Delayed Penalty Part 5

I looked up at Leo, confused by his reaction. "What?"

He stood, setting his stick aside, and then pointed at me. "She's in your zone, and now you're cherry picking," he said. "That's why you're upset. You fell for her, and she's not even awake yet."

He grabbed his stick and headed to the door with Remy, not even bothering to wait for my answer.

Leo saw me this past month. He knew by the way I was reacting at the hospital on Christmas that there was something keeping me there. I didn't deny it either. I had kind of fallen for a girl in a coma, as weird as that sounded.

It had been a few weeks since I found Ami in the alley. And every day that I could, I was with her, sitting in her hospital room, just being with her. It made me feel like I was doing something right. I was waiting for her to wake up.

She turned eighteen two days ago and didn't even get to celebrate. All her surgeries had been completed, and everything the doctors could do for her had been done. We were just waiting.

It wasn't easy on me, and I tried not to return to that hospital, but every time I did. Hockey players didn't live their lives by the calendar year. For hockey players, our lives were dictated by a schedule, a very long schedule from October to March, and longer if you were lucky. Our lives consisted of fragments and were turned upside down nine months of the year. Awake half the night, sleeping half the day, the morning no different that the afternoon or evening, it was life on the road. Full of high energy, it wasn't a life everyone could lead. It was exhausting, to say the least.

And then add being attached to a girl you never met before. Talk about mental stupidity.

The police had no leads on her case and were just about to close it. The only lead they had with Blake was quickly put to rest when he got a good f.u.c.king lawyer. I was sure he took a mortgage out on his dance studio to pay for it. The bottom line was his DNA wasn't a match, and he had an alibi that placed him at home after they went to dinner. It didn't matter if he had an alibi to me. Something about our conversation, and the way his dark, s.h.i.+fty eyes a.s.sessed me that day in the parking lot, told me he knew a critical detail about that night that he wasn't sharing. That could have just been my mind trying to hold someone accountable.

The rape kit was positive, and the police had the information they needed should the right lead come along, but they basically had nothing. None of the witnesses panned out.

I must have called that f.u.c.king hospital twenty times that day, checking for updates, once I knew they were taking her off the medication that was keeping her in the induced coma. I wanted so badly to be there when she woke up, but what the f.u.c.k would I say? She didn't know me. I would be lucky if she wanted anything to do with me.

Would she want to know me?

Every pa.s.sing day, each minute that came and went and she didn't wake up, added to the churning in my stomach. I worried about her. I found myself sitting there talking about nothing, telling her about me and my life, and then I'd just sleep in a chair beside her bed. I couldn't leave.

Nineteen days after I saved her, I got the call that I had been waiting on. The morning of game forty-six, Ami woke up.

"She's awake," were the words I'd been waiting on since I found her, and then I wanted to hear, "He's been caught." I was smart enough to understand the criminal justice system and knew that I would be hearing one before the other.

I wasn't sure what would feel better, but when I heard that she was awake, the relief that came with it was greater than I expected.

Wendy called around four in the morning when I was getting ready to head to our morning skate. I was f.u.c.king tired from the game last night against St. Louis, but when my phone rang and I saw it was the hospital, I answered.

"Are you serious?" I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

"Yeah, she came out of it last night, but we wanted to give her some time. Then when she started to come around she wanted to know how she got to the hospital."

"And you said?" I pressed for more information as I walked toward my bathroom.

"I said Superman brought her in."

I laughed, throwing my towel on the tile floor in my bathroom. My eyes caught the city below Trump Towers, quiet and still asleep. My lips curved, knowing the one person I wanted to wake up was finally awake.

"Seriously, what did you say?"

"I told her a man brought her in and then she asked to meet him," Wendy said, amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice. I wasn't sure if she was f.u.c.king with me.

"Oh."

"What's with you?"

"Nothing." I tried to play it off, but I was freaking out a little, and Wendy didn't miss a beat.

"Well, are you going to come see her or what? She's awake now."

