by Selena Kitt
"Cade. You're still here."
He jumped up to his feet and proceeded to look me over carefully, inch by inch.
"Are you in pain?"
I giggled and slurred my words a little. "No, I'm not in any pain at all."
He took my arm and lifted it gently up to his face, inspecting the cast the doctors had placed on it.
"Broken?"
I nodded.
"What else?"
"My nose is broken. My teeth - well, they're obviously broken. They say I'm probably going to need dental implants."
I was talking in short, simple sentences and breaking out into inappropriate laughter every few seconds. When Cade pulled me into him I laughed again and it unexpectedly turned into tears when I felt his big, strong arms wrapped tightly around me and heard the overwhelming concern in his voice.
"Ellie," he whispered in my neck, "My poor girl. They're not going to get away with this, you know."
I pulled away from him, crying and giggling at the same time, made loquacious by whatever I'd been given to dull the pain.
"Yes they are!"
"No, Ellie, they're not. What went down there was assault, maybe worse, they're going to have to pay for all your treatments."
Doped up or not, I knew Cade was wrong. Not because I was a legal expert but because I knew how things were in North Falls. Girls like Katy Grebling got away with things. And girls like Ellie Hesketh didn't.
"You'll see, Cade. Nothing's going to happen to them."
Anger flashed across his face. "Ellie, why are you talking like this? What even happened? Why did they do this to you?"
I shrugged my shoulders as we walked back out to reception. "Why do you think they did it, Cade? Someone saw us on Friday night. Katy has been torturing me since we were in middle-school. Did you really think she was going to just let me sleep with the hottest guy in school? The one she knows is hers by rights?"
Cade looked at me like I was insane. I looked back at him with the same expression on my own face. How could someone be eighteen years old, in high school, and not realize these things? In a way, though, I understood. Cade didn't need to tell me about his childhood or his family for me to know what it had been like for him. I'd already noticed that part of him, the one that just automatically believed people were basically decent, that good would prevail over evil and all that other stuff I knew was bullshit before I was six years old. Part of me envied him his innocence. Another part of me knew it wasn't going to last long anyway, especially once he got into the NHL and the mercenary world of professional sports. People aren't decent. Good doesn't always prevail. Most people want money and power and status and they'll stomp on anyone to get it. I looked up at Cade's face, so smooth and young in spite of its strong masculine angles.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because, Cade. You don't know how the world is. You will, soon."
He almost smiled, thinking I was joking and then looking confused when he realized I wasn't.
"What the hell did they give you, Ellie? You sound like some kind of world-weary old man philosophizing on his porch. All you need is the pipe."
"Sir?"
It was the receptionist. Cade led me over to the front desk, where the counter he'd broken had now been roped off with yellow tape and a plastic folding sign advising people to watch their step. As she talked to Cade I watched her face with fascination as the internal war between her anger at him and her attraction to him raged across it.
"Sign here, please. Cade."
She dragged out the last word girlishly: 'Caaade.' It made me start laughing again and she threw me a cool, disapproving glance.
"You're lucky your friend could pay for this, young lady. You would be in a lot of trouble if he hadn't stepped up."
I looked up at Cade.
"You paid for this? Cade, what? You didn't -"
"Let's go, Ellie. We can talk about it in the car."
He led me out to the parking lot, keeping an arm around my waist as I stumbled around like a drunk. By the time I was in my seat I'd forgotten about the fact that he'd paid for my treatment so I just sat there staring at him with a big dumb smile on my face.
"Are you hungry, Ellie? We should go get something to eat."
The mention of food jerked me partially back to reality. Food. My brothers. It was almost seven o'clock and I knew they wouldn't have had any dinner yet.
"I have to go home. My brothers are there. They won't have had any dinner yet."
I'd told Cade a little bit about my family life, although I'd glossed over my mother's alcoholism as a vague and unspecified 'sickness.' He knew it was my job to feed and clothe and care for Jacob, David and Baby Ben.
"Let's go grocery shopping then. I'll come over."
"No, Cade..."
"No, what? No groceries? Or no coming over?"
I shook my head tiredly.
"I don't have any money. On me, I mean. It's at home. And you can't come over because of my mom, you know that."
Cade suddenly leaned across the center console between us and took my face gingerly in his hands, not wanting to hurt me. He looked right into my eyes.
"Ellie, stop being so fucking stubborn. We're getting groceries. I don't have to come in and eat with you but I'm buying you groceries. You just got assaulted. And when those painkillers wear off, you're going to be feeling terrible. The last thing you need is to be worried about what your brothers are going to eat. So we're going to the store and that's that."
I didn't have it in me to argue so I just nodded as tears started to leak out of my eyes again. Cade brushed them away with his thumbs, still looking at me.
