Dying For Siena (7 page)

Dante turned on his heel with dignity and walked carefully down to the communal bathrooms, where he relieved his stomach of last night’s liver.

Chapter Four

Don’t be misled by facts.

Deerfield, Massachusetts

The good news was that the doorbell ringing didn’t hurt anymore. The bad news was that it was his sister, Lou, at the door.

Nick stared at Lou for a moment, hating her because she looked so good. She was dressed in one of her usual designer outfits in some bright jewel color and not a hair on her dark head was out of place.

“I used to think of you as my big, handsome brute of a brother,” she said idly from the doorframe. Her big dark blue eyes, so remarkably like his own, looked him up and down, taking in his unshaven chin, tousled hair and bare chest. “But I guess brute just about covers it now. Do your eyes hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” Nick answered shortly. “Why?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite that shade of red outside a fashion magazine before. How come you haven’t called? I was worried.”

Nick leaned against the doorjamb negligently, as if he were relaxed and had nothing else to do and not as if he’d fall down otherwise. “Had an out-of-town exhibition game.”

“Well, that’s no excuse for disappearing. Can I come in?”

“Can I stop you?” Nick countered, and turned away.

Lou sucked in a breath and Nick winced, knowing what she was seeing on his bare back. The pain of the bruises had lessened, but even he had whistled when he’d seen the vision of blues and greens, slowly turning yellow at the edges, in the mirror. There was even a little black here and there.

Lou had seen him in this shape before, but Nick knew she never got used to the sight.

“Christ,” Lou muttered behind him, and Nick hobbled more quickly into the living room. The lecture was coming. Any minute now.

He only wished he could fortify his system with alcohol beforehand, but he’d probably exceeded his body’s yearly quota.

“You can turn around, Nick,” Lou said acidly. “You don’t have to hide. I’m not going to say anything. If you want to beat yourself to a pulp, week after week, that’s your business.”

Nick slumped down into the sofa. Lou might hold off for a minute or two, but he wasn’t counting on it. She hated hockey, and said so…often. To hear her tell it, it was basically pro wrestling with a stick.

“Well.” Lou sat down next to him, frowned and lifted her hip. She reached under herself and pulled out a none-too-clean T-shirt. “Christ, you’re an animal.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Lou. It’s the maid’s year off.”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust and tossed it over her shoulder. “Honestly, Nick. You’re enough to give jocks a bad name. How can you live like this?” Lou’s sharp eyes narrowed. “Listen, I swore to myself I wasn’t going to ask, but…how
are
you?”

“You were right the first time. Don’t ask.” Nick felt weary and depressed.

“Too late.” Lou was trying to keep her voice light. “I already did.”

“I’m fine.” Nick pursed his lips and studied his knees. “Just fine.” He looked up to see if Lou was buying it. Unfortunately, her mind was even sharper than her eyes.

“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. “And I’ve got a genuine Armani you can have for fifty bucks. Spill it.”

He didn’t have any choice. Lou was as tenacious as a bloodhound when she wanted something. He heaved a sigh. “I… It’s like this.” Nick started to tell her everything—the concussion, the medical tests, the doctors, the enforced retirement, Faith—but to his horror, his throat seized up. His tongue became a useless muscle in his mouth.

I can’t play hockey. Ever again.

The words were there but they simply wouldn’t come out. It was like looking at a train wreck. You saw the smoking ruins, could hear the cries of the wounded, but words simply couldn’t describe it.

Lou was watching him with her I-love-you-but-you-exasperate-me look and she was probably about five seconds from torturing it out of him. Or tricking it out of him. Nick had never, ever been able to outthink his sister Lucrezia.

He struggled up from the couch and went to the bookcase, where he picked up a sheet of business-grade paper, folded three times to fit into an envelope. One lousy sheet of paper that had changed his life.

He sat back down, looking at the paper he held in his hands, wondering where to start.

There was silence for a long moment, then Lou said, gently, “What’s wrong with your leg? You’re limping.”

Nick’s throat eased. He could talk about that. “It’s not my leg. It’s the knee.”

“The meniscus again?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ, Nick, how many times have they operated on that knee?”

“Seven. The surgeon said next time I should just buy myself a new one.”

