Delayed Penalty by Shey Stahl

21. Penalty Shot

A free shot awarded to a player who was illegally interfered with, preventing him from a clear scoring opportunity. The shot is taken with only the goalie guarding against it.

Evan

Against his better judgment, Coach plays me in the game. It’s probably the worst mistake he’s ever made. Hello! I just shattered the glass when I slammed the door to the penalty box.

It takes a good twenty minutes for them to replace it but still, I can’t calm down.

Even you’re thinking he’s an idiot at this point, aren’t you?

You probably know what I’m going to do before I do.

My mouth is dry. I keep drinking water as though it will help, but it doesn’t. Not feeling like myself, I keep tripping and even drop my stick a few times. I’m probably the most aggressive I have ever been on the ice. It might have been my body’s reaction to stay away from Dave, knowing that if I get near him, I might kill him. Honestly, I should have be ejected. I know one thing. I don’t look at Ami. Not once. If I do, I’ll go after Dave and I’m already holding on by a very thin thread.

Through all this, Dave doesn’t say a goddamn word to me. I think back and everything about that night finally makes sense.

When play starts up again, we lose possession just before the line change.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Leo shoves against me as we shuffle down the bench. “You’re playin’ like shit, boy.”

I know I’m playing like shit. I grunt a response but don’t speak. I’m not sure if I can.

“Where the fuck were you?” Coach smacks the back of my head. “When he crosses over like that, you gotta fucking nail him! Goddamn it, Mase! Get your shit together!”

I nod, only speaking in sighs and blinks and nods, pretending I hear him, but I hear nothing. I’m not here. I’m not anywhere but lost in my own fucking thoughts. No sensation, no sight, no sound, only fucking anger.

How could he? How could he fucking do that to her?

I know, I don’t know for sure it’s him, but tell me. What do you think?

I have no idea where the game is at, who’s leading, or any other stat I usually always know. Instead, I have one focus, one thought, one outcome.

On the ice again, I face off on the line and I’m next to Dave. My hands are shaking, my stomach clenching. If I had anything left in my stomach, I would lose it on the ice.

Don’t react. Don’t look at him.

And then our eyes meet on the line, center ice. He stares at me, his eyes narrowing. “Not here,” he says.

Not here?I swallow hard. Maybe it’s a warning, but it tells me one thing.

He knows why I’m acting like this.

I can’t see straight, anger filling me with adrenaline, pumping blood through my veins, and it’s a deadly combination. Every bone in my body aches, my muscles clenching and strangling. The beat of my heart is loud, drowning, and suffocating. I swallow back the bile rising up my throat.

I blink.

I try to breathe.

I try to be numb.

Leaning forward in a crouched position, I rest my arms against my thighs, my gaze catching Ami staring at me, her hand over her mouth. She knows something is wrong.

I look away.

I blink.

I try to fucking breathe.

Being numb won’t work. Too much about this girl is inside me. Too much anger. Too much guilt. Too much heart.

I blink again. This time, the motion is exaggerated.

“You want it, don’t you? I bet you like it rough.”

“How are you and the ballerina doin’?”

The warning chirp of the whistle brings me back. Leo is nudging the Shark’s center with his stick, one eye on me, his head turning to the ref and then me again.

Leo knows. His jaw clenches, and his eyes wild when I tip my head toward Dave letting him know I’m about to do something.

He returns the nod, his posture tense.

My eyes flicker to Dave, gritting my teeth. Sweat mixes with the blood from earlier and it streams down my face, hot against my cool skin. I blow out a breath.

Anger pulses through my body; my hands clench inside my gloves.

When the whistle blows, the puck drops, the sound of plastic scraping over the ice rattles, but everything is still for me. I don’t move. Neither does Dave.

I blink.

I try to breathe.

I try to be numb.

None of it works.

Dave stands from his crouching position, and I follow his action. “I told you. Later.”

I’m famous for fighting with my heart. Ask my parents. Ask my friends. Ask Ami.

I don’t listen. My breath hitches as I let my stick and gloves fall to the ice. The sound, so loud, so defining because this is it. This is me giving in. I can’t take it any longer.

