I can feel my heartbeat accelerating under her palm, probably giving away everything I’m trying not to say.
“You know what’s really crazy?” she says quietly.
“My pirouettes?”
She lets out a small laugh. “Yes those, but also…” Her fingers curl slightly into my shirt. “It’s that you’re the one person who makes this feel less like I’m losing everything and more like I’m choosing something great.”
“You are,” I say.
She leans in first, or maybe I do, or maybe we both do simultaneously. The kiss begins tentatively, like we’re both testing the strength of a bridge we’ve been building plank by plank for weeks. Her lips are softer than my imagination ever dared to make them, warm and pliant, carrying the faint sweetness of cherry ChapStick. Her breath mingles with mine, quickening, and I feel the delicate brush of her fingers against my jaw, anchoring me in a way that makes my pulse race. My hand finds the curve of her waist, the heat of her body radiating through her shirt. Then my hand makes its way up her body, discovering the place where her neck meets her shoulder. As I slowly trace that vulnerable curve, her pulse flutters against my thumb. Her skin is warm and smooth. I can feel her heartbeat syncing with mine.
I’m suspended in the air again—metaphorically this time—between what is and what’s about to not be.
And this time, I don’t ever want to land.
Chapter Thirteen
There’s a peculiar kind of optimism that only exists in medical waiting rooms, and it’s always sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with its twin: dread.
Dr. Connelly waves me into his office where he now sits shuffling his papers with the care of someone about to explain why your body has betrayed you in new and creative ways. I know this shuffle. I’ve memorized its rhythm over months of appointments.
“Well,” Dr. Connelly says, dragging the word out. “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this.” His wire-rim glasses slide halfway down his nose before he nudges them back into place, and then he swivels the massive monitor toward me. “This is your last MRI from eight weeks ago. And this,” he clicks to the next image, his voice doing something I’ve never heard it do before—ascending into actual wonder—“is the MRI I just took.”
He flips back and forth, from the old one to the new one.
The first image—my eight-weeks-ago hamstring—looks like someone asked a toddler to draw pain using only black crayons and rage. The muscle fibers appear frayed, like a rope that’s been used for tug-of-war between optimism and decisively-winning reality. There’s this ghostly white clouding throughout the tissue—inflammation having a house party it forgot to end three months ago. The tear itself shows up as a dark, irregular gash, like someone took a bite out of my athletic future and didn’t even have the courtesy to chew properly. Scar tissue sprawls across the image in chaotic patterns—the body’s equivalent of duct-taping a broken vase back together and hoping nobody notices. The second image, from today, looks like my hamstring went to Switzerland for a spa retreat and came back speaking six languages and owning a massive cryptocurrency portfolio. The muscle fibers run in perfect parallel lines. Where there was once that angry storm cloud of inflammation, there’s now just muscle.
Dr. Connelly keeps toggling between the two images like he’s trying to catch them in a lie.
“Liam,” he says, emitting a short burst of laughter in disbelief. “Your hamstring, your corresponding ligaments, your tendons…they aren’t just healed. They’re stronger than they were before the injury.”
“Stronger?” I ask.
“Not only is the damage repaired, but your glute-hamstring complex is firing at a higher efficiency rate than pre-injury.” He stares at the screen. “This should have taken months longer. If ever.”
“So, you’re saying I’m good to go? I can get back on the ice?”
He gives me a look. “I’m saying you’re a medical anomaly. What in the blazes have you been doing?”
I shrug. “Just followed your guidance, doc. Alternative options.”
“Alternative options?” he repeats.
“No stem cells, no magic potions,” I add. “Just diligent alternative training like you suggested.”
“Based on these scans, I don’t see why you couldn’t be cleared soon—a matter of days, or even later today.”
As I stand to leave, the excitement overwhelms my façade of coolness. I head for the door and instinctively find myself twirling as I exit.
Behind me, I hear Dr. Connelly’s voice, bewildered. “Did he just pirouette out of here?”
Walking into the Sentinels’ locker room, a tape ball smacks me in the forehead courtesy of Dewey Carter. A small tape ball or a chunk of snow scraped off a skate blade and thrown at you by a teammate—this is hockey’s version of a hug.
“Nice of you to join us, LeClerc,” Dewey calls out, his grin suggesting he’s been stockpiling insults since I’ve been sidelined. “You sure you’re in the right place? Don’t recognize you with a smile plastered all over that ugly mug of yours.”
“Well,” I shoot back, the muscle memory for locker room banter awakening like a bear from hibernation, “figured I’d come see what you guys did for fun while I was gone. Turns out it’s just missing open nets and blaming the goalies for your personal failures.”
Dewey smirks. “Big words from a band-aid.”
