Back It up, Baby

"Shit," Coach muttered, slamming his foot into the ground. I sighed as Fleury let in his fifth goal of the night. We were losing to the Boston Bruins by two and Fleury was not helping us. I tried not to make eye contact. I desperately didn't want to play.

After leaving Brandon's room, I confessed everything to James. He knew about Brandon and had kept his mouth shut because he was happy for the two of us but, he couldn't hide his anger about Beau. Yet, as if any good stand in brother would do, he comforted me all night and brought me to Tuukka as soon as we touched down in Boston. Tuukka, much to his effort, tried to cheer me up as much as possible.

"Think about it like this, Lily," Tuukka explained, puttering around the kitchen of his apartment. I had never seen Tuukka cook anything but standard sandwiches and here he was, trying to put together some kind of meal for us. "Were going to have to cancel those tickets to see Pekka over Christmas because you'll be playing for Canada!"

I had forgotten all about those tickets and it now made sense why Pekka had sounded almost disappointed when I told him that I would be playing in the World juniors. That's all I could focus on, getting out of the NHL for a bit and playing international. God, that would feel so great.

Brandon refused to look at me during the plane rides, bus rides, practice and even in the locker room and Beau always ha. A knowing smirk on his face whenever I saw him. James just kept his arm around me as much as he could, as if he could protect me from all the bad things but, the bad things were exhausting me.

"I've got no choice, Lily," I looked up to see Coach staring at me and one of our trainers holding out my helmet. "You jut have to play for ten."

I didn't say anything, I just took the helmet and got on the ice, patting Flower's ass as almost an apology. Skating over to the net, I got my head in the game, stretched, tapped my goal post and got ready.

The aggravation on the ice was much more than I had realized. I knew there was always a little anger between us and Boston, I could tell from how Tuukka had always spoke of games, but this was a new level. Some of the Bruins looked like they were really out to hurt people.

We got lucky, a power play almost seconds after I entered the game. Milan Lucic, two for roughing. I took a deep breath, praying that Penguins would dominate in this one.

A whistle blew and I took the break to shake out my arms. Something jingled against my wrist and I remembered that I was still wearing my frog bracelet from Brandon. No matter how hurt and confused I was, I couldn't bring myself to take it off.

Puck drop and Penguins were going to work on the Bruins. Even from my angle I could see they were trying to chip it in from every part of the ice. I was proud, our power play had been lacking recently.

Gregory Campbell cleared the puck and I knew I could get to it first. I stepped out of my net, chasing the puck a bit. I got to it first alright but, what I missed was that Milan Lucic wa out of the box and barrelling towards me.

I had just a second to look up and hear Brandon call out my name, was he even on the ice? Before I was absolutely bull dozed into the ice.

Pain shot through my leg and everything went black.