Playing Hurt Read online

  Yeah.

  Then there’d been the time I’d bruised my ribs. They weren’t broken, but it was fucking painful. I’d tried to tell Mom and Dad I didn’t want to play because it hurt. Well they were having none of that. I kept playing. So the time I took a puck in the face, I got stitched up and went right back out there.

  Every kid wants their parents to be happy and proud of them, so I worked my ass off to try to please mine.

  I loved hockey, don’t get me wrong. After a rough start, I grew to love the game. I wanted to play and I wanted to be the best, but I always knew that my parents’ love and approval depended on how I played.

  When I’d been kind of screwing around in New York my first few years in the league, my parents had been all up in my business about it. They’d made numerous trips to New York, even talked to my coach, for fuck’s sake. I was only twenty years old, but I’d been away from home for a few years by then, after playing Major Junior hockey in Windsor and a season in the AHL, and I felt I was an adult. Having them come to babysit me had been humiliating.

  Now they were riding my ass again because of how I’d been playing lately.

  “We’re barely into the season,” I added. “Relax.”

  “I don’t think ‘relaxing’ is a proactive way to tackle a problem,” Mom snapped.

  “It’s not your problem,” I snapped back.

  A two-ton silence met my ears.

  I closed my eyes. “It’s not,” I said in a lower tone. “It’s my problem and I’m dealing with it.” I lifted my chin. “I gotta go, sorry. Talk soon, okay? Love you both.”

  “We love you too, Chase.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes. I knew they loved me deep down inside, but sometimes it felt like they only really loved me when I was as good as they wanted me to be.

  I dropped my cellphone on the kitchen counter in my condo, closed my eyes, and tipped my head back. I took in a long breath and let it out.

  It was my problem, not theirs, and I needed to put them out of my mind. More pressure was not what I needed. I was trying to focus on the things Danny was working on with me, and part of that was positive mental talk and not constantly thinking about the goals I wasn’t scoring. My parents meant well, but their input was the opposite of what I needed at the moment.

  It was a night off between home games, and I was home alone. My day had started early, at nine o’clock when we’d watched video of last night’s game. Yeah, all my mistakes up front and visible for us all to relive. But one thing I learned from those disappointments as a midget player was that you couldn’t wallow in self-pity for screwing up. You had to let it go, think positive, and look forward. That was what I was trying to do, learn from my mistakes.

  After the videos, I’d worked out—yes, Mom and Dad, I really did—today’s workout focusing on my core. I’d spent some time taping my sticks; I was super picky about that even for practices. Some guys don’t care unless it’s a game, but I wanted my stick taped to perfection all the time. Our practice was an easy one since we’d played last night and we played again tomorrow night, but I skated hard and tried to focus on the things Danny had talked to me about. And I stayed on the ice after everyone had left, putting in some extra time. Tomorrow night we were playing Pittsburgh, so we went over a bunch of tactical things about how they liked to play. After that was the usual stretching and I had an awesome although painful at times massage, working out a few kinks, then a couple of meetings.

  The X-rays hadn’t shown anything wrong with my wrist, which was good news, I guessed, but I’d been given a cortisone injection, which would help if there was some inflammation. Things had been feeling pretty good so I was hoping that whatever the problem was, it was healing up.

  I was tired and tempted to go to bed early, but I stretched out on my big couch in my TV room with my phone and the remote control. It happened to be a night the Condors were playing, in Vancouver, and sure enough, Jordyn was on Twitter, happily commenting on the game, which just started.

  I smiled. She made it fun to sit alone in my condo and watch another team play hockey. Over the past few weeks, I had to admit to looking forward to the nights when this happened. Not that there were many, the way the schedule was with my games and Condors games, and she was probably busy too. I saw her posts on Instagram—lunch she was having at some outdoor café in Hollywood, a selfie with a monkey filter that was ridiculous, or another selfie of her at the gym, sweaty and wearing skimpy workout gear and absolutely gorgeous.

  We got this, boys! #GoCondors

  I heaved a sigh. I was going to have to disagree with her tonight. There was no way the Condors were going to beat Vancouver, who were on a hot streak. We’d just fallen to them ourselves last week. Also, the Condors were on their last game of a Western Canada road trip, the last two games back-to-back, so they had to be tired. The Condors were going to have a hard time shutting down the Vancouver offense.

  Sorry, song girl, your team won’t win tonight.

  #Faith

  I smiled. She was a good fan.

  We traded comments about the play and the reffing. Then I remembered something important. Hey! Congrats on your Grammy nomination!

  They’d been announced a couple of days ago. I didn’t pay much attention to music awards, but Jordyn’s name had come up and I was all over that. Wow. A Grammy.

  Thank you! It’s such an honor.

  Then Elson, a rookie player for the Condors, gave up the puck behind his own net, accidentally passing it out front to Nilsson of the Canucks, who instantly scooped it into the Condors’ net for the first goal of the game.

  Jordyn tweeted, OMG OMG OMG what was that, Elson???

  I could feel the pain in her tweet. That was a gift to Vancouver.

