Blind Ice (Razors Ice Book 5) (17 page)

Logan’s head throbbed and his face felt like it had been cracked open. What did he expect taking a puck to the face at eighty miles an hour?

He wanted the doctors to patch him up as best as they could so he could get back out on the ice. He’d wear one of those stupid helmet cages if he had to, he just wanted to play. The team needed him. There was no way they had the offense to beat the Greenbacks without him. And he wasn’t about to let those smug Nevadans walk out of his building with a win.

“Get me back out there,” he demanded. His team would need him for the power play. “Stitch me up and do whatever you have to do, just get me back out there.”

Dr. Mallan moved passed Kate and went to Logan’s side. “We need to get you to the hospital right away.”

“Shit,” Logan murmured. This wasn’t how his night was supposed to end.

Nothing good ever came from a hockey player being transported to the hospital.

* * *

Kate followed behind the ambulance in her car, her hands gripping the wheel like a life preserver ring. Swirls of fog disappeared under the bumper like defeated ghosts.

Dr. Mallan was more qualified to be in the ambulance with Logan and the trainer than she was, but she wished she was with him all the same. She wanted to pull over and be sick on the side of the road or to cry, to have a long, hard cry, but she didn’t. She couldn’t cry because then she wouldn’t be able to see the road. But the tears came hot and fast anyway, and she blinked them away as the road swirled with the light from her headlights.

The image of the ice kept flashing before her eyes. There had been so much blood. It had mixed with the moisture from the ice and created a pool of catastrophe.

There could be any number of things wrong with Logan. He could have a fractured orbital bone, clotting under the eye, scratched cornea…

As much as her eyes burned and her stomach churned, Kate gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white and kept on driving. Traffic was surprisingly light for a Monday night, but most of Red Valley was at the NorCal Center watching the remainder of the game. She didn’t care which team ended up winning the game, she just wanted Logan to be okay.

Cool air blew in from the vents and Kate shivered. She’d forgotten her cardigan in the suite, but somehow she’d had the right mind to grab her purse when she’d run to the locker room.

The inside of the hospital was sterile and drab, yet familiar. Kate was reminded of a time when she’d rushed Julia here after she’d stubbornly insisted she could change the filter in the air conditioner herself and had broken her arm falling off the stepstool.

As the medics rushed Logan to a room, Kate sat in the waiting room. She wanted to pace but sat in the cold, hard plastic chair and waited instead. She should be in there helping him, talking with his other doctors,
something
.

But she wasn’t qualified to treat such an extensive injury. She knew that. She wasn’t an MD who specialized in ophthalmic surgery like Dr. Mallon. She administered glaucoma tests, diagnosed conjunctivitis, and dispensed contact lenses to grateful teenage girls.

And then she immediately felt selfish for thinking only of herself. If
she
was feeling this helpless imagine how Logan was feeling right now.

* * *

Logan dropped his head against the pillow and cursed his bad luck. After receiving thirteen lucky stitches and an x-ray revealing multiple fractures to the orbital bone, his entire face was throbbing. And now Dr. Mallan was telling him he had a scratched cornea along with a bunch of other medical jargon he didn’t understand. But the terminology wasn’t the issue. An incident like this could set him back for months. And that was a reality that didn’t sit well with him. But if his vision had been affected…

Well, he didn’t want to think about that reality.

“There’s a small chance of blindness if we operate, but an even bigger chance if we don’t.”

Dr. Mallan’s voice was beginning to irritate the hell out of him.

“
If
? I’m not going under the knife with an
if
, Doctor,” Logan said bitterly.

“I advise you to have the surgery, Logan. As soon as possible.”

Logan shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t fucking know yet.”

The doctor’s voices echoed in his head.
Surgery, blindness
…the words were a death sentence.

All he wanted to do was play hockey.

* * *

Before Dr. Mallan disappeared with Logan, he had reassured Kate that he would take good care of Logan. Kate trusted him, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t have liked to be in the room with Logan. How could she comfort him from out here? How would he know that he wasn’t alone if she was here in the waiting room?

When Kate looked down at her phone and saw the incoming call was from Julia, she felt some small comfort in the midst of her inner turmoil. “Hello?” she answered weakly.

“I’m coming down,” Julia said matter-of-factly.

Kate could hear the snap of Shamus’s harness being secured. “No! You don’t have to do that.” The last thing she needed was to worry about Julia out and about at night by herself. With or without Shamus.

“But I am,” Julia argued. “You need me. I’ll take a taxi and be there in no time.”

“Okay,” Kate relented. It would be nice to have someone to keep her company while she waited. The whole reason she had insisted on Julia getting a service dog was so that she wouldn’t have to worry quite so much. She would always worry, but she trusted Shamus’s ability to protect her sister.