Closing my eyes, I suck in one deep breath, the action strangled. My lungs fill with evil.

Dave circles me, waiting for me to make the move. “Okay.” He shakes his head. “So we’re doing this here, in front of everyone?”

I nod.

He was my friend, my teammate, my boy, but he took something from a girl in such a brutal fucking way, something she can never get back.

“Why?” My voice is barely above a whisper.

He hears me, his head angles at the sound of my voice. He shrugs, a bitter laugh. “It wasn’t personal, Mase. She’s just a girl.”

“Just a girl?” I choke, trying to swallow as we circle one another.

“Yes. Just a girl. You’re the one that got attached to her.”

I lose my shit at that statement. “You nearly killed her!” I bark. Leo is near me now, skating by and trying to push me back. Shoving Leo backward, I don’t even look to see if I do damage. I finally have that numbness I’d been searching for. “You knew what you did, didn’t you? You knew when I said I had taken a girl to the hospital that night, didn’t you?”

“I knew.” He shrugs again. “What do you want me to say?”

His casualness pisses me off. I have these memories of Ami in the snow. They haunt me. And now, staring at him, it’s like they’re real again. They’re playing out like a scene from a movie. One right after another. I can smell the blood, feel the chill of that night, hear her moan, wrenching in pain, and now I see him standing over her.

My fist clenches, my knuckles white. It’s not a memory any longer. It’s a fucking nightmare.

“She was a virgin....” I gasp, trying to hold on. I sound desperate, and I am. “Did you know that?” None of this has anything to do with her being a virgin, but I’m so far out of my own head, that’s the only aspect I can focus on.

I watch him. I want a response out of him. I need a goddamn reaction from him. Something that tells me he’s sorry or that he never meant to hurt her the way he did. I get none of that because you can’t get a reaction out of someone who doesn’t give a shit.

“Oh, come on.” Dave rolls his eyes, shaking his head in disgust. His teammates begin circling us, and refs get in between, shoving us backward. “Why does it even matter?”

The nerve of him. How? Why? “It matters!” I shout, struggling to get to him. I’m so livid and want revenge so badly I’ve forgot everything else around us. In an aggravated motion, I rip my helmet off. It skids to the boards. “It fucking matters, and you know it!”

“Why?” He sounds offended. He knows where this is going and from the look in my eyes, I’m sure he knows how it’s ending. “Is it because you didn’t get a chance at the cherry?” He laughs bitterly. “That’s it, isn’t it? Or because you wanna be the hero?”

I find numbness again and lunge for him, throwing punches I’m not landing at first, but then once I start connecting, every fucking memory is told through my fists. It’s like I stop seeing what is in front of me and live inside a memory instead.

“She’s fine now, man.” Dave snorts, completely missing the point, struggling to get me off him. “Get over it.”

I have no idea what’s going on around me, just that refs, coaches, and teammates are all shouting around us, but I can’t stop, not until I can’t lift my arm. He holds his own for a while too, nailing me with a few right hooks and one jab that has me seeing stars.

When I can’t move, when he’s lying on the ice, bleeding, a vision just like Ami had been, that’s when the refs are able to pull me off. “You’re done,” they yell at me, point to the bench.

Wobbly, I try to stand, but I can’t. I’m held up by a ref that tells me I’m ejected.

Turning to look at Dave, I spit blood on the ice next to him. “Walk away from that, you son of a bitch.”

He doesn’t move from his place on the ice, but he does look at me. Nothing. He’s expressionless. There’s no apology, no anger. Not a goddamn thing to go off. Blood pours from his face, soaking his jersey as the medics surround him.

I want to fucking kill him, but there’s a bigger message here.

My message? The heart of our sport so clearly sent sometimes, is a personal one: You fuck up, you pay for that shit.

I’m escorted to the locker room and start ripping away my gear, throwing the best I can given my condition. The trainers are there, and I’m told I need to head to the hospital. I can feel blood dripping from my face and the pain in my chest, but when I realize I have no vision in my left eye, I decide maybe it’s a good idea.

