Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 136296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 681(@200wpm)___ 545(@250wpm)___ 454(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 681(@200wpm)___ 545(@250wpm)___ 454(@300wpm)
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a lot of testosterone and competitive personalities, especially when we’re all trying to impress the coaches and scouts, which breeds aggression.” I position myself at an angle, so I can reach her hands, but I’m not invading her space as much as when I was crouched in front of her. I flip the lid, remove a couple of iodine pads, and tear one open.
“Have you had many injuries?” she asks, her gaze going to my right eyebrow.
When we were together in the summer, we talked, but mostly it was light stuff. Easy conversation. We avoided personal details and focused on orgasms and the intense chemistry we seemed to share.
“Enough. I’ve gotten slashed with a stick and fractured my wrist once, and I got a puck to the head and needed stitches.” I tap the eyebrow she’s looking at. “We were playing street hockey, and I’d taken my helmet off for a minute. My best friend hit a slap shot. It ricocheted, and the result was this and a mild concussion.”
“How many stitches?” She reaches out and smooths her finger across my eyebrow.
I clear my throat before I reply. “Seven or eight, I think.”
“I’ve never had stitches.” She drops her hand back to her lap. “Have you had many concussions?”
The concern in her tone is a little surprising.
I’m used to the lecture from my dad about the dangers of head injuries, so I know better than to get into it on the ice, for the most part. But sometimes it’s hard not to drop the gloves and throw down when I know I could beat the hell out of the guy.
“Nah. Just the one. My dad had a bad accident once, though—took him out of the game for the rest of the season, and he missed the playoffs that year. When he woke up in the hospital, my mom was there, and he couldn’t remember who she was. They were engaged at the time, and all he knew was that he loved her. He tells me that story every time I get into a fight on the ice about something stupid.” I take one of her hands in mine.
Her fingers are long and slender, delicate, like they’re made for playing the piano. I focus on the injuries, and not the fact that I know what they feel like on my body. The pad of her baby and ring finger are both missing skin. I give those my attention first, using the iodine to clean them of whatever dirt is left and then blowing on them, like my mom used to do with Lavender whenever she would fall and scrape her knees, which was often. Lavender isn’t known for her gracefulness. Neither is my mother.
“You’re going to need bandages on these two fingers for a day or two.” I pluck the clear ones from the kit, which will be a lot less obvious.
“That’s probably for the best,” she agrees. “You have younger siblings, right?”
I offered up a lot of personal information in that short story for her class. I know she didn’t grade it, but likely she read it . . . If she did any research at all, she knows it wasn’t embellished. “Yeah. My sister Lavender and my brother River are twins. They’re a couple years younger than me.”
“What about younger cousins?”
“My parents have a lot of close friends who are part of our hockey family, and some of them have younger kids. Why?”
“You’re exceedingly adept at first aid. And gentle.”
My gaze flicks up to hers and then back to her hand. “Lavender had pretty bad anxiety as a kid. Sometimes when she got really upset, her fingernails would dig so hard into her palms that she’d break the skin.”
“Oh no. That’s . . . not good,” she says softly.
“It wasn’t. And whenever it happened, my mom would get upset, and so would River, so Lav started coming to me. I would help her clean them up and use liquid bandage on them, which stings, but works well and was a lot more inconspicuous than wrapping her hands in gauze.”
“That must have been hard for you, having to keep that from your parents.”
I frown. Maybe she hasn’t read my story. “When Lavender was little, she was taken. Not for long, but it scared the shit out of us—my family, I mean. So Lavender had enough shit to deal with. She didn’t need my parents hovering more than they already did. And I got it. I mean, the shit that happened when we were kids was fucked up. But she’d get so upset with herself whenever she got anxious, and then things would sometimes spiral. I just . . . I owed her, so hiding it from our parents seemed like the only option. At the time, anyway.” I make sure Clover’s palm is free of dirt. They’ve stopped bleeding now, which is good.