A TV mounted in the corner of the drab waiting room showed highlights of the game. As far as comebacks went, the Razors’ was short lived. Apparently they had fallen apart after Logan was carried from the ice because they lost 4-1. It would have been nice to see them get a win, but the hockey gods were stingy when it came to doling out victories.

Within the next half hour, Shamus arrived at the hospital with Julia in tow. He immediately recognized Kate standing by the coffee machine in the waiting room and wagged his big tail in greeting.

“Is he going to be okay?” Julia asked Kate without bothering with pleasantries.

“I don’t know. He’s going to need surgery and…” Kate lowered herself to one of the plastic chairs, leaned down and put her arms around Shamus’s sturdy neck. He licked her arm and his compassion made her choke up even more. “You didn’t have to come,” she said softly.

“I’m here to show my support. Don’t let the word get out, though. I have a reputation to uphold.”

Kate sighed as Julia sat down next to her. “The way he fell down to the ice…” Her voice trailed off as she replayed the scene in her mind. It had been awful.

As much as Julia wanted to show her support, she couldn’t imagine what it had felt like to see Logan go down like that and then flail on the ice like—

“I’m sorry.” Julia put her arm around her sister’s shoulders and squeezed tight.

“Me too.”

Julia waited with Kate for a while and when it was clear they were waiting in vain, she told Kate they should probably head home.

Kate shook her head. She knew she should probably leave and give Julia a ride home, but she couldn’t get herself to stand up from the chair. Logan needed her. “You go on home. I’m just going to wait a little longer. I’ll call you a cab.”

“Okay.” Even though she felt like she hadn’t done enough, Julia went back home and left Kate to wait alone.

When Logan’s physician found her in the waiting room, Kate sprung from her seat. “Can I see him?” she asked, her voice sounding small and weak.

“He’s resting. Logan has expressed that he doesn’t wish to have any visitors,” he said gently.

Even me?
she wanted to ask. But she didn’t. Logan didn’t want to see her. After everything they’d shared and confided in each other, Logan didn’t want her by his side during this difficult time.

Two weeks days ago, they had made love in her living room during SportsCenter. She had sunk low into the couch cushions as their bodies joined. Two days ago, they had been in Cabo making love in a room overlooking an ocean so blue it looked Photoshopped. And yet today, Logan might as well have been a thousand miles away from her.

He didn’t want to see her
.

He just needed some space and time, she told herself. He had been through a lot during these past few hours and had experienced a traumatic injury. Their relationship was still new yet and she didn’t have any real claim on him anyway. Tomorrow he would ask for her and she’d hold his hand and kiss his forehead and reassure him that everything would be okay.

Tomorrow.

She’d already waited this long. She could wait until tomorrow.

The doctor gave her shoulder what was meant to be a comforting pat and then turned and left the waiting room.

A while later, a few of Logan’s teammates showed up at the hospital. They were freshly showered and still wearing their game-day suits. They strode into the waiting room looking out of place in the stark white room.

They didn’t look surprised when they saw her there. Logan must have told them about their relationship. She recognized Cody Lambert from his appointment with her last month and she knew Trik Levine was his good friend and linemate.

As captain, Cody assumed the role of spokesman for the group. “How’s he doin, Doc?” he asked.

“He’s stable, but they aren’t allowing any visitors.”

Cody nodded.

“Where on his face did it hit him?” Trik asked.

“It looked like his nose,” Leo Larsson chimed in.

“I thought it was his cheekbone,” Pete Fontaine added.

“It was his eye,” Kate replied somberly.

The guys murmured their concern. They knew all too well the consequences that came from an eye injury. There was no way to sugarcoat an injury like Logan’s. It wouldn’t be a question of whether he could play hockey again or not. The real miracle would be if he didn’t lose his sight in that eye altogether.

The players milled around for a while and when Dr. Mallan reiterated Logan’s request for no visitors, they said goodbye to Kate and plodded down the hall, leaving her alone in the waiting room.

* * *

Dr. Mallan frowned at Kate, who was perched uncomfortably on a plastic chair. For a woman who always looked so put together, she looked oddly disheveled. He’d never seen her look so frazzled before. “You’re still here.”

“Yes.”

What
was
she still doing in the waiting room anyway?
she asked herself. Waiting to see someone who didn’t want to be seen? Waiting for word—or more specifically the “everything is going to be all right” word?

She stood up and her legs felt shaky from one too many vending machine coffees. “Can I see him?”

“Mr. Murray has asked not to have any visitors at this time.”

“Oh.” They were the same words his doctor had said to her. As his optometrist, she could probably override that request, but she didn’t. Logan had made it crystal clear he didn’t want to see her. Or even his teammates for that matter. But that wasn’t any consolation.

