Page 6 of Goalie interference

“Still hurts?” she asked, gently rubbing my hip.

“Yup,” I sighed, dropping my head back against her dorm room wall with a thud. “I’m sorry,” I offered, lazily turning my head to her.

Callie perked up, smiling that sweet smirk at me before resting a dainty hand on my chest with a slow kiss. “I could do things that don’t require me on top of you,” she teased, trailing kisses down my jaw.

As tempting as that sounded, fuck no.

I’d been dealing with this pain for long enough to know that playing through it was one thing, but fucking through it was another–it never ended well. I always ended up in more pain than when I started, even when it was just Callie using that pretty mouth God gave her.

Callie was just so pretty in general. She was short and sweet with blonde hair and green eyes–didn’t annoy me, so that was a plus. I’d had a girlfriend in high school, swore that her going to college in New York wouldn't change anything…and then dumped her two months into my freshman year.

I wasn’t really proud of that, and I didn’t dump her for another girl–contrary to what her snotty friends thought.

Honestly, I broke up with her because it was too much work. I couldn't maintain a long-distance relationship with how demanding hockey was– I thought she understood that. I thought she understood me enough to know that I was never the type of person to leave her for just a girl that happened to be closer, but clearly, I was wrong.

Callie and I didn’t start dating until my sophomore year, and she'd been…okay. I expected very little from her, so it helped. I didn’t expect her to get me and be my little cheerleader–I wasn’t expecting deep conversations with the girl who thought saucing a puck involved your choice of buffalo sauces.

She killed time and was very pretty to look at, so I was in. It wasn’t like she was any deeper invested than I was–I was just hot and on a sports team, so she had a reason to doll herself up in yellow and blue on a Friday night.

If I were honest, it was boring.

We were boring these days.

Part of that was my fault–I couldn't do crazy stuff or fuck her against the walls the way I could when we first started dating. It was a fifty-fifty shot if I'd even be able to get hard with how uncomfortable or in pain I was when I was just lying in bed with her.

Pain felt good when it was working towards a win, but in my bed?

Not so much.

“I’ll have to pass,” I mumbled, gently working her mouth off my neck with a sigh. “I need to get to the rink anyway.”

“Okay,” she hummed, kissing my cheek sweetly. “I’ll be there later. I’ll be the pretty blonde with the Kincaid jersey and 22 on my back.”

“Can’t wait.”

Boring.

Honestly, walking out of her dorm, I wasn’t even all that upset that we didn’t have sex. I was fucking bored–even when I wasn’t in pain, I was careful not to do something that could irritate it.

Sex was just boring right now, at least until this finally healed.

Still, the superstitious part of me was screaming in my head the whole way to the rink, pissed off that we were breaking routine. I had the same routine every gameday, so skipping the part where I got off may not have seemed crazy, but it was going to throw off everything in my head.

When I got to the rink, I could already feel it.

Something felt wrong when I did my usual three knocks on my locker door, echoing wrong for some reason. My mouth was dry, and it wasn’t even time for me to drink my whole bottle of water, but I skipped two more steps, just to quench the feeling.

And just to make matters worse, when I was already feeling so off, Coach Thayer showed up.

He walked right into the locker room, smiling his annoyingly perfect smile at some of the guys, but walked straight up to me.

Go-fucking-figure.

“Ash, can you come with me?” he asked quietly, nudging his head towards the training rooms.

“I’m getting changed, but then I can–”

“Before you get changed.” He motioned again until I followed him.