  No shit. OMG. I can’t believe he did that.

  Mistakes happen.

  We kept watching and then Jordyn tweeted. LOL I can’t believe Paterson just said that!

  What did he say? I apparently wasn’t paying attention to the TV network commentary.

  Keddie’s still on his knees in front of Blake Morand.

  I laughed out loud. Morand was the Condors goaltender.

  He always says things like that. Once he said about you…Chase Hartman just took a pounding.

  I blinked, but that amused me too. OMG

  Just listen.

  Jordyn was a dirty girl. I liked that.

  I paid more attention but it wasn’t until the third period I picked up on something Rex Paterson said. “And Joseph was squeezed off by Coppola…”

  With a grin I tapped in a tweet but Jordyn must have been doing the same at the exact same time, as our matching tweets came up simultaneously. I laughed again as she replied to mine with a bunch of exclamation marks.

  Shaking my head I fell back into my couch cushions. Was she laughing too? Having as much fun as I was?

  I’d totally forgotten the frustrating conversation with my parents earlier.

  Chapter 6

  Chase

  CHICAGO

  DECEMBER

  Leafs vs Condors—it’s on baby! I smiled at my phone.

  Jordyn’s response made me frown. What do the Leafs and the Titanic have in common?

  What?

  They both look good until they hit the ice!

  Ha. Very funny. You obviously haven’t been paying attention this year.

  Last year my Leafs had taken the number one draft pick, and the kid was amazing. With some other changes, they’d been playing some good hockey this season.

  I’ll bet you the Condors win.

  A bet? Hmmmm. What are we wagering?

  I don’t know…

  How about this. If the Leafs win, you go on a date with me.

  I sat there staring at my phone. I’d typed that and sent it before I’d really thought about it. Fu
ck.

  I was going down in flames. Crashing and burning. I’d just asked Jordyn Banks out on a date and there was no fucking way she was going to agree to that. I wanted to hurl my phone into the fire burning in the fireplace in my condo and never look at Twitter again so I wouldn’t have to live through the humiliation.

  All right, hockey dude, you’re on. It’s a bet.

  Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ. She’d agreed to it.

  I just needed the Leafs to win.

  Christ, I’d never been so on edge during a game I wasn’t playing. This was nuts.

  We tweeted back and forth during the game, a little trash talk, another dirty comment by the commentator (“Egorov slides his hand down his shaft when he needs to…”) which had us both cracking up. The Condors went ahead by a goal early in the first period, then scored again at the beginning of the third. My stomach was knotted, and I was bouncing my knee up and down as I watched the Leafs get possession of the puck and rush toward the Condors’ net. I pumped a fist in the air when the puck slid over the goal line. “Yeah!”

  Okay. One more goal and it would be tied. I tapped my fingers on my coffee table. It took until there were only three minutes left in the third period, but they did it. This time I actually jumped to my feet.

  Shit. How the hell would I take her on a date? We lived in different cities, on opposite sides of the country. I was on a road trip next week and who the hell knew what her schedule was like. And even if we could find a day to make it happen, what would we do? Go out for dinner? A movie? Phht. How the hell did someone come up with something special enough for Jordyn Banks?

  It might not happen anyway. The Leafs needed to score, or it was going into overtime and that was—yeah! I stared at the TV openmouthed. They did it! They fucking did it! Forty-two seconds left in the third period. They had to hang on…

  And they did, winning the face-off and killing time until the horn sounded. Game over. Leafs won.

  I grinned. So. I guess we have a date.

  A deal is a deal.

  Hopefully she knew I really meant this too. I wasn’t just screwing around on social media. I was going on a goddamn date with Jordyn Banks.

  I sent her a brief message: DM

  We’d been doing this all in public, and I knew people were seeing it and talking about it, but they weren’t going to watch us plan our date. That was going to be done privately. I hope you know I’m serious and intend to collect on my bet.

  And I intend to live up to my end.

  I nodded. Okay, when are we doing this?

  And where.

  Right.

  We were off to Dallas tomorrow, home for a game, then to Washington mid-week. Then we had a Friday night home game but Saturday off. I sent her these details.

  She responded, I have to be in New York Dec 10 for the Mistletoe Magic concert on Dec 11. I guess I could fly to Chicago on the 9th then go to New York the next day.

  December 9 was my Saturday off. And it was just over a week away. Holy shit. Really? You’d come here? Cause not sure when I could get to LA. We didn’t have a West Coast road trip until March. We did have a five-day stretch in January with no games, but that was a fuck of a long way off.

  I think so. Would that work for you?

  Yeah.

  I’ll confirm ASAP.

  My phone beeped with an incoming text message. I switched screens and saw it was from Brick.

  Do you seriously have a date with Jordyn Banks????

  I grinned. Yep.

  Holy fuck, man! The whole world is talking about this.

  Ah, shit. I went back to Twitter and scrolled through it, gnawing on my bottom lip. Oh hell, my mentions were blowing up hard. I closed it down and messaged Brick back. It’ll blow over.

  When are you taking her out?

  Next Saturday.