Will he be able to see out of his eye again? Will he be able to play hockey again? Will he ever speak to me again? Dozens of questions bombarded her, but she just nodded solemnly at her colleague and clutched her purse in front of her like a designer life preserver.

Dr. Mallan’s hand was strong and reassuring on her shoulder. “Go home, Kate.”

Kate sighed and numbly acquiesced.

On the way through the hospital doors, all she could think about was Logan lying all alone in a hospital bed, his career hanging in the balance, and the condition of his vision up in the air.

Chapter Nineteen

Tomorrow

Logan’s stay in the hospital was made even more miserable by the fact that he’d given specific instructions that he wasn’t to have any visitors, especially a one Kate Kapowski.

Despite his better judgment, Logan couldn’t seem to get past his pride. It was heavy on his chest and had tied his hands behind his own back, leaving him to stare at the ceiling of a hospital room like a deformed Cyclops. The six weeks of recovery time the doctors had given him was starting to feel like an eternity.

He held his phone in his hand and tried to imagine the words he would say to her, but they didn’t come. He should have apologized to Kate, told her he loved her and needed her now more than ever. But he didn’t. He set the phone back down on the table next to him and sat in silence with one eye open and the other bandaged shut.

Up until now, his life had consisted of ice and teamwork and a little round disc of rubber. Not IV drips and haggard nurses and grim diagnoses. No one had prepared him for this. It wasn’t in the manual—not that there was one. All he knew was that he wasn’t supposed to be here. And he couldn’t face Kate.

Logan Murray was in the best physical shape of his life. He was talented, successful, driven and powerful.

And he was scared as hell.

* * *

After the second day of Logan avoiding her calls, Kate tried to accept the truth. It was over between them. He obviously didn’t want anything to do with her. Personally or professionally. He’d made it clear. Crystal clear.

But he’d been through a traumatic experience, she kept reminding herself. A hit like that would leave anyone rattled and he probably just wasn’t thinking clearly. It was a wonder he hadn’t suffered a concussion.

So much for not being in denial.

Kate didn’t know what to do. How was she supposed to play the role of supportive girlfriend—that’s what she was, wasn’t it?—when Logan wouldn’t even accept her calls or visits?

All he had to do was tell her he needed time. She would have understood
that
, but the avoidance was too hard a pill to swallow. It was understandable at first, but now that he’d been released from the hospital, the silent message was loud and heart-breakingly clear.

She didn’t know what to text, so she called and hoped the words would come when he answered. But she wouldn’t need to figure out which words to say. He would have to answer the phone in order for that to happen.

Kate hung up the phone when his voice mail came on. He was tough as nails on the ice and yet he didn’t even have the guts to break up with her fair and square.

Maybe that was just the way their love was meant to run its course. They’d gone hot and heavy and burned out like a match.
Poof
, gone. All that spark and heat disintegrated into nothingness. But she couldn’t believe that, could she?

Her heart said no.

Kate sighed and dialed his number again.

* * *

When Logan woke up, every muscle in his body ached. He’d slept for too long, but sleep was how he chose to cope with feeling sorry for himself. This wasn’t like him, he knew that, but ever since that puck had collided with his cornea, all common sense had been knocked right out of him.

He glanced at the hockey stick leaning against the wall in his bedroom and thought about using it to tap his way around the room. It would be good practice, he thought bitterly.

When his phone rang, Kate’s name popped up on the screen.

Kate had little decorative soaps shaped like seashells in a little dish in her bathroom.

Why that thought popped into his head now, Logan didn’t know. He just knew that although they were 150 miles from the ocean, Kate’s bathroom was decorated in a beachy theme with blue and pink soaps shaped like starfish and little conch shells. He didn’t have any feminine touches in his big empty house and he missed Kate’s cozy little bungalow.

He missed Kate’s cooking.

He missed Kate’s colorful dresses and shoes.

Logan closed his eyes and imagined a world shrouded in darkness. Color—who could live without color in their life?—would just be a fleeting memory. The flash of a red jersey as his teammate passed the puck to him. The bright lights of the NorCal Center illuminating the screaming fans. The white dotted lines on the road as he sped down the freeway in his car. Kate’s red lips, curving into a smile as she laughed at something he said. The blue and pink soaps in her bathroom.

Forget colors, he scowled and threw the stick across the room. The ache in his heart was ten times worse than the one around his eye.

When he thought about losing his vision, bitterness seeped into his heart and coated everything inside of him with an inky blackness. Just because it was only one eye, didn’t make a damn bit of difference to him. Kate didn’t deserve half a man. Kate deserved a whole helluva lot more than some disabled ex-hockey player and he was the only one who could save her from the fate of being burdened with him.

Kate wasn’t the only person he’d been avoiding.