“Maybe while you’re at it, you should just buy yourself a new head,” Lou said acidly. “What?” She’d seen him wince.

Here it comes,
he thought. “Well, since we’re on the subject…at the last game, I was backboarded and—”

“Wait, you were
what
?”

Nick smiled. Lou knew what he had in his bank account. She knew the name of every girlfriend he’d ever had. If she thought about it, she probably knew what color shorts he was wearing. And yet, though he’d been a professional hockey player for going on twelve years now, she’d systematically refused to learn even the basics of the game.

She’d once complained that there should be closed-captioning on TV for the hockey-impaired.

Here goes
, he thought. “Someone drove me into the backboard…hard. It’s an illegal move and the player got fined. But as I went under, I felt something crack in my knee. I went off to the bench for a minute and the coach pumped me full of painkillers and—ouch!”

Nick glared at Lou and rubbed his head where she’d whacked him with a rolled-up magazine. As if he wasn’t banged up enough as it was. “What the hell was
that
for?”

“You felt something snap in your knee and you
went back into the game
?” Lou spoke through gritted teeth. “What on earth happened to you, Nick? You used to be such a smart little boy, before you grew up. Overgrew up. Then you turned into an idiot.”

If she only knew how big a one,
thought Nick. “Lou, you know what hockey’s like. Unless a limb is actually hacked off, you play. But that’s not the problem. The thing is, I also…uh…sort of…blacked out for a while. Probably not more than a second or two. But I forgot to tell the coach.”

“Hold on.” Lou’s pretty face turned fierce. “You
blacked out
. And you,” she thumped him over and over again with the magazine, “you forgot to tell the coach?”

Nick lifted his arms in defense. “Wait, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. It was the middle of the game, and it was a close one, and I didn’t realize until later that I’d actually lost consciousness for a while. It’s a symptom of concussion, the doctor said. Not remembering.”

Lou was sitting back on the couch, arms folded, eyes blue fire. “So when did you tell the coach, Einstein?”

Nick winced again. “Later. At the end of the game.” He hung his head, then looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “We won the game. I scored the winning goal.”

“With a concussion.” Lou rolled her eyes.

Okay, so that wasn’t the best tack to take with her.

Nick drew in a deep breath. His throat started tightening up again, the closer he got to the heart of the matter. “After the game, I told him about the blackout and coach ordered me into the hospital for a checkup. I was put through a variety of tests which were—not fun.” Nick shivered at the memory of being enclosed in the MRI machine.

He was tough and he could take blood and broken bones with the best of them. But that silent, eerie machine like a coffin… It had been like being buried alive. “That was the day before yesterday.” Nick studied his hands. Hands that would never hold a hockey stick again. At least not professionally.

“And?” Lou prodded. “What did the doctors say?”

This was it. Nick handed her the sheet of paper and sat back, closing his eyes.

Lou sucked in her breath as she read. Nick knew every word, from the heading—Clarence A. Sorenson, M.D., Specialist in Neurology—down to the last words.
We hereby advise that Nicholas Rossi be barred from competition athletics for the rest of his natural life.

And in between were all the fun words describing possible consequences if he were allowed to continue playing—secondary concussion, cranial nerve damage, possible permanent neurological damage, possible cognitive deficits, biochemical changes at the cellular level.

And there it was. What Nick had tried to drink himself into a stupor to forget. Twelve years of his life down the drain because of an overenthusiastic adversary and a few moments of blackout.

“Oh, Nick,” Lou breathed. She put her hand on her brother’s bare shoulder. “Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” Nick shrugged, trying not to think about the rest of his life. “Had to retire sometime.” He tried on a smile. “Just didn’t think it would be this soon.”

Lou was looking at him and he knew she was reading every emotion he had. She’d always been able to do that. Just like their mother. “You know, Nick, maybe this accident is…is a blessing in disguise.”

Nick blinked. “Say what?”

“Oh, Nick, just think of it. How long do you think you could have gone on? You’re thirty-one years old. You could have played for what? Another seven, eight years? Ten, tops? And then what? You’d be forty and a has-been.

