Wild Heart (Viper's Heart Duet Book 2) (8 page)

“I had twins, remember?” she laughed.

Before the pizza came, we quickly bathed the lake water, sand, and sunscreen off the kids and put them in clean jammies. Again, not cleaning out my car came in handy because I still had a clean pair for both kids in my overnight bag for Gam’s. The doorbell rang just as I finished brushing Maura’s curly blond hair. We set the kids down around the table and starting cutting pizza and passing out plates like we were feeding hungry animals at the zoo. Once the kids all had pizza, apple slices, and milk in front of them, Kacie and I finally made our own plates.

“Ooooh, the game is starting!” Kacie mumbled through a mouthful of pizza. She grabbed the remote off the coffee table and found the game on TV. They were zoomed in on Brody’s face as he took a few chugs of water from the Gatorade water bottle on his net. Kacie beamed with pride as the announcers talked about how he’d had three shutouts in a row and the team was looking really good early on in the season.

“Maybe this is our year?” she said with a shrug.

“That would be awesome, wouldn’t it?” I added.

Lucy, Piper, Matthew, and Emma ate fast and scampered off to play Ping-Pong in the basement while Grace and Maura toddled around the family room, chewing on everything they could get their hands on.

“Want a glass of wine?” Kacie asked as she put the last of the pizza in the fridge.

“Um . . . nah. I’ve been fighting a headache all day and that would just make it worse.”

Kacie nodded and filled her wine glass with Riesling. She grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and balanced the drinks carefully in her hands as she stepped over our makeshift baby gate of pillows and an ottoman.

“Thanks.” I took the bottle from her, ready to relax and watch our boys play. The second period was just starting and the Wild were already up 2—0.

I didn’t think the day could get much better.

Kacie plopped down roughly, giggling when she spilled a little wine down the front of her shirt. “Oh well.” She shrugged and took another sip.

“Thanks for tonight, Kacie. You have no idea how much I needed this.”

“Oh my goodness, don’t mention it. It’s been so fun. I think this should be our new road trip tradition.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said as I held my water up in the air. She grinned and immediately leaned over, touching her glass with my bottle.

We relaxed back into her oversized couch happily, while our babies played and boys kicked ass on TV.

Just before the second period was ending, there was a breakaway play and Viper was all alone, dribbling the puck down the ice toward the goal. Kacie and I both sat forward in our seats, praying for another Wild goal. He skated along the boards, nearing the goalie, when out of nowhere Ricky Young from the St. Louis Blues barreled into him, sending him crashing into the glass.

“Holy shit!” I jumped up and covered my mouth.

Hard hits were nothing new in hockey, but that one was brutal, and it was obvious by the way his body flew that Viper had no idea Ricky was even near him.

“He’s okay. He’s totally fine,” Kacie tried to reassure me, taking a step closer as she put her hand on my arm.

But . . . he wasn’t okay.

Within a couple of seconds, the station cut to a commercial break and fear exploded inside of my chest.

Not again. Oh God, please not again.

“Fuck!” I rolled around on the ice, trying desperately to give my knee some relief. Any relief. The burning sensation was overwhelming. Within seconds, half of the team and the ref stood over me.

“You okay?” a bunch of them called out and a few knelt down next to me, but I was in too much pain to answer.

Within seconds Pete, our trainer, was by my side.

“What’s going on? Talk to me.”

“My knee. I hit the board and felt a huge fucking pop,” I growled.

“Your knee actually hit the wall?”

“No,” I shook my head. “My leg was straight but that leg went straight into the wall.”

His eyes widened and he quickly wiped sweat from his brow. “Okay, we have to get you off the ice.”

The look on his face ignited a fear inside of me that spread like wildfire through my body, every nerve prickling with anxiety.

“Okay,” I answered gruffly, trying to stand.

“Wait, wait. Just wait. I need you to move
slow
and not put
any
pressure on that leg. Got it? No pressure.”

I nodded, grimacing as I tried to stand. Once I was upright, the audience started clapping. Ignoring the pain the best I could, I took off one of my gloves and gave them a thumbs-up. The clapping grew into a thunderous roar that shook the whole building. Choked up that they cared more about me than the away jersey I was wearing, I gave another wave as I slung one arm around Pete’s neck and the other around my teammate Rex Craig’s. They skated slowly off the ice and I was careful to keep my right leg just above the ice, practically dangling along behind me. As I got to the doorway of the bench, one of Pete’s men stood waiting for me with a wheelchair.

“Seriously?” I groaned toward Pete.

“Shut up and sit,” he answered without looking back at me.

With Pete’s hand tucked under my armpit, I carefully turned and sat in the wheelchair. He quickly unlocked the wheels and hurried back to the small medical clinic within the arena. Dr. Houston, the St. Louis Blues team doctor, was already in the room waiting for us.

“Do you need help lifting him?” he asked as Pete wheeled me over to the exam table.

“No, I’m fine,” I answered before Pete could.

Pete’s eyes slid from the doc’s to mine and back again. “This one is a live wire. I can handle him. If you don’t mind, I’m also going to be the one to examine him.”

“Of course,” he said with a nod as he took a step back and folded his hands in front of him. “I do have to stay in the room because of liability, but do your thing.”

