Puck Block : A Brother’s Best Friend Hockey Romance (Bexley U)

My body arc is curved to perfection, and my toe points to the sky in the middle of my arabesque. The stretch is a breath of fresh air, and I inhale the moment I touch my foot back to the shiny stage, but it takes a moment to adjust to it.

There’s a groove in between my eyebrows with thoughts that send my heart into a bit of a tizzy. Calm down, Tay. 

“Hey, you okay?” Claire’s face comes into sight. I don’t answer her right away because, truthfully, I’m not sure, but I know I don’t have to lie to my best friend and hide my concern.

“Yeah, I think. I just got a little dizzy.”

She holds her water bottle out for me, and I take it with a shaky hand. I tip my head back and swallow a few gulps before handing it back and nodding. “I’m fine. Maybe grab my snack kit just in case.”

She hands me my little pink bag with llamas wearing sunglasses all over it. “Should I call Emory?”

I scoff. “Absolutely not.”

I know my brother means well, but he, along with my parents, tend to forget that I’m twenty-two and have, on occasion, taken care of myself.

“Tay, are you sure? We don’t want a repeat of the incident at The Bex. Where is your glucose monitor? We should check your levels.”

I glance at Claire with her hands on her hips and her bottom lip tucked underneath her teeth. She’s the shyer one of our bestie duo, but the burn of embarrassment was much more potent to me than it was to her that night.

Nothing like the entire restaurant spinning when your feet are firmly planted on the ground and then, to make matters that much richer, your face meeting the unmoving floor moments later and taking your friend down with you.

That was the start of everyone learning that I have Type 1 diabetes, and ever since I was diagnosed before coming back to Bexley U in the fall, I’ve been riding waves of ups and downs.

I take a deep breath, and the room settles. “I’m fine. Really.” See? Totally fine. 

Coming to Bexley U, even with my brother and Ford in attendance, was a breath of fresh air for me. For the first time, I was able to break away from being Emory’s little sister and go off on my own. They still tried to step in and interfere whenever our paths crossed, but it wasn’t nearly as demoralizing as when we were in high school.

But this year, I’m back to being in my own version of hell.

After I was rushed to the ER during our yearly summer lake trip, nearly died, and was later diagnosed with Type 1, things fell into the same cycle as before.

The phone calls from my parents are borderline obsessive. If I don’t answer, they dial Emory next. If he doesn’t answer, they move to Ford because they know he will stop anything to take their call.

“As long as you’re sure,” Claire says.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

I nod to her and unzip my bag. I stare at the contents inside. Candy, glucose tablets, peanut butter crackers. After I sort through everything, I zip it back up. I feel fine physically, but there’s a nagging voice in the back of my head that’s making me hesitate.

Professor Petit claps her hands twice, and I push my bag off to the side. Claire and I stand and make our way over to center stage to run through the end-of-year performance again. Dance isn’t my one true love like it is for a lot of the dancers in the program, but it’s all I’ve ever known. With Emory and Ford having an all-consuming passion for hockey that dictated their lives from elementary school on, I decided at a young age that I wanted something like that too. It turned out to be ballet, and here I am, at Bexley U on a scholarship.

“That was a great arabesque, Taytum!” I smile at one of the younger dancers when she finds her position on the stage.

“Yeah, except for the landing. Why don’t you go practice instead of trying to make friends with the more established dancers?” Heat burns my neck at the sound of Kate’s piercing voice when she reams into the freshman. “And as for you”—she turns to me, and I want to flick her pointy little nose—“we wouldn’t want your face to meet the floor again, so maybe you should go practice too.”

I bare my teeth. “Shut the fu–”

Claire’s face pops into view. Her eyes are wide, and when her hands land on my shoulders, she hisses under her breath, “Taytum!”

“What?” I shrug. “She doesn’t get to talk to me or the other girls like that. This isn’t an audition for Mean Girls.”

Kate rolls her eyes and turns around in a huff.

I may have some areas of insecurity, but that doesn’t make me passive by any means.

“She needs a dose of reality,” I grumble.

“And you need to take a deep breath,” Claire reminds me. Her hand falls to mine, and she gives it a gentle squeeze. “Ballet dancers are supposed to be poised, remember?”

A tight laugh tumbles from my mouth before I back up to prepare for a pirouette. “I only got into ballet because I was jealous that Emory and Ford were good at something. I wanted to prove that I was good at something too. It has nothing to do with my demeanor.”

