Kinsley fell in love with Phoenix Maverick, an NHL player for a team she never imagined supporting. But when Kinsley suffers from a head injury and forgets the last six years of her life, she struggles balancing being the person Phoenix fell in love...
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October. 2016
You can imagine pain, empathize, think of how different sorts of heartache would feel to bare. How it might fester inside of you, weighing down and crushing the vital parts of us we need to keep moving. Pain can feel like a disease, one that rots us from the inside out.
Pain can be blanketed with substances or distractions. Pain can be buried deep enough that we're able to smile until the roots start to wrap themselves around our hearts and squeeze until we have no choice but to dig it all back up.
I've been hurt before. Friends have lied, girlfriends have cheated on me, I've had to bury a beloved pet. Nico, the hamster I was so adamant would live forever. He did well, but old age comes for all of us.
There was something unique about the pain worming itself down into the base of my stomach these days.
Whenever Kinsley looked at me, her smile a bit smaller, her eyes a bit more guarded, I felt winded. Of course I was grateful she was still alive and things could have been worse when she hit her head. But the love of my life looking at me as if I'm a stranger was one of the most gut wrenching things I have ever been through.
We had plans. We were engaged, building a home, getting dogs. I meant it when I told her we'd start over and we'd go as slow as she needed, it didn't mean I wasn't desperate for that ring to go back on her finger.
I sat on the steps outside of the rink.
Somewhere behind the thick dark clouds was sunshine, I caught the occasional glow of it when the wind shifted. I was fucking freezing but I needed air in my lungs before I got back on the team bus this evening.
Practice ended a while ago, I'd made a coffee, walked outside and got a phone call from Ash asking if I was going to be home for Halloween. Ash was big into her spook fests. She decked out her apartment, hired caterers, ghouled herself out so she was the best dressed. I had to admit, the events were a good time but I had to be in Seattle on the first of November.
She was disappointed to hear I couldn't commit but I didn't make it more often than I did.
"You look like you're about to kick someone in the teeth," Lei walked past me, skipping down a few steps and leaned on the metal arm rail, watching me.
"I just hate being this far from Kins," I admitted, turning my phone over and over in my hands. We had a flight into Colorado later tonight and then we were straight back here to Alberta for our match against Edmonton. Two days later we'd be in Vegas.
All of the travelling had never bothered me like this before. I'd never felt homesick but now I was homesick for her. It was killing me not to text her and ask how she's doing every five seconds. To beg her to follow me and forget about a job if it meant I could wake up beside her in these fucking hotel rooms I was sick of seeing.
Lei tapped the arm rail, the ping of metal echoing in the parking lot. "Things are going well, right? You two seem good."
"Things are good. Great," I blew out a breath and palmed my jaw. "I miss her so fucking much. She was supposed to be here, we were supposed to be doing this together. It's just hard."
