Limelight Love Story

20. Love You Goodbye

One second, Lucy was enjoying herself at Tim's hockey game, and the next, her heart stopped, because someone shoved her husband against the boards. "Is that blood?" She asked, wide-eyed and panicked. The cheers and ruckus of the crowd faded, and all she could hear was her heart beat thumping faster and faster the longer she saw red dripping down his face.

"Looks like it's just a scratch on his face. He'll be okay," Angela said to soothe her. Going to games with Lucy was always fun, but when play started to intensify and Tim was in the middle of it, she could see how Lucy barely even breathed and definitely did not blink as she watched so intensely.

"I don't like watching him get hurt like this," she admitted as she put a hand over his heart. "How are you so cool about Wes' injuries? He was in a fight last week."

"A fight is nothing. You do realize I get shot at, right?"

"Oh, yeah, being a detective must be harder."

"Mind saying that in front of Wes?"

Lucy scoffed. "Will do." Her eyes remained fixed on Tim, so she noticed the second a drop of blood trickled onto his jersey. "Okay, he's definitely hurt. I have to go see him."

"There are still two minutes left of the game. They won't let you near him."

"As if they can stop me." She strutted out of their box and ignored her security team to move through the stadium, weaving through people without paying attention whatsoever, because her end goal of seeing Tim was too important. Between concerts, she had not missed a game whether it was home or away, and though she wanted to support him, Lucy's heart ached every time a player got aggressive with her husband. He was tough enough that a little ice, a few kisses, and falling asleep cuddling was all he usually needed after a game, but until she could see him up close and assess his injuries for herself, she was overwhelmingly concerned.

During his last game in Calgary, a hockey stick whacked into Tim's forearm hard enough to leave a bruise, and it took several minutes to calm Lucy down and promise her that it hardly hurt, so he could only imagine how she would react to the sight of blood on his face. The cold temperature of the rink did help alleviate the pain, so he barely felt the cut along his cheek bone, but he knew it was there, and his first thought after he wiped his glove against his face and saw the blood was that his wife was probably sick with worry. The horn blared, announcing the end of the game, and Tim did not even enjoy the victory for a second. He shook hands with the San Jose Sharks' captain and skated off the ice. Just as he suspected, Lucy was standing outside the door of the locker room with her arms crossed over her stomach and her eyebrows knitted together. "I'm fine," he promised.

They lunged for each other, and she wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could manage given how the pads augmented his frame. "Are you sure?" Lucy asked into his sweaty chest then stepped back to inspect the cut for herself with gentle hands on his jaw. Then, she tried searching the rest of his body for signs of further injury.

"Go inside," Grey ordered as he marched towards the locker room. Perhaps the couple had not noticed the reporters swarming around them with cameras flashing and shuttering, but he did.

"Sorry, sir, they wouldn't let me wait in the locker room," Lucy explained as she took Tim's hand and walked inside.

"No one's allowed in the locker room on game day until the game is over and the team walks in. You know the rule," Tim reminded her.

"Considering you two make such a spectacle in the hallway whenever Tim gets injured, we might need to change the rule," Grey noted. Even he could not avoid the inevitable tabloid coverage with pictures of Tim and Lucy in the corridor outside of the locker room embracing each other postgame if he was so much as scraped during gameplay.