Claire laughs while bending at the waist to stretch. “Obviously.” She slowly stands up and says, “It’s probably a good thing you’re in ballet. You’d be way too intimidating if you were in a highly competitive sport.”

“Like hockey?” I ask. “Could you imagine if there were two Olsons on the team?”

My older brother has a temper—much like every goalie there ever was.

Claire does a quick sauté and lands in first position. “It would be terrifying.”

We both laugh and practice a few more turns while we wait for Professor Petit to stop correcting some of the younger dancers’ form. I step in line to do another arabesque because Kate’s little dig irritated me. Determination runs through my blood just as potently as it does for my brother, and if we’re given the chance to prove something to someone, we will obliterate it.

I arch my back deeper this time and lengthen my neck. My focus is stable, and my left foot balances along the floor before I finish and regain my posture. I finally exhale, and that’s when I realize the room is spinning again. Black dots swarm my vision, and I become aware of the all-too-familiar tingling in my clammy hands.

Shit.

Like a looming nightmare, I know what comes next.

I was wrong earlier.

I’m not fine.

I make eye contact with Claire, and she knows right away that I’m about to go down. She takes off in my direction, but before I can see if she attempts to pull another heroic move, like at The Bex, everything goes black.

“This is totally uncalled for.” I’m scowling, and it causes the paramedic to chuckle under his breath.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible patient?” he asks.

I pause and look away because yes. 

“Only every single time,” another voice says.

I tip my head back and make eye contact with the dark-haired EMT who has unfortunately had me in his care before. He turns away with a smirk and goes back to reading my levels on the monitor. His strong brow furrows, which is never good.

Do you know what else is never good? When the campus EMTs start to recognize you.

I’m beyond embarrassed, and I continue to curse my wonky pancreas all the way to the hospital, where Mr. Bossy-Pants refuses to let me walk and threatens to strap me down onto the stretcher if I even dare step a toe off.

I fling myself back onto the uncomfortable padding and cross my arms. The other EMT, the one that has a much better bedside manner, pats my arm, but the dark-haired one swoops in and whispers in my ear, “Relax, princess. Let us take care of you.”

My stomach gushes with something warm, and my cheeks burn with a blush. Christ, Taytum. I’m so deprived of the opposite sex–thanks to Emory and his friends becoming even more involved in my social circle because of Claire dating their captain–that I think the cute paramedic is flirting with me.

He’s not.

He’s just doing his job.

Kate is likely throwing a party with confetti and cake due to my sudden disappearance during practice. Knowing her, she’s probably set up some viewing site where my face met the floor.

When the elevator doors open, I tense. We’re headed for the ER, and I hope they don’t take me to the MICU. I’m convinced Dr. McCarthy lives there. I imagine him sleeping in the hallway with his white coat as a blanket, prepared for anything and everything. A vacation for Dr. McCarthy is heading down the street for a coffee and back.

“Alright, boys,” I say. “Fess up. What was my sugar?”

The two EMTs look at each other before swinging their gazes toward echoing footsteps. I lean forward only to quickly jolt backward to hide. The cute one rolls his lips together to hide a smirk.

Dr. McCarthy walks past us, and I breathe out a heavy breath when he’s out of sight, but then he takes one step backward, rolls his head toward me, and blinks once. “Taytum…”

Damnit. 

“Sorry, Doctor. I’m not sure who that is.” I look behind me and catch a grin from the other paramedic. He stuffs a laugh deep in his throat, but we both pull it together when Dr. McCarthy sighs.

“What happened?”

“She fainted at practice but regained consciousness quickly when her friend checked her sugar. We took over once we got there and finally persuaded her to get on the stretcher.”

I cross my arms. “If threatening to call my brother is what you consider persuading, then sure.”

Dr. McCarthy clicks his tongue–his usual telltale sign that he’s thinking hard, which I picked up on within the first week of being under his care. He isn’t the warmest doctor I’ve met, but he’s the top endocrinologist in our area, and he actually takes my opinion into consideration despite my parents’ refusal to listen.

“Get her into a room. I want a reading on her levels and what was given by her friend, if anything.”

He pulls out his phone, and even though I’m being pushed down the long hallway, I crane my neck back.

“I hope you’re not calling who I think you’re calling. I’m fine, Dr. McCarthy.”

We briefly make eye contact, but he turns his back to me as soon as he puts the phone up to his ear.

I flop back onto the stretcher and cross my arms. It doesn’t take long for me to feel like a child again, and I know it’s only about to get worse.