Page 8 of Yard Sale

Luckily, I didn’t need my white cane during the day, so walking on crutches wouldn’t be too hard. And at night, I would just call for delivery and beg whoever was nearby to do errands for me.

“I’m going to walk Boden out,” Hugo announced. I appreciated that he was learning how to vocalize in a room full of people without full vision. “I’ll be back before you’re discharged.”

“You think they’re gonna fuck in his car?” Tucker asked as he took Boden’s now abandoned chair.

I pulled a face. “That is so not my business.”

“That’s what I’d do. I mean, not with Hugo, obviously. But I guarantee you that Amedeo would be trying to fuck the grumpy out of me if I said that shit to you.”

I laughed. It was mostly the drugs, but I tried to picture shy, anxious Amedeo fucking the grumpy out of Tucker, and, yeah…actually, it probably worked well for them. And then I got sore all over, but inside this time because I would love someone to come fuck me happy right now.

But I had zero prospects and zero desire to try that dating bullshit ever again.

“So,” Tucker said. I could hear the hesitation in his voice.

I knew he’d been waiting for the right time to ask about my knee, which was currently the size of a small summer melon the way it was all wrapped in ice for the swelling.

Luckily, I couldn’t feel shit.

“Do we have to talk about this right now?”

Tucker sighed. “No, but⁠—”

Fuck’s sake. “I have zero prognosis for my knee right now. The surgeon said the procedure was a success, but I won’t have any idea if I’ll be able to get back on the ice after this. You know this fuck-ass tear is a career killer.”

Tucker’s exhale was shaky. “I know. And I hope you realize Boden is wrong. It’s not just the fact that you’re a beast on the ice. You’re my friend, and⁠—”

“Tuck, you don’t have to sell yourself to me. We’ve been friends for years.”

Long before he was my coach. Long before he was anywhere near professional para hockey. Back when he was a punk-ass pain in the ass that wanted everyone else around him to suffer too, he was one of the few people in my life that I trusted.

And now he was married. He’d made amends with his brother. His life had come together in ways that none of us ever expected, and I couldn’t be happier for him if I tried. Well, maybe I could.

Tiny flames of jealousy burned inside me, taking up space. But I was pretty sure I was hiding it well.

Tucker stood up again, then dragged the chair to the side of my bed and dropped down, leaning his chin on the railing. “What will you do, eh? Uh…if you can’t, you know…”

He wasn’t going to say the words aloud. He was too superstitious for that.

“Well, Coach…”

“Fuck off.”

I grinned and ruffled his hair. “I don’t know. I have time to figure it out. I’ve been living in the city and doing nothing but playing hockey and jerking off for the last six years. I have piles of money I’ve been sitting on.”

Okay, not piles, but I was smart. I listened to my dad, who’d actually given me his honest attention for the first time ever when I got my seven-figure contract after my third year with the Legends. He helped me invest and diversify and all that other stock market shit I still didn’t understand.

I paid a guy named Andrew whose face I’d never seen to manage it all for me, and I was worth a lot of money now.

Go me.

I could take time to figure it out.

“If I keep living like this,” I said, “I don’t ever have to work again.”

“You’d go out of your mind,” Tucker replied, sitting back in the chair. “You know you would.”

He was right. Someone else in a similar position to me might say they’d travel. Buy an RV and go coast to coast, East to West, then North to South. But that wasn’t in my cards. I’d have to pay someone with decent eyesight to drive me, and I’d be broke before we hit Seattle.