"You can't keep pretending that you've got everything under control all the time, Ellie. You have to be willing to accept help from others."
"From you, you mean, right?" I replied, looking back at him. "Because believe me, Cade, no one else has any interest in helping me."
He winced a little when I said that and glanced down.
"Yeah, Ellie, from me. I want to help. I want you to tell me why those girls did this to you so I can make sure it doesn't happen again. I want to make sure you eat properly. I want to make sure you have enough blankets to sleep in that freezing trailer. This is normal. This is what you want when you care about someone."
"I know what it means to care about someone!" I interjected, defensively.
"I know! So you should understand why I want to help! Wouldn't you do anything to keep your brothers warm and safe and fed? That's all I want. To make sure you have all of those things, too."
I started bawling then. Really properly losing it in front of Cade and, unusually, given my typical tight grip on my emotions, I couldn't seem to stop. He didn't ask me to, either. I think maybe part of me waited until I was alone with Cade to sob like that because I knew he wouldn't shame me for it or tell me to stop. Instead he just held me as best he could in the car, stroking my hair, which was tangled with dried blood, and kissing my face until I calmed down a little.
"So," he said, tenderly tucking a lock of hair behind one of my ears, "can we go get some damn groceries now, Miss Stubborn Pants?"
I laughed a wobbly, hiccup-y laugh and nodded yes.
People stared at me at the grocery store and I wasn't sure if it was because of how I looked or because they knew who I was and they knew who Cade was and they probably didn't have any idea why he was hanging out with me. He looked after me, though, directly meeting the glances of anyone who stared too long with his own cold gaze until they looked away.
He also pestered me to fill the cart with more fresh produce than I wanted, because I couldn't admit that the fridge at home was full of bottles of cheap vodka and gin. If it wasn't, it soon would be and I knew my mother wouldn't think twice about throwing food away to keep her alcohol cold.
By the time we were finished shopping my whole lower face had started to throb ominously, in a way I knew was only going to get worse, so Cade bought me a big bottle of ibupr
ofen at the pharmacy and we headed back to my family's trailer at around eight o'clock. I was relieved to see none of the lights were on - it meant my mother wasn't up and that meant I wouldn't have to explain my injuries to her.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come in? I could help you make dinner for the boys."
Cade was looking at me hopefully but I knew it was out of the question. There was no way I was going to risk a confrontation with my mother, who was a mean drunk on her best days and a borderline psychopathic one on her worst, in front of him. It was bad enough that he knew we couldn't afford groceries and that my little brothers - and me - barely had enough items of clothing to keep ourselves warm. The gruesome truth was going to have to stay hidden.
"No, Cade, I'll be OK. The boys need to be in bed anyway, I'll just fix them a quick meal and tuck them in."
"Will you be in school tomorrow? Will I see you?"
I turned my head away and grimaced as a spike of pain shot through my nose and down through my jaw.
"Yeah, I'll be there, Cade. Thank you for...everything, today."
We said our goodbyes and I waited until he was halfway down the road leading back to his part of town before stashing the majority of the groceries in the shed and only taking what needed to be refrigerated and what I was going to feed the boys that night into the house.
They were all sitting on the couch waiting for me and there was just enough light to see the stress on their little faces.
"Hello, you three!" I whispered, holding up the groceries in the hopes of distracting them from all the bandages. "Who's hungry?"
David hopped off the sofa and approached warily, as if he wasn't quite convinced it was me.
"Ellie. What are all those white things?"
I looked down at him, running my hand through his hair and noting that it needed to be washed.
"I hurt myself at school today. I fell down the stairs! It's OK, though. It doesn't hurt. Are you boys hungry?"
They were hungry. They followed me into the kitchen and watched as I cracked eggs into a pan and threw in canned corn, peas and carrots to make them my version of an omelet. The rest of the house was quiet.
"Is mom sleeping?" I asked Jacob.
"Yeah, she was awake when I got home from school but then she fell asleep. Is your arm broken?"
"No, not broken. I just hurt my wrist," I lied, desperate to shield the boys from the truth.
As soon as the omelet was ready I served it to them and then sat down at the table. My face and wrist were in pain but one of the ibuprofen pills seemed to keep it just about under control. I was just happy to see my brothers eating something nutritious. I wet a kitchen towel and wiped their faces when they were done, deciding against a bath due to the chance of waking my mom and then tucking them into bed and sitting in the dark bedroom with them until they were all asleep.
It was when I was walking back to the kitchen to clean up the plates and the saucepan I'd cooked the eggs in that I walked straight into my mother, who hadn't bothered to turn a light on when she'd crept out of her bedroom to top up her drink.
I just barely managed to stifle a scream, groaning into my palm and almost falling over as pain ripped through the lower half of my face.
"What the fu...? Ellie? What are you doing?"
