The Good Luck Charm(2)

“What’s this?” I ask, moving to stand beside her. The shadows on the scan don’t look particularly good.

“Stroke. Came in less than an hour ago.” She glances over her shoulder at me. “You on your way out?”

“Yeah.” My gaze snags on the name at the bottom of the scan. The clipboard slips from my hand and clatters to the floor. “Oh God.”

“Lilah? You okay?”

I shake my head, unwilling to believe what I’m seeing. This can’t be happening. Not today.

Ashley puts a hand on my shoulder. “Do you know him?”

I nod, swallowing back a terrified sob before I can respond. “Yes. What room?”

“Let me check.” She rushes to the board, finds the room number, and repeats it twice. “Do you need me to come with you?”

“No. I’m fine.” That’s not even close to true. The man I love like a father has suffered a stroke.

I wish I’d never gotten out of bed today. I wish there were no today.

I race to his room, heart in my throat, body humming with adrenaline. But when I get there, I don’t find Martin Kase’s wife, my second mother, as I expected. No, sitting in a chair next to the bed, head down and looking lost, is their son. My stomach fills with concrete as I take in not a ghost but the ghost from my past. Ethan.

My mouth goes instantly dry. My legs feel suddenly wooden and weak at the same time. I can’t seem to take a full breath. Or get a handle on the sudden, violent rush of emotions that paralyze me. I feel raw, as if my nerve endings are all exposed, and the air makes my skin feel like it’s on fire.

This is all too much. I’ve already taken too many punches to the heart today. And in this moment I feel like I’ve barely recovered from the punch he delivered eight years ago. My heart aches exactly the way it did the night he called to tell me it wouldn’t work anymore. We wouldn’t work anymore. That all the years we’d been together—through my dad leaving when I was just a child, all of high school, every single first-time experience, prom, helping him pack for college—all of it meant nothing. He needed to focus on hockey, on his career in the NHL, and I was a distraction he couldn’t afford.

Ethan pushes up from the chair, his massive body unfurling. Good God, he’s filled out. Sure, there have been pictures on social media, and I’ve caught glimpses of him on the ice when I’ve accidentally turned on a hockey game—any time he plays I’ve made a point to turn it off. But nothing could ever prepare me for being this close to the man who took my heart, crushed it, and gave it back to me in pieces.

He’s still uncommonly beautiful, more now than he was when we were teenagers. I swear his shoulders are twice as broad as they were a decade ago. I can barely hold his eyes without being submerged in a deluge of memories I thought I’d buried long ago. I’d nearly forgotten how arresting his eyes are—okay, that’s untrue—but it’s been a long time since I’ve been hit with the full force of them. The vibrant blue with a halo of amber edging the iris, the burst of gold that colors nearly a third of his right eye draws me in and briefly holds me captive, just like it always did when we were younger.

“DJ.” It’s just my name. Two small syllables. But the effect of his voice is bone jarring. I feel the grit of his pain like sandpaper on my heart.

I fight to keep my voice even. “I go by Lilah now.” The words leave my mouth before I can call them back and find a different, more appropriate greeting. I shift my gaze away, anywhere but him. Martin looks frail in that hospital bed, and I wish Jeannie were here, a lifeline I can cling to, something to keep me from being torn apart from memories I don’t have the strength to handle. After all, the present is already crushing me under its weight.

“I didn’t realize Martin had been admitted until a few minutes ago. How long have you been here?” I lock down the emotion and switch gears to professional mode. This I can do. This I am good at. I read through the chart at the end of the bed, then cross the room to check the monitors—though my mind barely registers the numbers.

“I don’t know. Awhile, I guess. I just got into town and then … this happened.” I can feel Ethan’s eyes on me. I self-consciously touch the end of my ponytail, having given up on wearing it down by lunch. My scrubs are a size too big, and my running shoes are old and scuffed, my good ones still soaked from this morning. I look as bad as I feel, and I hate that I care about the way he perceives me and that it’s even a thought, with Martin hooked up to monitors, his prognosis uncertain.

“His vitals are good, but we won’t know anything long-term quite yet. Where’s Jeannie?”

“Mom stepped out to get some coffee.” He rubs the back of his neck, as if he’s trying to ease the tension. “So you’re a nurse here?”

The fact that he has to ask, that it’s not something he knows, feels like another shot to the chest. Maybe he’s making small talk, but it still hurts to be reminded that he knows nothing about my life.

I look down at my scrubs, as if they hold the answer to his question—which in a way they do, considering the hospital name is emblazoned on the pocket over my heart. At my silence he clears his throat. “I thought you were at Mercy in Minneapolis.”

“I transferred a while ago.” I’ve been here since just after the New Year. The last time Jeannie mentioned Ethan was two weeks ago. She’d said something about hoping he’d come for a visit before the hockey season started, not that it would make a difference to me since he never made an effort to see me when he blew in and out of town.