I really wanted to ask Wendy what color Ami's eyes were and if she had said anything else, but I didn't. "Oh, uh yeah, we play Anaheim tonight. I'll come by after the game."

"Okay, I'll let her know. Good luck tonight."

"Thanks." I hung up before I said anything else that would give me away. I was kind of glad there was a game tonight because it'd give me more time to think of what to say to her.

All through the morning skate, and after what Leo had said to me, I couldn't stop thinking about Ami. I should have been preparing for the game and thinking of nothing but the Anaheim Ducks and how we could beat them. We hadn't seen them since game twenty four and they had beaten us 0-3. That wasn't happening again if I could help it.

During practice, Leo and Remy were talking about their night while slapping pucks at Cage, and before he could recover, they'd slap another one at him.

Skating near them, I leaned on my stick, watching, waiting for Cage to react to them. He'd let them do this as sort of a warm up, but right when they weren't expecting it, he would slap one back at them.

"You know that feeling when you're on acid and the world stops just to f.u.c.k with you? That's what it was like."

Remy gave Leo a concerned look and then slapped another shot toward the net. "Never did acid," he said in his rough voice this early in the morning. "I really worry that with the hard hits you've taken, and your drug use as a kid, you might not have any brain cells left."

Leo yawned. "I've got some left." He took cover behind me when Cage took one off the face mask. He knew what was coming.

Sure enough, Cage took a puck and fired it back at us, nailing Remy in the back of the head.

Leo skated over to me after warm-ups and asked if she was awake. He knew they'd taken her off the medicine.

I said yes, and he knew then I'd be no help in that game.

As it turned out, I was more than on my game that night with two goals, three a.s.sists, and ten minutes in the penalty box.

After the game, I didn't go out with the boys. Instead, I did what I had been doing for the last nineteen days.

The five-minute drive to the hospital went slower than it had in the previous weeks because, for once, there was this anxiety that had settled over me, knowing that I would finally meet her.

What would I say?

Should I ask about her family?

No. Stupid idea. Let her talk.

What if she can't talk?

What if she doesn't want to see me?

No, that wasn't true. Wendy said she asked for me.

Wendy was just getting ready to leave, dressed in street-clothes, when I walked in. It was late. She probably just wanted to get home.

"Has the doctor seen her since she woke up?"

"Yes, he said she has no memory of the few hours leading up to the attack, as well as the entire attack itself. She doesn't remember."

Nodding, my next question was, "Did you tell her who I was?"

Wendy gave me a grin as she walked to Ami's room with me. "I told her your name, but no, I didn't say that you were a hockey player or anything. That's your business."

My arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her into me. "Thanks. I appreciate that."

"Does that mean you'll take me to dinner soon?"

I gave her another smile. "Sure."

I wasn't lying. I would take her to dinner. Going home with her was another story. I knew I couldn't do that again.

The anxiety of actually meeting Ami, now that she was awake, was written all over my face. Wendy noticed and asked, "What's going on with you?"

"I don't know...what if I'm not who she expected?"

"Believe me, she's pretty cool, and any girl would be lucky to be saved by you." Wendy gave a nod in the direction of the room. I smiled, giving her one last look before she left.

I stood outside the room for a few minutes, not knowing what to say. It was more along the lines of my f.u.c.king feet wouldn't move, and my heart was in my throat.

What if I wasn't who she expected?

That was a big what if in my head. It was the one question that was keeping me from stepping inside. Until now, I'd never seen her eyes open, her smile, or her voice. She'd never seen me, never heard my voice, looked into my eyes, or felt my touch.

At some point, I must have gotten my b.a.l.l.s back because I knocked lightly and poked my head inside the door.

And then I heard her voice for the first time. "Come in." Sweet like syrup, but a touch raspy from having the tube in her throat for so long. It was also tender and just as scared as I felt.

She was sitting up; that was also a first. Her eyes were downcast as stared at her hands resting on her lap. She looked up as I came through the door, her bright starry blue eyes, though tired, met mine and I smiled at her.

