I shouldn’t have driven that night. Period. Liam should have been the one to take Reed home. I don’t even remember pulling up to his place, or walking up to the door, or the fight with his dirtbag father.
All I remember is his father shouting, “You killed him!” over and over, the cocking of the shotgun, Lynn’s screams, and the blood.
The door to the locker room bangs open, launching my pulse into the stratosphere. I swallow hard, gulping air. Beckett staggers in, hitting the swinging door against the wall. He launches his helmet across the room and makes for the trash can. The sour smell of stomach acid and bile fill the air. My racing heart stops on a dime.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask, trying to keep the shake out of my voice. I push off the lockers and cross the room.
Beckett pukes again, wobbling on his skates.
“Are you fucking drunk?” I know that’s impossible. Beckett drinks to be polite. Maybe in the off-season he’d get wild and get tanked once or twice, but during the season? Never.
He is still in his skates, the rubberized floor giving him grip, but his ankle wobbles and he almost goes down. I’m at his side in a blink, pinching his elbow.
“Get the fuck off!” Beckett rips his arm out of my grip. He staggers back, almost falling. In his skates, Beckett has half a foot on me, but our strength is even, since I lift heavier. Today though, he’s feeble, like a baby bird pushing my arm away. I slam his back into the lockers. He still has a glove on and uses it to bat my hand. His head lolls on his shoulders.
“Beckett, look at me.”
Of course, he doesn’t. I grab his chin and give his head a little shake, my panic making it rougher than I mean. His pupils areblown huge, eating up all the blue in his eyes. And this isn’t from bullshit alpha rage. His eyes are bloodshot too.
“Did you see the doctor?”
“I just need to eat.” His words are clear, not slurred. At least there’s that.
“You dumb fuck!” All my care comes out as curses. “You didn’t see the doctor, did you? You got clocked so hard it rattled your little puppy brain. You have a concussion. And then you get the bright idea to train hard on top of that and not take a day off?”
A bang behind me sounds like a shotgun through the locker room.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Julius strides in, all righteous.
“It’s nothing,” both Beckett and I say, in perfect unison.
Julius rips off his gloves and throws them to the floor like he’s on the ice and going for a winger. I don’t even see the punch before it lands. Stars break into little sparkles at the edge of my vision. Instantly, blood flows from my nose.
“What the fuck, man?” I wipe my upper lip with the back of my hand, and it comes away red.
“You!” Julius hauls me off the floor and shakes a finger in my face. “This is your fucking fault!”
“What the fuck?” I say again.
“You have one job, you degenerate asshole!” Julius slams me into the lockers next to Beckett. “Your one job, Pierce, is to take care of him, and you fucking failed at that. He has a concussion and you did jack shit about it?”
I open my mouth, then close it. He’s not wrong. I did jack shit about it. Regardless of the fact that Beckett is a pro athlete and a goddamn adult, and that he should fucking know better. That is my job. Beckett is my job.
Julius gets his hand wrapped around my throat, and he hauls back for another punch. I brace for it, then Beckett’s voice cuts through the tension right next to my ear.
“Don’t fucking touch him.”
Julius drops me like I’m a bag of dog shit. He takes two giant steps back, and I’m left with the taste of copper in my mouth. I wipe under my nose. Blood. I look at my hand, then spit onto the floor.
“At least I still have all my teeth,” I mutter, tongue probing the line just to be sure.
Julius snorts.
I want to tell him he’s right, but my jaw aches too much to be funny. I glance at Beckett, who’s swaying on his feet. Fuck.
Julius points at me, then at Beckett. “I’m going to do you a solid, Beckett, and keep this quiet. So, we’re going to reduce this down to a migraine. And not whatever the fuck is going on with you right now. But you,” he jabs a finger at me, “you’re going to take him to the clinic and get all the imaging that he needs. And you,” he points at Beckett, “are benched for at least a week. Get in bed. Rest.”
He looks at me, then at my crotch. “And I mean actual fucking rest, so that your brains don’t turn to complete mush.”