  Holeeeeeeey shit!

  No big deal.

  Bullshit! You’re probably freaking the fuck out.

  Yeah, I kind of was. Wasn’t about to admit it though. Just chillin’. Hey, Leafs won.

  LOL

  * * *

  —

  I was freaking the fuck out.

  It was Saturday. The day of my date with Jordyn.

  I’d discovered that she’d grown up in Chicago. How had I not known that?

  I’d learned this from some of the blog articles that had popped up online since our very public Twitter bet. Reporters had been hounding me all week, asking questions about it, trying to find out when and where our date was going to be, but Jordyn and I had agreed not to make that public. People were probably going to find out, but we weren’t going to tell them and have a huge crowd watching us. So I kept my mouth zipped shut and just laughed off their questions. Even so, they wrote shit and posted it, speculating all kinds of things about us.

  Knowing she was from Chicago made the pressure so much more. She knew Chicago, so I couldn’t take her somewhere touristy. And I couldn’t take her somewhere she’d be swarmed with fans. It was December so not exactly weather for an outdoor date, although it was pretty nice today for Chicago in December. And it wouldn’t be very exciting if I took her somewhere she’d been a million times.

  The guys had laughed at me all week, giving me crazy-ass ideas like taking her to the Sears Tower, or Portillo’s for hotdogs, or suggesting I make dinner for her at my place. (I can’t cook.) Bomber suggested taking her to a karaoke bar. That was met with my middle finger. “Maybe I should come with you,” Brick had said. “Like, on a double date.” I’d turned down that offer too.

  I knew she liked music, obviously, but taking her to see a popular musical like Hamilton didn’t seem like how I wanted to spend my date with her. Nor did a movie. I contemplated a fancy dinner but that just didn’t feel right either.

  Well, I had a plan now and was nervous as fuck about it, but it was too late to change my mind. She’d agreed to meet me, although I would gladly have picked her up. I guessed she didn’t want me to know where she was staying, which I totally got. I had a little sister, and I’d tell her to do the same if she was going on a blind date with a guy she’d never met.

  I walked to our meeting place since it wasn’t far from my condo, just across the river. It was late afternoon, just getting dark, the tall buildings making it seem darker. The sky was clear, the air crisp. It was early, but if I was going to have a date with Jordyn Banks, it was starting early and ending late. Jesus. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about the end of the date. She was only here for one night, leaving for New York tomorrow.

  We’d both kept it low key, not making it public on social media anywhere, and my hope was to keep it that way. Chances were pretty good that we’d be seen though, especially since so many people had been talking about our bet and our date.

  I stopped outside Whole Foods, hands in my jacket pockets, and looked around. People strode briskly along the sidewalks, some carrying shopping bags, and traffic flowed steadily over the bridge.

  A car pulled up on Illinois at the curb right near me. The driver got out and opened the back door and a woman stepped out. She smiled her thanks at the driver, said something to him, and he got back in.

  Jordyn.

  She almost wasn’t recognizable, wearing a black hat, sunglasses, and a huge plaid scarf wrapped around her neck. But her pale blond hair showed beneath the hat, and her pretty lips, shiny with a rosy gloss, were easily identifiable. At least by me.

  She seemed small. So much smaller than I would have thought from the pictures I’d seen of her or watching her on TV.

  She smiled, and despite the sunglasses, I knew she was looking at me. I pushed away from the granite pillar I was leaning against and started toward her as the car she’d arrived in pulled away from the curb and drove off.

  She took off the glasses as we neared each other. Fuck yeah,
that was her and she was beautiful, even more beautiful in person, with smooth creamy skin, big eyes that as usual were emphasized with lots of eye shadow, making them a focal point on her face. Her small nose wrinkled as she grinned at me. “Chase.” She said it not as a question, but as a soft statement. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” I smiled down at her. “Jeez, you’re little.”

  “Ah!” She laughed. “And you’re tall. But I figured that.”

  I wasn’t really that tall for a hockey player—six feet, two hundred pounds. There were a lot of dudes bigger than me. But she could only be about five foot five…my gaze dropped briefly to her feet. She had on boots with chunky heels that were a couple inches high, so…“You’re little.”

  “I’m not that little. I’m five three. That’s average height. Okay, the low end of average.” She smiled as she said this, and I knew she wasn’t really offended by my comment.

  I remembered that she always seemed to be wearing high heels onstage and in pictures and now I knew why.

  “It’s so nice to meet you in person.” Her smile broadened, showing perfect white teeth, her eyes crinkling up.

  “Yeah. It really is.” I was keeping myself in check, not wanting to make a fool of myself by going all crazy fan boy.

  “So where are we going?” She glanced at the building. “Probably not shopping at Whole Foods?”

  “Nah.” I held out my arm, and she slipped hers through it. We were both wearing thick jackets, but it still felt…good. “Although I do shop here a lot. We’re going bowling.”

  She laughed, a light, musical sound. “No way.”

  “Way.” I started across the street when the light changed. “It’s just down here. Wonder Arcade and Lanes. Have you been there?”