Delayed Penalty (Crossing the Line, #1)(17)

Cherry picking – When a team's player stays near their opponent's defensive zone waiting for an outlet to pass in order to receive a breakaway.



Game 46 –Anaheim Ducks

Sunday, January 10, 2010

(Home Game)




I looked up at Leo, confused by his reaction. "What?"

He stood, setting his stick aside, and then pointed at me. "She's in your zone, and now you're cherry picking," he said. "That's why you're upset. You fell for her, and she's not even awake yet."

He grabbed his stick and headed to the door with Remy, not even bothering to wait for my answer.

Leo saw me this past month. He knew by the way I was reacting at the hospital on Christmas that there was something keeping me there. I didn't deny it either. I had kind of fallen for a girl in a coma, as weird as that sounded.

It had been a few weeks since I found Ami in the alley. And every day that I could, I was with her, sitting in her hospital room, just being with her. It made me feel like I was doing something right. I was waiting for her to wake up.

She turned eighteen two days ago and didn't even get to celebrate. All her surgeries had been completed, and everything the doctors could do for her had been done. We were just waiting.

It wasn't easy on me, and I tried not to return to that hospital, but every time I did. Hockey players didn't live their lives by the calendar year. For hockey players, our lives were dictated by a schedule, a very long schedule from October to March, and longer if you were lucky. Our lives consisted of fragments and were turned upside down nine months of the year. Awake half the night, sleeping half the day, the morning no different that the afternoon or evening, it was life on the road. Full of high energy, it wasn't a life everyone could lead. It was exhausting, to say the least.

And then add being attached to a girl you never met before. Talk about mental stupidity.

The police had no leads on her case and were just about to close it. The only lead they had with Blake was quickly put to rest when he got a good f*cking lawyer. I was sure he took a mortgage out on his dance studio to pay for it. The bottom line was his DNA wasn't a match, and he had an alibi that placed him at home after they went to dinner. It didn't matter if he had an alibi to me. Something about our conversation, and the way his dark, shifty eyes assessed me that day in the parking lot, told me he knew a critical detail about that night that he wasn't sharing. That could have just been my mind trying to hold someone accountable.

The rape kit was positive, and the police had the information they needed should the right lead come along, but they basically had nothing. None of the witnesses panned out.

I must have called that f*cking hospital twenty times that day, checking for updates, once I knew they were taking her off the medication that was keeping her in the induced coma. I wanted so badly to be there when she woke up, but what the f*ck would I say? She didn't know me. I would be lucky if she wanted anything to do with me.

Would she want to know me?

Every passing day, each minute that came and went and she didn't wake up, added to the churning in my stomach. I worried about her. I found myself sitting there talking about nothing, telling her about me and my life, and then I'd just sleep in a chair beside her bed. I couldn't leave.

Nineteen days after I saved her, I got the call that I had been waiting on. The morning of game forty-six, Ami woke up.

"She's awake," were the words I'd been waiting on since I found her, and then I wanted to hear, "He's been caught." I was smart enough to understand the criminal justice system and knew that I would be hearing one before the other.

I wasn't sure what would feel better, but when I heard that she was awake, the relief that came with it was greater than I expected.

Wendy called around four in the morning when I was getting ready to head to our morning skate. I was f*cking tired from the game last night against St. Louis, but when my phone rang and I saw it was the hospital, I answered.

"Are you serious?" I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

"Yeah, she came out of it last night, but we wanted to give her some time. Then when she started to come around she wanted to know how she got to the hospital."

"And you said?" I pressed for more information as I walked toward my bathroom.

"I said Superman brought her in."

I laughed, throwing my towel on the tile floor in my bathroom. My eyes caught the city below Trump Towers, quiet and still asleep. My lips curved, knowing the one person I wanted to wake up was finally awake.

"Seriously, what did you say?"

"I told her a man brought her in and then she asked to meet him," Wendy said, amusement in her voice. I wasn't sure if she was f*cking with me.

"Oh."

"What's with you?"

"Nothing." I tried to play it off, but I was freaking out a little, and Wendy didn't miss a beat.

"Well, are you going to come see her or what? She's awake now."

I really wanted to ask Wendy what color Ami's eyes were and if she had said anything else, but I didn't. "Oh, uh yeah, we play Anaheim tonight. I'll come by after the game."

"Okay, I'll let her know. Good luck tonight."

"Thanks." I hung up before I said anything else that would give me away. I was kind of glad there was a game tonight because it'd give me more time to think of what to say to her.