door while he shoved his needles and the afghan square he was working on deep between the arm of his black leather sofa and its first overstuffed cushion.

Knitting was a private hobby, and something he would prefer no one else—not even his closest friends—know about.

If the media found out, it would be a public relations nightmare. His fellow Rockets would rib him endlessly, call him a pussy, a pansy, a eunuch, and worse. His fans would probably do the same, as well as losing respect for him and going as far as booing him when he skated onto the ice.

If he
ever skated onto the ice again.

And if his friends—specifically Gage and Dylan—discovered his secret, then it would be even worse. Not that they’d tease him—at least not much—since they had both taken up a bit of knitting in one form or another over the past year and wouldn’t have a lot of room to talk.

No, the worst part was that they would know
why
he’d taught himself to knit. They might not verbalize their thoughts, but they would
know
it was something he’d done after Grace left him in hopes of possibly winning her back …and they would pity him.

Well, he didn’t need their pity.

God, he was so sick of the sentiment, he wanted to vomit. First, Grace had left him and he’d been pitied for either being a cheating ass whose ex-girlfriend didn’t believe in pulling her punches…or because he’d moped around like some homeless, flea-ridden pup who had been kicked around too much and just wanted to go off somewhere to die.

Yeah, he’d been that pathetic.

Then he’d gone and made a bonehead move on the ice. He still wasn’t sure exactly how it had happened, but he was man enough to admit that his head hadn’t been in the game properly for months before the accident. He’d been distracted, hurt, annoyed, and phoning it in.

The irony was that he’d just started to drag himself up, dust himself off, and get back to work, putting the entire mess with Grace behind him in an effort to help his team win game after game and once again make it to the playoffs.

He’d been all over that game, blocking shot after shot to keep the other guys from scoring. And then something had just gone …wrong.

Maybe he’d pushed himself too hard too fast. Maybe he’d overestimated his skills. Or maybe it was just one of those times when life threw a curveball, and there was nothing to do about it except look back and wish you’d done things differently.

Whatever the case, he’d launched himself one way to keep the puck from making the net, his left leg had remained extended, and the player who had shot the puck to begin with had barreled into him full force.

It hadn’t been pretty, according to witnesses. Luckily, he’d lost consciousness the minute his head hit the ice and didn’t remember much of anything before waking up in the hospital with his cracked skull wrapped like a mummy, his leg covered in a hip-to-toe cast and elevated by wires, and tubes pumping some truly amazing painkillers into his veins.

Sinking down in his chair, he slouched his shoulders and linked his hands low on his stomach—which, okay, had gone a little soft over the past month, thanks to his lack of mobility and dietary choices—pretending to be involved in the action taking place on the TV screen.

Shit!
he realized belatedly. Leaning forward, he grabbed the remote from the glass-topped coffee table, grimacing when the movement pulled at his knee and sent pain shooting up the full length of his leg.

Punching buttons, he quickly changed the channel in case whoever was at the door ended up coming in. All he needed was for someone—close friend, mild acquaintance, or complete stranger—to discover that in addition to taking up knitting, blowing off rehab, and letting himself go to fat, he spent his days watching soap operas.

They were surprisingly interesting. He started with
The Young and the Restless
when he rolled out of bed around noon, then tried to catch
One Life to Live
and
General Hospital.
He liked
Guiding Light
and
Days of Our Lives
, too, so sometimes he would TiVo those to watch later.

And God bless SoapNet. If he missed a show, he could catch the recaps there, as well as all-day marathons of older episodes and even serials that were no longer on the air.

He wasn’t proud of his new hobby, but he wasn’t ashamed enough to give it up, either.

The voices at the door grew louder, and he returned to his apathetic slump. He heard Magda complaining in rapid Spanglish, followed by lower, hushed tones.

Zack sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing two fingers over the spot between his eyes where a headache was brewing. He got them a lot these days, thanks to the concussion he’d suffered when his helmet had flown off and the back of his skull had smacked the ice.

They seemed somehow worse, though, when his friends showed up unannounced and tried to bully him into getting better and giving up his life of leisure.

Well, the joke was on them. He liked his life of leisure, and suspected they’d be only too happy to join him if they got a gander at some of the chicks heating up the sheets on daytime television.

Thirty seconds later, slow footsteps sounded behind him. When they came to a halt, he felt both their breaths on the back of his neck and their censure over the fact that he was still in his wheelchair, in the exact same spot as the last time they’d stopped by to check on him three days before.

“Don’t you ever get out of this damn thing?” Gage asked, voice soured with annoyance. He punctuated the question by kicking one of the wide wheels of the chair with the toe of his boot.