Immediately, my thoughts are on Ami. I wonder if she knows. We knew things about each other, shit we never had to say.

And then I realize, if she didn’t know already, she’s about to find out the truth and it might destroy any chance I have with her.

He was my friend and I didn’t see it.

I brought him around her, unknowingly, but still.

Staring at my bloody hands, reality begins to sink in. I’m disappointed in myself. Ashamed I didn’t use my head. We’re in playoffs and I let my team down over not being able to pull myself out of a situation I should have let the police handle. I also know had any one of my boys known what I know, they would have reacted that way too. You can’t tell me Remy wouldn’t have pulled that shit.

Coach is in my face immediately following us losing the game. “They’re slapping you with intent to injure.”

I nod. I knew that was coming. I dropped my gloves first.

“I hope it was worth it,” he snaps, throwing his clipboard and walking away from me.

Was it?

I don’t know the answer.

“So what’s going to happen to Dave?” I ask, at the hospital and holding my cell phone to my ear, my voice shaking in fear that the answer will be nothing.

“If he is the one, he will be arrested,” Detective Paulsen tells me. I had Leo call him as soon as they sent me to the hospital. “He will be questioned, I assure you.”

“Questioned? He should be fucking arrested. He admitted it to me,” I yell.

I hear the change in Paulsen’s breathing. And then I think, did he know all along it was Dave? Had he known and just didn’t say anything to me because he was my teammate? I think back to my interactions with Paulsen. How I missed it this long is disturbing. Now everything makes sense.

“You knew all along it was Dave, didn’t you?” I ask, gripping the phone tighter.

Silence. Nothing but fucking silence.

Leo takes the phone from me. “Listen here, Detective. You guys better do something about him tonight, or I guarantee you, you’re gonna have the entire Chicago Blackhawks team in jail in about an hour,” Leo warns the detective, his scowl deepening when the detective says nothing, and I realize I have never seen Leo this upset. I’ve never seen him so intense, so angry, and well, so protective of a girl. Ami has that way about her.

Shit. Ami. She’s probably wondering where I am and scared of what she saw on the ice.

“Like I said, he’ll be questioned.” And then the detective hangs up on us.

Leo starts pacing the room, his hands in his hair and throws my phone against the wall. “I was with him that night. I was fucking with him!” A look of realization comes over him. “I had breakfast with him that morning and didn’t think anything of it.” His hands pull at his hair. “He had scratches all over him. Oh, for Christ’s sake! I even knew he’d been with a girl that night. He told me.” I can understand Leo’s anger and betrayal. We trusted Dave. He was our friend, and now it’s like we don’t even know him. Dave was the last person I would have ever thought could do something like that to another person. Sure, he fucked around, but trying to kill a woman? No. Never did I think he would have been the one.

Nausea rolls through me again. I think of Ami and my heart sinks. “Since you just broke my phone, can you text Remy and have him find Ami?”

Leo picks my phone up off the floor. The screen is busted. “I already sent him a message to bring the girls here.” Our eyes meet. “Did you know before the game?

I swallow trying to calm my stomach. “That’s when it hit me. He said Natalie liked it rough and something about the way he said it hit me. And then he couldn’t even fuckin’ look at me. I knew then.”

He hangs his hands on the back of his neck. “But did he actually admit it?”

“Yeah, he did. Right before I hit him.”

I replay his words in my head. “Is it because you didn’t get a chance at the cherry? That’s it, isn’t it? Or because you wanna be the hero?”

She’s fine now, man. Get over it.

Get over it? How’s she supposed to get over it? She still has the lasting reminders of his attack, and will for the rest of her life. And what, he gets to be free? I don’t fucking think so.

How am I going to tell her this? I fight back the urge to vomit again. Will she hate me?

Will she blame me because I was friends with him?

Feeling lightheaded, I lie back against the bed. All I can think about is how I’m going to tell Ami and what she’s going to think of me after tonight. I lost my shit in front of thousands of people and she witnessed me at my worst.

After what she went through, will she be scared of me? Did I fuck this up with her over not being able to control myself?