Those bright blue eyes looked even brighter and lit up her face. "That sounds good."

She reached for the remote beside her bed the same time I did, and our fingertips grazed. It wasn't the first time I had touched her, but it was the first time I had touched her. Before there was nothing there. Now, I felt that f.u.c.king touch from the tips of my fingers to my toes.

Leaning back in the chair, not knowing what else to do, she looked up at me, and I was gone. f.u.c.king gone. I knew then why I couldn't not come here every day. This girl had a hold on me.

I knew why she wanted me there. She didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want her to be. It was part of the reason I kept coming to the hospital. She had no one right now. If I didn't come, who would?

I couldn't tell you what movie was playing. My eyes were only on her, in a non-creepy stalker way. She seemed different. Of course she seemed different. She was awake, dumb a.s.s.

We ended up watching a movie that was on one of the basic cable channels, and before I knew it, I started nodding off.

When I woke up, Ami was asleep, curled to the side with a peacefulness about her, so I snuck out quietly. I left a note beside her bed that said: I'll see you tomorrow.

When I closed the door behind me, I leaned against it and closed my eyes, then slid down the length of the door until I was seated on the floor. I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, trying to hold back any emotion I had. She was awake and that attraction, that draw that had kept me coming back, was intensified to the point where I knew I'd never be able to leave this girl alone.

Once I got back to my apartment and into bed, I only had about two hours before our morning skate. I couldn't sleep, thinking about what had happened to her, but the s.h.i.tty part was it didn't even happen to me. It happened to her. A girl. Just a girl.

s.h.i.tty things happened. They happened, and there was nothing you could do about it. Then they're over and you dealt with it, or you didn't. Some people did, some didn't. Ami was trying, I could see that, but the guilt that she survived was written all over her face.

Part of me, a part I frequently told to shut up, wondered what I could possibly offer someone like Ami. Maybe friendship, but for someone who spent the majority of the fall through spring traveling, it was hard to offer her much.

Then again, would she even be interested in me?

You're so far ahead of yourself it's pathetic.

What was pathetic was the fact that I was even thinking like this. Leo was right. I was cherry picking.

Sometimes I felt like I was stalking Ami, like I was the guy in the corner, taking everything in, waiting. That kind of stalking. Or maybe that was just watching? It felt like stalking. If I had the chance to learn anything about her, I would wait a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a year, just to know her. For me that was the hardest part because I wasn't a patient person.

Defensive Zone The zone or area nearest a team's goal.

Game 47 Columbus Blue Jackets.

Thursday, January 14, 2010.

(Home Game).

Hockey players weren't like your average athletes. Some were, but most of us were different. If you compared us to football players, you'd see the differences right away.

We were aggressive; some girls called us secretive, and others called us wh.o.r.es.

They didn't usually say that after a night in the sheets with us, though. They were usually begging for more.

They liked us because we didn't give a f.u.c.k. If you wanted rough, you got it rough with a hockey player. And then there was the endurance part.

Not many guys could take hits like we could or got off their a.s.ses and continued their shift while sweating, skating, taking bone crushing hits against gla.s.s, getting their teeth knocked out, having the s.h.i.t beat out of them by hits to the face with pucks, sticks, elbows, and then score a goal.

In between the physically demanding prowess of the game there was a skillful presence and the crafty strategies of the sport we loved.

With all that came the endurance, an endurance most women couldn't keep up with.

I was twenty years old and had p.u.s.s.y whenever I wanted it. I had one regular, but it wasn't like we were dating. We never had that kind of relationship.

There were plenty of times throughout the season and off season I got my d.i.c.k wet with the willing puck bunnies that pressed against the gla.s.s, but I never made a habit out of it.

Callie, on the other hand, she was a friend. Not a girlfriend by any means, but I'd taken her out a few times and tangled in the sheets more times than I could count.

She was a G.o.dd.a.m.n freak in bed, too. I'd show up at practice with a swollen lip, and it hadn't been from the game.