“Where am I supposed to go?” he returned, not bothering to turn his head in their direction. “It’s not like I can do much with this bum leg.”

Dylan came around, skirting his chair and the low coffee table, and took a seat on the sofa…dangerously close to the spot where Zack had hidden his needles and yarn. Zack watched his friend’s progress, careful to keep his eyes front and center rather than letting them stray to something he’d prefer not to have to explain.

As Gage moved around and took a seat at the opposite end of the couch, Zack shifted the chair to face them better, getting situated just in time to have Dylan start in on the lecture du jour.

“You wouldn’t still have a bum leg if you’d go to physical therapy like you’re supposed to.”

“The doctors say you’d have almost full use of it by now, be up and around and that much closer to getting back on the ice, if you weren’t being such a stubborn ass.”

This from Gage, whose tolerance levels were significantly lower than Dylan’s. Both had been fully sympathetic while he was in the hospital and soon after his release. They’d helped him get home, stocked the cupboards and fridge with easy-to-reach and easy-to-prepare foods, and gotten the apartment set up for someone with limited mobility.

But their sympathies had grown short and their tempers long when he’d blown off his first appointment at the rehabilitation center. And then the second and the third and the …

They’d tried finagling, browbeating, even bribery. But what was the point?

He’d seen the X-rays. He’d heard the doctor explaining his injuries to the others even before he’d been fully conscious. It was bad.

In a word, his knee was fucked up.

He could be early to every physical therapy appointment, do every exercise they recommended and then some, and there were still no guarantees he’d ever play hockey again. In fact, chances were good—better than good—that he would never return to the ice. He’d be lucky if he ever walked again, and even that would most likely be with a limp.

So why the hell should he bother?

All he knew was hockey. He’d never done anything else, wasn’t
qualified
for anything else. And even if he had been, who wanted to go from being the star goalie for a professional hockey team that had been to the playoffs seven times and brought home the Stanley Cup four of those years, to selling insurance or asking, “Would you like fries with that?”

It wasn’t like he needed the money—he had enough socked away to last him three lifetimes—so he would just as soon be left alone.

His friends thought he was wallowing, giving up. He preferred to think of it as cutting his losses. Why waste time or energy on getting his knee to function at fifty or seventy-five percent when it still wouldn’t put him back in his Rockets jersey?

“I like being a stubborn ass,” he tossed back in response to Gage’s charge. “It suits me.” Just like his ribald T-shirt collection—the one he was wearing now Said THEY CALL IT PMS BECAUSE “MAD COW DISEASE”

WAS ALREADY TAKEN—and the basketball hoop fastened to the wall above his laundry hamper suited him.

Before they’d broken up, Grace used to tease that he was a little kid at heart. When she was in a good mood, at least. When she was angry with him, she’d complained that he had a Peter Pan complex and needed to grow the hell up.

The first time she’d accused him of such a thing, he’d had to look it up. He’d thought being called Peter Pan meant he liked to wear green tights and was light in the loafers. Instead, it simply meant there was a part of him that didn’t want to grow up.

And what was so wrong with that, anyway? What was wrong with having a sense of humor, being young at heart, not taking life too seriously? As far as he was concerned, there were a lot of people in the world who could stand to loosen up a little and let the sticks fall out of their asses. Maybe a corny T-shirt or two would do them some good.

“You’re not just being stubborn,” Dylan tried again, his tone more soothing and cajoling than Gage’s, “you’re being stupid.”

Well, so much for soothing, Zack thought with a mental eye-roll.

“You’re only hurting yourself, Zack. No one else is keeping you in that wheelchair. No one else is turning you into a pathetic, housebound invalid. That’s all on you.”

“Gee, thanks for the news flash,” he responded with heavy sarcasm.

“That’s it,” Gage bit out, pushing back to his feet. “I’m done with this shit. Sit there and mope. Feel sorry for yourself. Crawl into a hole and hide from life. Whatever.”

The last was delivered with a healthy dose of disgust and frustration while Gage towered over him, face angry and muscled torso bulging with barely restrained violence.

“But don’t expect me to hold your hand or coddle you any more than we already have. I’m out of here.”

Leaning down, he grabbed an open bag of Cheez Doodles from the table and pitched them in Zack’s direction, hitting him square in the chest and sending air-puffed snack pieces and artificial-cheese-flavored dust flying.

“You’re on your own, buddy.”

With that, he turned a scornful glance to Dylan and added, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk away, too. Leave him to wallow in his own misery.”

And then he stomped off, his heavy, booted steps echoing across the wide-plank hardwood floors, followed by the hard slam of the front door.