Except it didn't sound like that. It sounded like 'Whathefuh? Elliewhayoudoin'?'
I froze, desperate for her not to turn on any lights.
"I'm - nothing, mom. I was just putting the boys to bed."
I could hear my voice shaking as I spoke. So could my mom, because the next thing she did was snap the hallway light on and stare at me. Her thin, greasy-looking hair hung limply over her shoulders and her breath absolutely reeked of alcohol.
"What did you do this time?"
She wasn't concerned or worried. My mother doesn't tend to experience those emotional states, especially with me. She said something else, most of it unintelligible.
"What, mom?" I asked, eager to avoid antagonizing her and possibly causing one of her screaming, plate-smashing rages.
"I said have you ever seen a hen's first egg, Ellie?"
I had seen a hen's first egg, when I was very small and we kept them in a small coop behind the trailer. The first egg a hen lays is usually strange-looking or misshapen in some way.
"Yes, mom."
"That's you. The hen's first egg. All fucked up.'
I stayed where I was, waiting to see if she had anything else to say. My mother still had the ability to hurt me deeply, but it seemed to me then that she might be losing some of that power. It was Cade, even if I wasn't consciously aware of it at the time. It was being cared for by another human being and my fragile but growing belief that maybe, possibly, I deserved to be cared for.
My mom didn't have anything else to say. She turned the light off and disappeared back into her darkened bedroom. I listened until the sound of the ice cubes clinking together in her drink faded and then went back to the kitchen to clean up the mess from dinner. When I went to lay on the deflated air mattress I called a bed, with the sound of the boys sleeping around me, I thought of Cade. I didn't know why he liked me. In fact it seemed highly likely that he was going to wake up one morning and discover that he actually wanted one of the curvy blonde cheerleaders at school. Until that day, I was determined to enjoy every second of my time with him, aware as I was even at that young age that I might not get another chance.
Cade
I didn't see Ellie for almost a whole week after our evening in the emergency room. I also found the cell phone I'd meant to give her buried in the bottom of my backpack. Dammit.
My inability to concentrate on anything except Ellie and the incessant worrying about how she was doing distracted me from everything else in my life, including hockey. It didn't go unnoticed. After a particularly lackluster performance during an important game against our main rivals, Coach Hansen called me into his office.
"Cade. You were off your game tonight."
It was a statement, not a question and he was right. I didn't know what to say so I just sat there, looking down at the worn blue carpet in the office and wondering what Ellie was doing at that precise moment, whether she was still in pain or not.
"What's going on? Where is your head at? Is it that girl?"
Something about Coach Hansen's tone when he said 'that girl' ruffled me. I also wasn't used to being questioned. I was used to being praised and congratulated and, if I'm honest, pandered to. Coach was not in a pandering mood.
"How important is your future to you, Cade?"
Ugh, what kind of a question was that? Of course my future was important to me. I could feel myself getting progressively more and more pissed off.
"My future is very important to me."
"Glad to hear it. You know there are scouts from three or four NHL teams at all the Ice Kings games, right? And you know these are the guys who are going to determine your place in the draft - or if you even get drafted at all?"
"I know, Coach."
There was an old blister on the heel of my left hand. I picked at it absentmindedly, desperate to get the conversation over with.
"Come on, Cade. Level with me."
I hated all that we're-just-bros shit Coach Hansen always threw at us. My teammates mostly seemed to eat it up but it always came across as patronizing to me. Coach Hansen wasn't worried about me personally and I resented his assumption that I hadn't figured that out yet. He was worried about his own reputation - a reputation that might be in danger if Cade Parker turned out not to be the next NHL superstar. I looked up at him and shrugged.
"What do you want me to say? My girlfriend was badly hurt a few days ago, of course I'm worried about her. Even if you want me to just turn that off, I can't."
Coach leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his head, looking at me and just barely managing to conceal the disappointed sigh I knew he wanted to let out.
"I understand that, Cade. But you're e
ighteen years old. I'm looking at the big picture here. The decisions you make now are going to effect the rest of your life. You're almost there. You need to stay focused."
"I know that!" I said, getting heated. "I have the best scoring record in Ice Kings' history and I had one bad game. I wish everyone would just get off my goddamned back."
"Cade, listen. You're going to be drafted. What do you think is going to happen then? You're going to have to leave North Falls. Do you think Ellie Hesketh is going to come with you? With her family situation?"
Small towns, man. Everyone knowing everyone else's business. I'd already thought about asking Ellie to come with me, wherever I ended up going. Fantasizing about a life with her in the big city was actually starting to constitute an embarrassing amount of my daily thoughts. I knew her family situation, but I had been putting it aside, pretending we would be able to find a way around it. Coach Hansen bringing it up like that and exposing my daydreams for what they were infuriated me. I stood up, quickly, and looked him in the eye.