Callie was also a regular with a few other guys, too, so it wasn't like she was looking to settle down. I dug that because it was just like me. Shoving guys into the boards all night and roughing them up left me amped at times. That game against Minnesota Wild left me that way. It was the way of the game, and before long we found ourselves unwinding at a club downtown. Though I wasn't twenty-one, that night it wasn't questioned. Liquor flowed, and soon I found myself with a girl on my lap and then my mouth all over her, trying to forget. I thought maybe this time I could finish. Back at my condo, yes, I said my condo, with her head in my lap, I still couldn't get off, and I was getting kind of p.i.s.sed. The chick was, too, and ended up leaving. I couldn't blame her.

It was unlike me to bring her back to my place, but I thought that if I was at home, maybe it wouldn't be so bad and I could relax. Nope. Nothing changed.

So not only did I hyperventilate during s.e.x, now it wasn't f.u.c.king working. I was p.i.s.sed.

Still h.o.r.n.y, I tried calling Callie, thinking if anyone could get me to relax it would be her.

It didn't work. We went at it for something like forty-five minutes, tried everything, and I still couldn't get off. My mind kept going back to Ami and that night. I need that little gadget in those Men in Black movies where they erased your memory. I really needed that little device.

"You want me to try sucking your d.i.c.k?" Callie asked.

I laughed, my movements stopping. She was always so cra.s.s. "That's okay. I'm good."

Callie rolled to the side and then completely off of me. "You kind of suck right now."

"Sorry." I really was because I really wanted to get off. Like I said, it was p.i.s.sing me off.

Callie grabbed her phone beside my bed and sent someone a text when I went to the bathroom. I came back, put on a pair of sweatpants, and noticed Callie was on my couch now, smiling, phone in hand, and it dawned on me. Her big chocolate brown eyes always gave her away. "You tell Leo and I will kick your a.s.s, Cal."

Callie smiled and I knew she'd already dished the dirt on me to him.

"You little f.u.c.king brat." Taking a seat next to her, I reached for the remote to the television, wondering how much he already knew.

"I'm sorry. He asked, and Leo is kind of sneaky when it comes to getting things out of people."

"Why do you tell him everything?" I looked at her out of my corner of my eye. "Why would he ask that?"

She shrugged as though I shouldn't care and snuggled into my side. "Let's order Chinese."

We ate, I explained my problem to her, she laughed some more, and teased me, which only added to me being p.i.s.sed off at the situation instead of helping me.

"You should be talking me through this s.h.i.t as my friend."

"Hey, I never claimed to be that kind of friend." Callie rolled her eyes, tucking her legs up on the couch. She got comfortable and twirled her fork in the container of noodles. "We f.u.c.k. That's usually all we do. Since when do you want advice from me?"

Giving a shrug, I placed my own carton of food on the coffee table.

"Does this mean you want your jersey back?" You couldn't miss the little sense of regret in her voice.

"No..." Leaning forward, I kissed her forehead. "...You keep that."

Callie gave me a look and then picked her food back up, a contemplative look coming over her. "So, who's the girl?"

"Ami..." Just saying her name did things to me, and f.u.c.k if I wasn't annoyed by that. I looked at my food on the coffee. See? I couldn't even eat. "She's really f.u.c.king me up."

"And this Ami, does she know you've got a thing for her?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I can't stop thinking about her, and then I think about what happened and that it's wrong I even have feelings for her, you know?"

Callie gave me the same glazed over look Leo did at times but surprised me when she asked, "What happened to her?"

"The night before Christmas Eve when we got back into town after playing the Red Wings..." I looked to Callie to see if she was following me. She nodded, twirling her fork in the noodles, her legs propped on my thighs. "Well, I was walking home and found her nearly dead in the alley, so I took her to the hospital. She was raped and beaten to s.h.i.t. Fractured skull and broken bones...it was awful."

Callie blinked. Her expression held an emotion I couldn't register, almost like sympathy.

"Her parents were killed in a plane crash last year so she has no one else."

"Is she okay?"

"Sorta...she's coming out of it and is finally awake, but she doesn't remember anything surrounding the accident and can't really give us any clues."

"Did they catch the guy?"

"No..." The thought that he was still out there made me sick as it always did.

Callie stayed for a little while longer and then went home. I was lost in my thoughts again and lately nothing good had come from that.