He’d talked to Cody and Trik and told them to spread the word that he was fine. It was far from the truth, but until he knew more about what the hell was going on with his eye, he didn’t want them to be distracted from their upcoming games worrying about his condition.

And then there was his mother. She had been hysterical on the phone and his sister had been crying in the background. Logan reassured her that he was fine and begged her not to fly all the way out to California. If she had to come, he told her to wait until after the surgery when he would need her help the most.
If
he decided to go through with the surgery.

Frustrated, Logan sighed and shook his head. This wasn’t what he wanted. He was supposed to protect the people he loved, not bring worry into their lives.

He’d never shut people out like this before. But it was hard enough to face reality much less his friends and family. And Kate. God, he’d really done a number on her. He’d taken the one woman he’d managed to develop genuine feeling for—
love
for—and flung her away like Godzilla would an airplane. She didn’t deserve what he’d done to her. Hell, he’d treated her like a bona fide asshole for Christ’s sake.

But the minute his lifeboat had sprung a leak, he’d chucked everything out into the shark-infested waters and dove in when he should have been plugging the goddam leak.

He’d humored his teammates and family over the phone by telling them what they wanted to hear. But he refused to let them see him like this. He still had one good eye in which to see their looks of pity. And there would be pity, there was no doubt about that.

When he finally came to terms with his situation,
then
he would let people back in, but until then it was just him and the pain.

Logan looked down at the missed calls on his phone and frowned. Dr. Kapowski wasn’t going to give up, was she? She obviously wasn’t taking the hint and he guessed he could understand why. But what they had shared didn’t matter now, he told himself, although the words were hollow and unconvincing. Everything had changed.

In a flash of anger Logan called her back and his hand fisted around the phone. He would tell her now, over the phone like the coward he was. That way he didn’t have to see her face when he said the words. It was time to rip off the bloody Band-Aid once and for all.

She answered right away.

“I don’t want to see you.” The words stung as he said them, but it was the only way.

“But Logan, let me—“

“
Kate
. I don’t want to see you.” Or more like, he didn’t want her to see
him
.

He could hear her breathing and could feel her body heat as if she was sitting right next to him. God, how he hated himself for being the one to say such awful words to her.

“Just leave me the hell alone.”

There
, he thought as disconnected the call. Wasn’t this what he wanted?

He turned off his phone and threw it against the wall. It shattered and landed silently on the plush carpet next to the blade of the hockey stick. The phone was broken now, just like everything else. Ironically, it was the one thing that could be easily replaced.

Somehow he knew he’d come to a fork in the road. And he’d just taken the exit toward heartbreak.

* * *

Kate walked through her office, taking in her surroundings as if it was the first time she was seeing it. The optical shop with walls of colorful eyeglass frames, spotless mirrors on the glass countertops, posters of models wearing the latest designer frames on the walls. The comfortable chairs in the waiting room, the efficient and ergonomic space where the receptionist worked. The lush ferns in the corner to create ambience, the art painted by local artists hanging on the walls.

She’d worked her butt off to have her own practice. She’d climbed her way up from a space in a discount store, to a partnership with another optometrist. And now she had her own office. It’s funny how it didn’t seem to mean as much now. Especially now when she couldn’t even maintain the love of a man like Logan. A man she’d been convinced was in love with her in return.

Yes, she loved him. She’d known for a while. Whether it was when he’d shown up on her doorstep after visiting the children’s hospital or when they’d gone grocery shopping together, she couldn’t pinpoint the exact day, but she loved him all the same.

The rest of the day, Kate went through the motions and pasted a cheerful smile on her face for her patients as well as her staff. They didn’t need to know her love life had taken a literal puck to the face and that she felt like she was dying inside.

Her thoughts were still with Logan even though he had chosen his choice and there was nothing she could do about it. One minute she’d been in a loving two-way relationship and the next she’d been shoved out of a moving car and left to stare at the taillights and cough up the dust.

So, instead of finding a dark room to hide out in like she wanted to, she administered eye exams, filled out paperwork, and went along like everything was perfectly normal when it was anything but.

Julia was the only one who knew just how much Kate was hurting. She and Kate didn’t have to have a conversation for her to know that Logan Murray had shattered her sister’s heart with his rejection. He wasn’t the only victim here. Just because he’d been the one physically injured didn’t mean he hadn’t inflicted emotional pain onto Kate as a result.

Julia knew Kate wouldn’t have taken the risk after Carl and opened up her heart again to just any man. If this Logan guy was as great as Kate had made him out to be, then it would be worth teaching him a lesson. Sometimes men had a hard time seeing what was beyond their noses.

Even if they hadn’t said the words out loud yet, Julia knew they loved each other before the freak accident happened.

And love, no matter how fragile, was worth saving.

Julia patted Shamus on the head, secured the harness on his back, and called a taxi. It was time she paid this selfish hockey player a visit.