Soon enough we’re almost through the second period, and the Outlaws manage to get a lead on the Devils, and with every passing moment the air shifts more and more. The attacks get more brutal. The penalties coming one after another. And my heart starts a countdown as if it knows what’s coming. Each beat becoming louder and harder with every passing second.
And then it all happens in a quick snap of my heart.
The Ice Devils passing the puck to each other, Fooley and Goram intercepting from our end.
The chase is on.
Zima has the puck and he’s flying toward Sava, Exton is quick on his heels, but it’s too late. I watch in slow motion as Zima sends the puck into the net and it misses as if he never even intended to make it, aiming for something completely different. Someone. For Sava.
He runs straight into Severin, knocking him over with his entire force. The impact so strong it flips the net over and a few feet out of the way.
Sava’s head is thrown back; his helmet is knocked off as his whole body hits the cold ice…his head bouncing off it. A blood-curling scream fills my ears and I realize it came from me.
“Severin!” I scream, running past every stupefied spectator, pushing them away without looking as I rush to the plexiglass. My heart freezing over inside my chest. It won’t. It can’t beat without him.
My heavy, panting breaths seize when my eyes snap to Sava lying on his side as a small pool of blood spreads across his blond hair and the ice around him.
I don’t see the entire Outlaws team charging onto the ice. I don’t see Exton flying toward Zima as he slams him against the boards not too far from where I’m standing.
There’s mayhem on the ice, the sounds of a fight filling the arena but all I see and hear is the man lying on that ice.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, I chant in my mind.
“Mr. Brick!” Emett’s trembling voice reaches me, and I turn to see him watching his favorite person bleeding out on the ice. Stella wraps her arms around him tighter as he starts to cry.
“No, no, no, no,” I feel a tear slide down my cheek as I watch the doctors rush over through the crowd, crouching all around him. “No, you can’t die. Nothing can happen to you. Nothing! You hear me?NOTHING!” My palms beat against the plexiglassand then those golden eyes open just a touch as Exton rushes to him, his hands and jersey covered in Zima’s blood.
“Look at me! Look at me!” I plead, screaming against the glass and it’s as if he can hear me, sense my presence and fear that is so palpable, Severin’s head turns and his eyes lock on mine.Sava,I mouth, my whole body shaking. “I-I can’t…I can’t…” I struggle to get the words out past my wheezing breaths.
He says something to Exton, and the next thing I know, Severin is getting up from the ice, and I’m shaking my head as the crowd is cheering, going wild to see him up and moving.
He can’t get up. He shouldn’t! He needs to keep still. They need to make sure he’s all right, but Severin doesn’t listen to the doctors and staff shouting at him as he skates over where I’m standing. His eyes cast in that familiar storm as he stands on the other side of the plexiglass. A storm that doesn’t reach me even when he presses the palm of his hand over mine.
His storm is far away from me. Instead, he looks up to Emett and shouts as loud as he can, “I’m okay, little man. I’m okay!”
I tip my head up to where Stella is holding Emett, who’s nodding and wiping his tears off with the back of his small hand.
Before he can do or say anything else, the doctors finally manage to chase Severin off the ice to the sound of cheering but everything inside me is shaking and dying. I taste death on my tongue as my heart refuses to beat without him.
My oldest companion crushes into me. Fear. I’ve lived with it for better part of my life, but it never felt like it was here to claim me until now. Until this moment when I saw Sava’s life hanging on by a thread. A very thin thread that could snap and take him away. A thread that’s been unraveling from around my heart with every step he takes away from me as if he’s the one who was keeping it beating all this time. And now, the last inches of it are stretching tight and thin, yanking on it.
Fear. I feel it, but not of being hurt. It was never about being hurt when it came to Severin, and I think I’ve known it from the first moment I’ve met him.
It was fear of life without him, and now I’ve done everything to lose him. I feel it.
Foot by foot he slides off the ice, taking my heart along with him.
“Look at me,” I plead quietly. “I beg you, look at me, Severin.”
He stops abruptly, and then slowly turns just enough to make eye contact with me. Severin’s eyes don’t leave mine for a moment as he’s being led off the ice. He stops and stares with that storm brewing in the far depth of his soul.
My heartbeat gets mixed in with every loud thought in my head, pounding through me relentlessly and it’s too much…it’s all too much.
My eyes snatch onto the ice where a crew is cleaning up Severin’s blood.
The arena becomes a blur, every voice becomes a hush until all I see are the what ifs, and all I hear is my ragged, terrified breath. Somewhere far away I hear the buzzer, signaling the end of this bloody second period.
But something snaps inside my heart. Like a piece of it has broken free.