They were bigger than I imagined and somehow the same cool blue as mine, just brighter. When you looked at her pale complexion and then the eyes, they looked misplaced with their clarity and innocence. I couldn't look away from her, and the anxiety I felt was overwhelming. Beneath the eyes was a depth and intensity I'd never seen in another person. But then again, I'd never taken the time to really stare at someone before.

The doctor came in right then, ruining anything I was about to say, but it gave me a few minutes to decide what to say.

After being around Ami for all of two minutes, I learned a few things. She didn't take s.h.i.+t from anyone, which explained the bruises on her fingers and the blood under her nails when I found her. She fought hard for her life. And she was adorable. When she kept rolling her eyes at the doctor, I dug that. I liked her more by the second and was starting to understand why I was so drawn to her. She was just like me in some ways.

When the doctor left, she turned her attention to me.

"Hi," I said, because I was stupid and couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Wow, you're bigger than I expected." Ami blinked, the motion and her words bringing me from my thoughts and back to her.

Say what?

I just smiled. What the f.u.c.k do you say in a moment like this? "Hey, glad you're okay."

No that seemed too...cheesy?

I nervously cleared my throat, trying to gain some composure, if I even could.

Ami must have sensed the edginess surrounding me and motioned to the chair I'd spent almost every night in wondering what this moment would be like. "You can sit...if you want."

So I sat, awkwardly, but I did sit. She watched my every move, her eyes roaming over my body again. I could feel the rush of blood to my face, and other places, because she was watching me so closely.

There was another round of some awkward silence but more from the both of us this time.

I cleared my throat again. It was the only way I could get my words out. "How are you feeling?"

That seemed to spark the fire she needed to talk as well. "Thank you for what you did. I don't know how I can ever thank you for saving me."

"No thanking necessary." My elbows rested uncomfortably on my knees, unable to relax, knees bouncing. "I couldn't leave you out there."

There was a nervous energy swirling around the room, and every breath I took, she did the same, as if we were trying to breathe for each other, say what the other needed. Stumbling over words, we talked about the hospital staff and what they did to save her, but then we were left in silence again.

Ami, noticing the silence had settled, let out a small soft laugh. "Do you know Wendy?"

"Yeah, we've known each other for a few weeks at least."

She nodded, her eyes on her hands. Thankfully, the bruises were disappearing, and if you looked at her now, aside from the bandaged head and pale face, you'd never know she'd been injured with a smile and eyes like that.

But if you looked close enough, and I did, her pain, her memories, what she wouldn't say, was written in the frown she tried to hide when you'd look away or the heavy blinking and the glossy stare.

Wendy had told me her memory surrounding that night was gone, and it may very well have been, but there was a deeper part, a darker part of her that knew pieces of what happened.

She must have noticed I was watching and looked over at me and smiled. I did the same, feeling that connection I'd always felt with her grow a little stronger with her breathtaking smile. "They cut my hair, didn't they?" her hand reached up to touch the side of the bandage and then fell back to the bed.

"Yeah, they had to," I said, looking at my hands and my swollen knuckles from fighting Grady earlier. "It'll grow back, though." I gave her a wink before I realized what I did.

But then she smiled again, seeming to get lost in my words anytime I spoke.

I wanted to say so much, but I couldn't. The words still weren't there, and I didn't want to scare her with everything I had wanted to ask her. f.u.c.k, I was scaring myself with how I was reacting. Image if I could have spoken!

"You must be tired," I said, watching her again. "I should let you get some rest."

Her face fell slightly, and I could tell she didn't want to me to leave.

"Oh, okay." She looked down again, her fingers fidgeting with the IV tube in her hand.

"I just thought..." f.u.c.k. I wanted so bad to stop staring at her, but I couldn't. Her eyes flickered between my eyes and my mouth as we stared at each other.

"I get it if you have to leave. Thanks for coming to say h.e.l.lo."

Then I thought I could stay until she fell asleep. G.o.d knows I didn't want to leave. Here was a perfect excuse.

"I could stay...if you want," I suggested, not really wanting to leave. "I used to just sit here and watch movies."