Page 321 of Faking the Goal

Taylor never made it to the restaurant.

She never even made it to her car.

The surveillance cameras outside the hockey house and the dash cam recovered from her car filled in everything the police couldn't piece together from the crime scene alone, and I regret every second I spent watching the footage because now I can't erase it from my head. It follows me every time I close my eyes.

Every time I blink.

Every time I dare to think maybe I'll get a moment's peace.

I still see Charlie stepping out of the shadows with that fucking bat in his hands.

I still hear the sickening crack when it collides with Taylor's head.

I still see her crumple onto the pavement before she even has a chance to understand what's happening.

I made it through barely half the video before I had to walk out because watching the woman I love get beaten within an inch of her life while I stood there completely powerless behind a screen felt like someone was driving that bat straight through my own chest. The doctors told me how many ribs he'd broken, pointed out every fracture, every stitch, every bruise blooming across her body, but somehow... seeing it happen was even worse. Every swing only fed the monster growing inside me until there was only one thought left in my head.

If I ever find Charlie...

I won't think twice.

I'll kill him.

It's been three days since the attack.

Three days.

Seventy-two hours.

Four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes.

Every single one of them has been spent sitting beside Taylor's hospital bed, waiting for the slightest movement. Waiting for her fingers to twitch. Waiting for those beautiful hazel eyes to find mine again. Waiting to hear her call me Ken-chan again in that teasing voice that always somehow manages to annoy the hell out of me and make me fall even harder for her at the exact same time.

I'd give anything—my hockey career, every dream I've chased since I first stepped onto the ice, every breath I'll ever take—if it meant hearing her laugh just one more time. I'd trade every save I've ever made for one sarcastic comeback. One eye roll. One ridiculous argument over anything. One more chance to hear her tell me I'm emotionally constipated before flashing me that smug grin she always wears whenever she knows she's gotten under my skin.

The room is too quiet with her lying there so still, and it feels wrong.

Hospitals are supposed to heal people.

This one only reminds me of everything I almost lost.

I should've been there.

That thought has become its own form of torture, replaying inside my head every few minutes until I can't tell where the guilt ends and the grief begins. I was supposed to pick her up. She was supposed to climb into my truck, laugh at the flowers, tease me for being cheesy, then let me take her out on our first real date. Instead, I was halfway across town while she was lying alone on the pavement calling my name, and that is something I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for.

Waiting outside the operating room was the longest stretch of my life. Every second dragged by like an eternity, and somewhere between the fourth and fifth hour, I genuinely thought I was going to lose her. I kept thinking about all the things I'd never said. How I'd spent days planning to ask her to be my girlfriend. How I'd rehearsed telling her I loved her over and over in my head because I wanted it to be perfect. And all I could think was...

What if she never hears it?

The fear nearly hollowed me out.

So now I sit here every day, my fingers wrapped around hers, begging her over and over to come back to me. Sometimes out loud. Sometimes only inside my head because I'm terrified that if I stop asking, she'll think I'm giving up on her.

Please, Trouble...

Open those beautiful eyes.

Yell at me for hovering too much.