“A
rich
has-been,” she added wryly. “But it would be too late to do much of anything else. You’re young enough now to start putting that brain of yours to use.” She knocked affectionately on his head. “I know you have one in there. It used to be a pretty serviceable one, too, before you started playing hockey.”

“No jock jokes,” Nick warned.

“No jock jokes.” Lou smiled happily. “I’m going to go dump my collection into the garbage can. Now you can move on to the next thing.”

Whatever that was.

“Life after hockey.” Nick shook his head. He didn’t want to admit it, but he felt better now that he’d told somebody. He even managed a smile. “Is there?”

“Oh, Nick.” Lou scooted over and picked up his hand. He’d broken each and every finger. Some twice. He’d also broken his collarbone three times, his arm and his nose. That hadn’t been such a bad thing—Lou said it saved him from pretty-boy looks. But everything else… “One of these days you were going to kill yourself. And for what? Wouldn’t you like a real life? A real job? And a real woman, instead of those silicone bunnies with room-temperature I.Q.s you date?”

“Ouch.” Nick slouched lower in the couch. “I haven’t seen her in two months.”

“Well, how about that Dee Dee? She’s smart all right, but all she cares about is the fact that you’re a famous athlete. And rich.”

His love life was not something he wanted to get into right now. “Okay, okay—”

“What you really need is a smart, nice woman,” Lou swept on relentlessly. “Someone who cares for you as a person, not someone who’s blinded by your fame. Someone like—like Faith. She’s smart and nice and funny and pretty in her own quiet way. And the way she looks at you—” If Lou hadn’t been holding Nick’s hand, she wouldn’t have felt him jolt. “What?”

“Nothing.” Nick withdrew his hand and rubbed it across the back of his neck. “Say,” he said brightly. He stood up, staggering slightly and steadied himself with a hand on the back of the sofa. “You want something to drink? I don’t think I have anything alcoholic left, not even shaving lotion, but there might be—”

Lou’s watched him carefully. “Nick?
Nick
?” She raised her voice as he hobbled as quickly as he could into the kitchen. She got up and followed him.

“Nick, did anything happen between you and Faith? Because she was acting funny yesterday when I mentioned your name… Nick, get your head out of that refrigerator!”

Nick straightened and gave a bright smile. “What was that? Here, I found a beer for you. It was under the lettuce.”

Exasperated, Lou took the can of beer and set it on a counter with a bang. She crossed her arms and waited. When she started tapping her foot, Nick threw up his hands.

“Okay, okay. I blew it. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“What I want to hear is what happened,” Lou said grimly. “Now.”

It wasn’t easy, confessing to being a jerk. Especially to his sister. Nick knew it was going to hurt, so he hobbled back into the living room and sat down. Might as well be comfortable. He drew in a deep breath, then blew it out.

“Well, what happened was this. I was—I was blown away when the doctor said I’d never play again. I just couldn’t get my mind ’round the thought. It was as if the bottom had dropped out of my life. So I decided to go out and get drunk. Stinking drunk. I got totally wasted.”

Lou rolled her eyes. “Typical male reaction.”

“Yeah, well, I’m still paying for it, so don’t crow. Anyway, by the time I got done, I could barely walk. I stopped by your house for a little sympathy, but you weren’t there.” Nick tried to look accusingly at Lou. Maybe he could shift some of the blame around here.

Lou’s gaze was level. “I’ve been busy. Some of us have serious jobs. Go on.”

So that wasn’t going to work. “Well, Faith walked into the building just then. I wanted company, so I asked her out for a drink and then—then things just went on from there.”

“Things?”

“Yeah.” Nick shifted uneasily. “You know. Things.”

“You weren’t…” Lou hesitated. “You weren’t violent, were you?”

“Of course not,” Nick snapped, annoyed. There were gaping holes in his memory, but what memories there were, were almost unbearably sweet—and unusually satisfying. Then his head shot up. “Why?”

“Well,” Lou said, troubled, “I saw Faith yesterday, like I said. She was just coming into our building. I invited her up for a cup of coffee, and said I was going to stop by your house later and did she want to come along? She turned pale and got very upset. She said she couldn’t tag along because she was leaving in a hurry. She was off to some conference, called in at the last minute. A mathematics conference in Italy. In Siena, of all places.”