That was when Leo texted me. Hey, man, can you come over and get my jersey off the floor for me?

His question should have been a red flag. Lesson one: Leo never said anything without taking it in a direction you'd never expect. My girl problems didn't matter to him. If anything, that was ammo. I wasn't dumb either. I knew where he was taking this.

No. Get off your a.s.s and get it.

I can't seem to get up. Can you help?

f.u.c.k YOU and Callie!

You tried, remember? Couldn't. You know there's medication for that.

I had to turn my phone off. He wouldn't stop. Lesson two: he never quit.

The very next day, I went back to the hospital to see Ami.

She looked better and every time I saw her, I noticed something I didn't notice before. Like the freckle on her nose and the way she would crinkle her nose in the cutest way whenever the smelly doctor came in to check on her. The dude seriously needed to wear some deodorant.

What I didn't appreciate was the way he flirted with her. Yeah, she wasn't mine, but I wasn't cool with him showing any interest in her. She was young, too young for his mid-thirties a.s.s, so I voiced my opinion to him.

"Hey," I began, looking down on him in more ways than one. "Why don't you keep your hands to yourself and treat her like your patient, not your girl."

I had no claim on this girl either, but this sort of thing left me a little bent. Something rubbed me the wrong way with this guy, too. Maybe it was that I was constantly looking at every guy like they were a suspect. I wanted them to be because I wanted the guy that did this to her to f.u.c.king pay for it.

The doctor, with his smelly body and overly large eyebrows, glared. It was meant to level me, but I was a hockey player and saw that s.h.i.t daily. "You know, Mr. Masen, I let it slide that you have been in Ami's room at all hours of the night, but visiting hours end at eight. I suggest you get back in there. You've got ten minutes."

I didn't like this new doctor. Not one bit. I didn't like the look in his eyes when he examined Ami, and I didn't like the way he talked to her. Most of all, I didn't like the way he was talking to me. He was trying to intimidate me, and that was my game, not his.

"I'll leave when I want to leave, Dr. Dagger. I'm the only friend she has."

Friend? Is that what I was now? Part of me wanted to be more already.

Dumb a.s.s.

This wasn't the first time I told someone to basically stay away from her either. Remember my conversation with the dance instructor?

I was getting pretty good at this protection thing, but for some reason I had this defense zone around this girl, and d.a.m.n it if I wasn't going to play good defense. I never wanted to see something like this happen again.

When I got back into her room, Ami smiled. "That guy is super weird."

Laughing, I took a seat next to her. "You have no idea."

Ami was lying in the bed, slouched to one side with the remote in her hand, looking for something to watch. That was when she turned it to baseball, which was kind of weird to me since it was on in the middle of January.

Ami frowned. "My brother was a baseball player."

"Brother?" She must have sensed my confusion. They said her parents were gone. Where was this brother at?

"Yeah...he..." Ami's eyes dropped from mine and she swallowed. "My parents...he was just about to sign with the Angels. Baseball was his life and had been since he was old enough to hold the bat. My parents and Taylor, his girlfriend, were with him on that plane...it crashed en route to California."

Well f.u.c.k. As if this girl's life couldn't get any worse.

I didn't say anything. What could I say?

The sadness in her voice made me want to hug the s.h.i.t out of her. I wasn't sure what it was about the girl, but she turned me into a big mushball, and I was constantly looking for ways to make anything I could easier for her.

That f.u.c.king douche of a doctor came back, him and his smell. "It's time to go...Mase."

Mase? He really was trying to get under my skin. Only family and friends called me that. He was neither, and it was clear he never would be.

Ami glared at the doctor and rolled her eyes. "I let you guys prod at me all day long. The least you can do is let my friend stay."

f.u.c.k yeah.

The doctor, even though he was a doctor, was hardly mature and rolled his eyes. He eventually left.

"Why did he call you Mase? I thought your name was Evan."

"Oh, well my friends and family call me Mase." I shrugged, watching her again. "My dad started calling me it when I was a kid and it stuck."

Ami gave a nod and glanced back at the television. A half smile formed on her lips, maybe a distant memory.