The next several minutes consisted of Pete doing an assessment of my knee, asking things like “Does this hurt here? What about here? How about now?” as he touched different places. Some of the movements made me cringe in pain. Others didn’t hurt at all. His eyes darted up and down my leg as his jaw clenched.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to hear the answer.

His nostrils flared as he inhaled slowly, still looking at my leg. “It’s gonna swell fast. I wanna get an X-ray. Now.”

The enormous knot in my stomach hurt way worse than my knee, and the way Pete was avoiding eye contact with me didn’t help. He took his phone out of his pocket and stepped into the hallway.

Lying on that table, staring up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, I took a slow, deep breath in through my nose and did something I hadn’t done in a
very
long time.

I prayed.

Hello, up there. It’s me, Viper . . . Lawrence . . . whatever. You and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, and I know I’ve done a lot of shi—stuff that has probably made you roll your eyes, but I’m desperate here. If you help me out, I promise to quit sending pictures of my junk to Michelle and no more Icy Hot in Brody’s underwear. In all seriousness, please, please, please do this for me. Hockey is my life. I’m nothing if I can’t play. I’m begging you to make this a minor little tweak and let me back on the ice in a day or two. I can’t not play hockey. I don’t know how. Amen.

“What are you looking at?”

My head snapped quickly to my right where Pete stood again, staring up at the ceiling. “Oh, sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t hear you come back in.”

“Obviously,” he said sarcastically. “Ambulance will be here in a minute. How are you feeling?”

“Nervous.”

“I can tell. You’ve never been injured on the ice before, have you?”

“Nothing major.” I shook my head. “A busted lip here and there, lots of stitches, but nothing like this.”

“This might be nothing major, too. Let’s wait and see what the X-ray shows, okay?”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

“And while we wait, use this,” he said, handing me his phone.

“For what?”

“Trust me. I’ve been doing this a long time. There are people watching that game on TV who love you and are worried sick right now. Call them.”

Shit!

I was such an ass. Calling Michelle hadn’t even crossed my mind yet. I’d been so wrapped up with myself that I totally forgot that she might be freaking out. I quickly dialed her cell number as Pete and Dr. Houston stepped out of the room.

“Hello?” she answered quickly in a shaky voice, obviously not recognizing Pete’s number.

“Hey, baby. It’s me.”

“Viper!” she called out, her voice cracking. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m okay. I got hit and slid into the wall. It’s my knee.”

“Is it broken?”

“No, I don’t think so. I can move it a little, but it hurts, so I’m gonna head to the hospital just so they can take a closer look.”

“Okay,” she said quietly.

“Are
you
okay?”

“No,” she squeaked out before soft sobs filled the phone.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“It’s just that you got hit, then you slid into the boards. It was like Mike and—I couldn’t breathe,” she rushed out in between sobs.

“I know, baby. Where are you? Are you alone?”

There was shuffling for a second and then I heard another woman’s voice. “Hey, Viper. It’s Kacie.”

“Oh! Hey! Is she okay?”

“No, but she will be. Watching that obviously scared the crap out of her, but I think now that she’s talked to you, she’ll be better. I took the phone so she could get a drink of water and catch her breath for a minute.”

“Thanks. Are you at her house?”

“Nope, her and the kids came here to swim and hang out. They’re gonna sleep over, too.”

I nodded. “Okay, good. I was hoping that she wasn’t going to drive home tonight.”

“Nope, I got her. Hang on . . . here she is.”

Their low voices spoke to each other for a minute before she came back on the line. “Hi. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “I know this must be horrible for you—”

Pete’s head popped into the room. “Hey! Ambulance is here. Sit tight. We’ll come get you in one second.”

“Okay,” I called back with another nod.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. That was Pete telling me the ambulance is here. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay,” she said sadly. “Please do. I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight anyway, so it doesn’t matter what time it is.”

“All right. I’ll call you as soon as I can. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She sniffed. “A lot. Viper, I love you a whole hell of a lot.”

“Back atcha, babe.”

We hung up just as the EMTs got there. They hurried into the room and moved fast, talking to Pete and sliding me carefully off the table onto a stretcher. Before I knew it, they were rolling me down the concourse and out to the back parking lot.

Once we got to the ER, everything moved in hyper speed. The doctor came in, examined my knee for about ten minutes, and sent me off to X-ray. Those came back quickly and confirmed what Pete already knew. Nothing was broken. The doctors and nurses stabilized my knee and the Wild front office put me on the first plane back to Minnesota, where I could see our
team doctor the next morning.

It was a long, exhausting night and my plane didn’t land until about two o’clock in the morning. I was groggy from pain meds and beyond thankful when Samantha, who handles most things for the Wild, texted me that she’d arranged a car to drive me home since driving was obviously out of the question for at least the next few days.

I exited the plane last, slowly making my way up the cold, quiet hallway from the plane to the airport on my crutches. It had only been a couple of hours and I was already sick of those fucking things. They annoyed me more than they helped me. I was constantly getting them caught on the ground or banging them against things, like the leg of the guy sitting next to me on the plane. I swear if he glared at me one more time, I was going to shove my crutch so far up his ass that it would knock out all of his teeth from the inside.