Read Online Delayed Penalty by Shey Stahl - Free Book Online

stared at the girl underneath me, her blonde flowing hair wrapped around my hand, and I thought it could have been like that for Ami. Fuck.
    With quick, short breaths, I pulled away from the girl, but my heart wouldn't calm down. "I'm sorry. I can't."
    I felt like shit. I felt like an asshole. I wanted to shake myself and say, "Get yourself together," but I couldn't.
    She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. She wanted this. Being with me like this was probably something she would remember long after I forgot her name. I knew that; I was used to that.
    But now things had changed.
    "It's not you, honey," I said, trying to convey that it wasn't her at all. This was my own shit. I swallowed, my hands shaking as another image plagued me, the one of her when I left the hospital the other night. I shook my head and cleared my throat. "I need to get out of here."
    Sitting back on my heels, I moved away, reaching for my clothes. When I got to the door, I hesitated. I didn't want this girl thinking it was something she did. Running my hands through my hair, I gave her a smile and wrote my number on a piece of mail she had on the counter. "Maybe some other time."
    As soon as I got outside, I felt physically ill again, and the girl I left on the bed hadn't helped. Any other time I knew she would have been exactly what I needed after the win, and maybe even the next morning. But she reminded me too much of Ami. She had blonde hair and a tiny body, and I lost it. I had to leave.
    My problem was, I kept thinking about what she went through, what she felt, over and over again. Would she would remember? She was in my zone whether I wanted to admit it or not.

 
     
    Cherry picking – When a team's player stays near their opponent's defensive zone waiting for an outlet to pass in order to receive a breakaway.
     
    Game 46 –Anaheim Ducks
    Sunday, January 10, 2010
    (Home Game)
     
     
    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 fucking 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